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Myths Over Miami could have easily been published by somebody in the WoD.
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# ¿ Apr 10, 2015 06:57 |
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# ¿ Apr 30, 2024 01:14 |
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Wow, I got my hands on a copy of the original Clanbook Gangrel and drat but they used to be The Gypsy Clan (also gently caress the Ravnos). Also:Clanbook: Gangrel posted:CJ: (in a pseudo street-rap staccato)
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# ¿ Apr 10, 2015 14:38 |
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I wrote this about Vampire: the Masquerade awhile back, might as well repost it here. Shadow of the Vampire features John Malkovitch as F.W. Murnau, following him as he makes his unauthorized adaptation of Dracula, Nosferatu. Looking to make his film as realistic as possible, Murnau goes out and finds himself a real vampire, Max Schreck, played by Willem Dafoe. But Schreck’s been away from his humanity too long, and his self-control isn’t what it might be. If you’ve ever wanted to see a low-Humanity vampire struggling to interact with human beings, this film’s got you covered. If you’re in the mood for some violence and one of the best vampire movies out there, check out Near Dark, with Bill Paxton, Lance Henrikson, and Jeanette Goldstein all fresh from appearing in Aliens. A traveling pack of vicious vampires roams the American Southwest in a succession of stolen vehicles, committing a string of murders while trying to integrate their newest recruit. The ending’s a bit of a copout, but if you’d like to see a nomadic Sabbat pack at work, you might as well go to one of the primary inspirations for the Sabbat. I think it gets called out in one of the tabletop books, but The Godfather is the Vampire: the Masquerade movie. That scene at the very beginning, with the singing and dancing and partying of the wedding going on outside while behind closed doors potentially deadly business is being transacted? That's a Camarilla gathering if I've ever seen one. And the whole rest of the film? It's about an underworld of hierarchical secret organizations of people who covertly influence society and occasionally kill and die over their position in it. It's about loyalty and betrayal, about love and hate, and about wanting to do the right thing but being steered by forces not entirely within your control but not entirely out of your control either. See it because The Godfather is Vampire as all get out, or just see it because it's one of the best films of all time. Blade does something that's a staple of Masquerade but which doesn't show up in a lot of vampire movies- the notion of the vampire Illuminati, pulling strings behind the scenes. Boardrooms of pale men who don't remember mortality versus a group of young, cosmopolitan vampires who want to overthrow them in the name of a dark god? Archives of information hidden behind innocent fronts? Human beings sworn to the service of vampires in hopes of being turned? A secret vampire mythology complete with its own system of prophecies? drat, yes. Not all vampires live in boardrooms and move effortlessly among the kine- some just struggle to get by. Night Junkies is the Thin-Blood experience in a nutshell, as a desperate vampire moves through some grimy, incredibly seedy parts of London’s underbelly while beginning to suspect that the serial killer stalking London is him. For most of the Kindred, the Embrace comes with some pretty significant bonuses- sure, you’re losing a lot, but you’re also gaining quite a bit. For the desperate Thin-Blooded, well, not so much. I can hear you laughing already, but watch a few episodes of Downton Abbey and check out the way the post-Edwardian class structure is acted out and enforced both by the Crawleys and their fellow aristocrats upstairs and the servants below. It’s not just the aristocrats enforcing the class structure- some of the servants are as ardent supporters of it as their counterparts upstairs could ever be. Replace “aristocrats” with “Elders” and “servants” with “neonates and ancilla” and you’ve got the social structure the Camarilla tries to enforce- one in which the younger Kindred are respectful, subservient, and know their place. Lost Boys is one of those instant classics. I’ve heard people say it’s the Sabbat, I’ve seen people say it’s a gang of Brujah. Maybe it’s just about the fear of watching your kids grow up into somebody other than who you tried to raise. Heck, maybe it’s just a reminder that hunters are out there and if your characters aren’t careful, it’s not just their own necks they’re risking. And if nothing else, it’s got “Cry Little Sister”, so that’s good, too. Se7en has no overtly supernatural elements, but every last inch of it captures the feel of the World of Darkness. The world is grey and ugly, full of people who are sick inside and out, and the only man with a solution for it is himself a violent, vicious serial killer. What sort of horrors does the awfulness of living in the World of Darkness spawn in your game? In your city? In your character? Hmm, since I wrote that I saw this interview with MRH where he talks about how seeing The Lost Boys with Stewart Wieck was the original inspiration for V:tM. Also a bunch of the players in my LARP are undergrads whose reference pools are significantly later than mine; I referenced Interview With the Vampire while talking a player through deciding how her character felt about Humanity, saying that Lestat and Louis are effective illustrations of two very different approaches, and discovered she hadn't heard of it. So I guess no matter how obvious it sounds, that's a good one, too.
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# ¿ Apr 10, 2015 22:58 |
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Kavak posted:I just remembered this less than serious but still appropriate take on Awakening: Huh, I didn't realize he was using his first name now.
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# ¿ Apr 11, 2015 11:01 |
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The sky is where bombs fall from. The sky is where drones and satellites watch you from. The sky is where chemtrails poison you from. The sky is where dragons and rocs and the like swoop down from. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbpUcAI86MY
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# ¿ Apr 15, 2015 20:44 |
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So I've been running the local Masquerade LARP for about a year now, and I'm working up a survey to collect feedback on how I'm doing. I've got the following questions: 1. What is your overall feeling about [game]? 3. What's the best experience you've had playing in [game]? 4. What's your worst experience you've had at [game]? 5. How do you feel about the level of attention you get from the Storyteller during the game? 6. How do you feel about the level of attention you get from the Storyteller between games? Any ideas for other questions I should be asking?
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# ¿ Apr 16, 2015 06:57 |
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Kibner posted:Maybe ask about the place you play at. Is the schedule good? Thank you.
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# ¿ Apr 16, 2015 23:38 |
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So basically it would've been like a giant-rear end LARP only a million times worse.
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# ¿ Apr 17, 2015 06:41 |
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:World of Darkness Online had nothing to actually do with the World of Darkness other than vampires and some clan names. It was pretty much the WoD version of Shadowrun for the XBox 360. Well, that's insofar as World of Darkness Online could be said to be or have anything- it was really never anything at all beyond a super-early tech demo.
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# ¿ Apr 17, 2015 06:53 |
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:When it wrapped, they had an early alpha client and had active testing for employees and family. I'm not saying the leaks had anything to do with it, I'm saying they didn't produce anything worth producing in half a loving decade.
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# ¿ Apr 17, 2015 07:06 |
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I'm entirely okay with the City Gangrel swapping in Obfuscate for Fortitude; urban survival via blending in rather than just being tougher than everything else? Sure, makes sense. The lack of Animalism, though? Dumb. Celerity? Dumb. Animalism, Obfuscate, Protean, that I'm fine with. The invisible blender just sucks.
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# ¿ Apr 17, 2015 07:37 |
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That level of Mytherceria that's just Spirit's Touch except you actually eat the psychic residue and nobody else can Spirit's Touch the item afterward is pretty cool. I'd be cool with it replacing Spirit's Touch- introduces an abusable trust sort of thing.
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# ¿ Apr 17, 2015 09:21 |
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neaden posted:Lucious Soulban is still the greatest WoD author name of all time. I remember watching Serial Experiments Lain, going "what the gently caress did I just watch?" (which seems to be the most common reaction), and then buying a guide to the series mostly on the strength of it being by Lucian Soulban and Bruce Baugh. It, uh, didn't help as much as I thought it might.
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# ¿ Apr 18, 2015 00:19 |
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SunAndSpring posted:You don't seem to understand. Attorney at Funk posted:A shame. You seemed an honest man. If these are Lain quotes they're over my head, I saw the series once in like 2002.
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# ¿ Apr 18, 2015 04:34 |
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Daeren posted:That explains the two Night Horrors books, three Bloodline books, and two Ancients books I thought the explanation for the Bloodline books was Requiem players viewing them the way D&D players view Prestige Classes.
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# ¿ Apr 18, 2015 23:33 |
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Eddy Webb did a Reddit AMA.
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# ¿ Apr 22, 2015 07:17 |
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Mimir posted:A children's magazine commonly found in waiting rooms at dentists' offices. But that's not important.
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# ¿ Apr 22, 2015 12:36 |
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How do you pronounce chiminage?
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# ¿ Apr 24, 2015 04:57 |
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Mors Rattus posted:You don't, because it's a silly word. I suggest things like 'sacrifice' or 'bargain' instead. Chiminage is an obsolete Franco-English word for a toll paid on a forest road. White wolf!
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# ¿ Apr 24, 2015 05:13 |
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Mors Rattus posted:Chiminage is like two steps above Vitae, Celerity and Auspex, by rights of having extra syllables, sounding super goofy even in comparison and being equally well-served by the term 'sacrifice' which is really quite a nice little word. Metis makes me want to go back in time and scream "DON'T loving DO THAT" into MRH's ear while he's asleep.
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# ¿ Apr 24, 2015 05:47 |
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Kavak posted:How did that happen? Metis was the username of the poster who commissioned swap.avi, over the protests of virtually everybody.
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# ¿ Apr 24, 2015 14:56 |
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Tezzor posted:Remove non-resource merits from the game imo Screw that, Medium for everybody. The Shroud is all but down, go hog wild!
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# ¿ Apr 25, 2015 08:04 |
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MonsieurChoc posted:I guess the White Wolf writers really like that scene with the maggots in Lost Boys. According to MRH, seeing Lost Boys with Stewart Wieck was the inspiration for making V:tM, so it's not entirely inappropriate. I actually really like the "convince somebody that something scary is true" power. That's a neat one.
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# ¿ Apr 26, 2015 16:06 |
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So what are we talking about, some kind of Call of Cthulhu thing where a hilariously powerful offense is easy to acquire and adequate defense really isn't?
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# ¿ Apr 29, 2015 04:56 |
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Luminous Obscurity posted:I asked in the comments, but just so everyone here is fully aware. Shield somebody from chemical bonds, watch them dissolve.
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# ¿ Apr 29, 2015 22:19 |
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Little_wh0re posted:I actually like darklings and do like that write up. But "I'm willing to make the hard choices others won't" sounds like an arrow/batman kinda line It's a very WoD archetype.
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# ¿ May 1, 2015 12:18 |
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Little_wh0re posted:In my experience of gaming the hard choice tends to be being more moral, not less. This is also why Mummy: the Resurrection was poo poo.
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# ¿ May 1, 2015 13:35 |
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Why is it Mage specifically that always inspires the fifty-page rules arguments? Are the mechanics that vague?
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# ¿ May 2, 2015 20:21 |
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This weekend most of my players swore up and down OOC that their characters would never commit murder and had never killed anybody. This group includes several people playing elders. Additionally, I found this in the coordinator report: quote:Domain census and recruiting new members: Several new players are interested in Werewolf, and intend to form a pack. A few are possibly interested in Vampire but are put off by the competitive atmosphere. ...maybe I should just cancel game and hold Diplomacy sessions until they acquire a taste for backstabbing.
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# ¿ May 12, 2015 21:58 |
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Hipster Occultist posted:Maybe introduce some NPC's that start loving them over? My operating theory is that they're nice people OOC and that they don't want to be mean to each other IC. Which I guess is better than them being dicks IC and having it bleed into OOC (I knew a guy back in 2000 or so who quit LARPing, saying that being a manipulative jerk was starting to bleed into his actual personality and he felt it wasn't healthy for him to keep playing), but it makes the game a bit off from what we're ostensibly going for. It does raise the question of why you're playing Vampire if you want to be Lawful Good, but right now my plan is to scour their backgrounds for things I can dangle in front of them that multiple players will want and only one can have. There's also a part of me that suspects a lot of the younger players view all RPGs through the lens of D&D/Pathfinder and can't imagine why they would be expected to work against other members of the party (where "the party" = "the Camarilla"), but I can't exactly assign them five-page papers on how the Camarilla has a level of disregard for the welfare of its individual members that the Hierarchy of Stygia would raise an eyebrow at.
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# ¿ May 14, 2015 13:46 |
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This was always my experience with D&D- I'd get invited to play and told to bring a character, show up with a Dwarven Cleric or something, and everybody is half-dragon or half-celestial [class from some sourcebook I've never heard of].
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# ¿ May 16, 2015 10:29 |
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Loomer posted:Man, the official forums have a lot of people who think the Setites and Baali are completely redundant. Slaves of the Aeons, all of them!
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# ¿ May 17, 2015 09:43 |
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Banality is too central to CtD to fix it without making a completely different game.
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# ¿ May 17, 2015 10:30 |
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paradoxGentleman posted:I'd like to say that it's a well made, more thoughtful book would outsell what the CtD fans are willing to pay for the anniversary version, but the truth is that I am not sure how many of them there are out there, nor how much are they willing to pay for this game. Awkward, Ugly, and Gross. It's a PYF thread.
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# ¿ May 17, 2015 11:18 |
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Is there anything other than system issues preventing neatly excising C:tD and dropping Lost into the OWOD in its place?
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# ¿ May 19, 2015 00:12 |
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Covok posted:I know I am no expert on the subject, but it doesn't really make sense to do so. I mean, what's the point of doing a C:tD 20th Anniversary Edition if it's actually just C:tL especially considering C:tL 2nd Edition is on its way? I don't mean have C20 be Lost, I mean is there anything about Lost that would interfere with just dropping it into the OWOD and pretending Dreaming never happened.
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# ¿ May 19, 2015 01:50 |
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One of the things I like the most about the OWOD is the very 90's sense of impending doom- history is leading up to something big and bad and it's coming soon. You get that any time there's a big, round number (like 2000, say) coming up, and all of the OWOD games except Wraith have it, and Wraith goes out on a bang that destroys the major structure of the setting anyway. Requiem has much better politics, but it's missing that sense of desperation and doom that Masquerade at its best had.
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# ¿ May 20, 2015 18:50 |
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Kurieg posted:You do realize that Brucato is basically the patron saint of "Magic and Faeries are Real" in the Old World of Darkness and any rule that makes mages less powerful probably didn't come from him, right? Dan Ackroyd:Ghostbusters::Phil Brucato:OWoD Kurieg posted:Werewolf's anti-science stuff is also something of a relic of 1st edition, mostly because 1st edition Werewolf put forth the idea that any level of human development beyond hunter/gatherer society is inherently evil. While at the same time having all the werewolf tribes pull off ridiculously out of character schemes and backstabbing machinations that would make a Ventrue blush. The best part about the Technocracy and Werewolf is that the Technocracy is for some reason in deep with Pentex, because they're the bad guys, right? Ditto the Sabbat, despite the Wyrm being exactly the sort of thing the Sabbat burns people alive for being involved with.
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# ¿ May 21, 2015 01:42 |
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Kurieg posted:That was back before they had really worked out that the Weaver could, itself, be an enemy without actually meaning the Wyrm wasn't an enemy anymore. I think the idea of having two enemy factions might have popped poor MR*H's brain. The real issue is that it implies that a) the Camarilla aren't just as bad from a human perspective (they're basically a cancer gnawing away at the heart of human civilization and as the most powerful vampire faction are responsible for a lot of human misery) and b) the Sabbat are bad guys to the Camarilla's good guys, which is... seriously not right.
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# ¿ May 21, 2015 02:06 |
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# ¿ Apr 30, 2024 01:14 |
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MonsieurChoc posted:The thing with the Technocracy vs Traditions is that people bring in all kinds of assumptions from outside the game and then argue really passionately about what they think is true instead of what the books say. This gets worse as the line goes on and fan misunderstanding and retcons and genuine improvements all mix together to make a giant mess. Really instead of phrasing it as "The Technocracy does magic but they think it's science" it's more accurate to say that the nine systems the Traditions call magic and the five systems the Technocracy calls science are all ways of approaching whatever you'd call the underlying thing they're actually doing.
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# ¿ May 21, 2015 03:45 |