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paradoxGentleman posted:I dunno, I think the Genius fangame was pretty good at delivering a sense of powerlessness and horror, while at the same time creating an interesting setting for the whole thing to take place in. I know I am absolutely in love with the Foundations a Genius can belong to. I'm not a fan of the setting of Genius for the reasons mentioned, but it's not actually the biggest thorn in Genius's paw to me. The thorn is the writing style, and there's a YMMV element here, because I never got a sense of powerlessness or horror from the Genius book. In fact, I get a distinct sense from the tone that Genius actively wants to dissuade me from feeling creeping horror or existential despair, because whenever ideas that point in this direction crop up, Genius stops to deflate the tension with a joke about Gilligan's Island, or performs a goofy schtick about increasingly silly units of measure. I'm absolutely no enemy of comic elements in the World of Darkness or in its writing, but in Genius they're relentless and they feel like they enjoy primacy. Rather than an occasional line of black humor to underscore the horror or add a layer of irony to it, the jokes read more like they are the point of Genius as a book, and the ability to interpret and run it as a serious meditation on people who possess great power, but paradoxically strip themselves of control over their lives every time they try to exert that power over it, came across as more of an afterthought or a happy accident at best. Beast's writing about Heroes could learn a lesson from this example. I Am Just a Box fucked around with this message at 18:29 on Apr 14, 2015 |
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Apr 14, 2015 18:27
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Kurieg posted:How does a demon get their first cover in the first place then? How do they get from "Running away from god" to "Hiding inside an edgar suit"? The God-Machine, equipped as it is with so many fallback functions and logistical supports, manufactures edgar suits to smooth its angels' passage through human society — a feat demons can sort of reproduce with a lot of legwork. If you need an entirely new Cover, annihilating someone is the fast and easy way. The slow way is to make a whole lot of little pacts - an ex-boyfriend here, a nuclear family there, a work history or two - and eventually amass enough to weave them together into a psychic amalgam, creating an artificial person retroactively and stepping into that person's shoes. There's also the fast and hard way — let the God Machine make more edgar suits and steal those. Of course, it typically only produces one when it needs to sheath an angel, but if the demon locates the project from which the angel is entering its mission into reality and occupies the metaphysical space the angel is meant to be stepping into, he steals all that was to be the angel's, cover and mission both included. It's a package deal, but if you execute the mission as expected, it's easy to drop back off the radar again with your ill-gotten cover in hand. As for the angel you shoulder-tackled out of existence, what becomes of him? Decent people shouldn't think too much about that.
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Apr 15, 2015 01:00
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There was a whole host of mismangement problems going on with the WoD MMO, though. I'm skeptical of the writing perspective being taken on a lot of the leaked preliminary material (though if these criticisms help guide the final product to a better position that'd be great), but not only is Matt's quoted response to the incident laudable and the right tack to take, but I'm certain he's not hanging over his writers' shoulders, shaking his head and saying "No, it needs to be more... fsssh!" and then just walking off without clarification, as reportedly happened at CCP with the MMO developers.
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Apr 17, 2015 02:54
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Satyros Phil is developing oMage 20th Anniversary Edition, so he certainly counts post-name-change anyway. The interesting thing, though, is that as I recall, Lucien Soulban did not change his name. That is his legitimate birth name, Lucien Moussa Shukri Soulban.
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Apr 18, 2015 03:58
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Zombiejack posted:Between Scarecrow ministry members, Gentry, Slashers, Beasts, Predator Kings and pretty much any Vampire with a lovely attitude are their any actual human serial killers in WoD? Some guy who hates women because he was locked in a basement as a boy? Not only do you not need special rules or a special book for this, but if you decide you want a book, again: this is Slasher. Like, the scourges, okay, those start to get into deformed mutants whose hills have eyes and masked, senseless unpeople who just won't die. But rippers are meant in part to represent just normal humans who've become rotten and horrible killers. There's intentional ambiguity (and it might vary from killer to killer) whether there's any kind of supernatural influence involved in the creation of rippers, whether there's some influence producing the ripper phenomenon or whether there really isn't any such thing as a "ripper phenomenon" in the first place, just a name some hunters put to maladjusted and dangerous people to distance themselves from the human element when fighting back.
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Apr 21, 2015 23:38
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Covok posted:Actually, now that I think about it, if all the 2nd edition books are now complete so you can play without a corebook as Swagger said, what is core for? Just mortals games? As I understand it, at least, the upcoming corebook is basically for a combination of storytelling advice for mortals games, a book to sell to people who don't want to play as monsters, and (probably primarily) a collection of systems that are relevant for 2e WoD in general, but that the monster cores generally don't have space to include. The specific example I remember is the car chase and crashing rules that were in the 1e rulebook. Vampires and werewolves don't have specific rules for car chases because they're already straining at word count to fit in the stuff about actually being a vampire or a werewolf, but if you want car chase rules, you get the 2e corebook. There are various other omissions for space — for instance, Requiem 2e lacks the rules for ghosts, angels or spirits (Forsaken 2e also lacks the ghosts and angels), Tilts, or non-vampire-specific Fighting Merits. Stuff like that, useful but not essential.
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May 16, 2015 10:56
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MalcolmSheppard posted:On my perusal of Beast certain things might be read that way, but here I have to concede A) It's not my project, and B) my personal identity bits are pretty dominant-group-y in all the ways I'm willing to disclose, and you'll really have to talk to somebody else for responses that really come from the guts. I feel that Beast's main problem is a communication of tone. There's not really a unified voice, with different writers taking significantly different perspectives on the game. Those perspectives aren't all bad (and I think part of what I find frustrating about Beast is that I feel it came very close to, and yet fell very far from, being a strong and good game), but the way they clash with one another exacerbates a failure to clearly communicate the metaphor. Or in other words, I think the intended message is sound, but I don't think the book succeeds well in communicating that intended message to me. Of course, I'm also pretty dominant-group-y, and the plural of anecdotes isn't data and all. From what I've seen among readers who don't conform as much to the dominant identity, there have been mixed reactions; I've seen at least one person who felt Beast resonated and was honest and familiar, and at least one person who felt deeply alienated by its message as received. Either way, though, I enjoyed hearing your thoughts on this, it's something to chew on.
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Jun 4, 2015 18:26
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paradoxGentleman posted:Crossover friendly is all well and good, but you've still got to give the Beasts something original, I feel. Speaking of which, this is a minor complaint compared to all the other problems with Beast, but I feel like every nWoD corebook since Forsaken first came out has had something interesting in it that, even if you were uninterested in the corebook's signature monster, could be extracted and easily inserted into another game as a cool setting-expanding element. Forsaken has the Hisil and its constituent spirits and hosts. Awakening has the Astral Realms and manifestations of the Abyss. Created has fiery archangels of inscrutable purpose. Lost has the Hedge and weird goblin markets. Vigil has slashers and the various ideas attached to each conspiracy. Sin-Eaters has the Underworld and the Kerberoi. Curse has the remains of the Nameless Empire and, I guess, amkhata. Descent has angels, cryptids and splintering timelines. Even Requiem had smoke-owls from the outer darkness in the core by the time its second edition rolled around. What does Primordial have? I don't really see anything that isn't a Beast or intimately tied to having Beasts around (Heroes). There's the Primordial Dream, except... that's just another Astral Realm. (A kinda-sorta new region of it, and one that adds a few metaphysical wrinkles, but not fundamentally different.) There's the Dark Mother, but not only is she so vaguely defined as to be vaporous, but there's not even a clear communication of how you would go about looking for her or what kind of manifestations you would find that aren't more Beasts. The Inheritances are just variations on being a Beast and lose their definition beyond "fear monster" if you drop the Beast background. For all of its crossover friendliness, Beast doesn't seem to bring much to the table for other games if you're not already fired up about the Beasts themselves.
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Jun 6, 2015 16:43
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Kavak posted:What does the text say about why a player would want to play a Beast in a non-Beast campaign, by the way? General arguments for why a Beast, as opposed to some other gribbly, would be an attractive option for a one-man-out crossover with another game are surprisingly scarce. There's discussion of how a Beast would relate to each individual gameline, and discussion of general advice for crossover like "choose a theme and make sure your players create concepts that fit into it," etc. but as far as a generalized answer, this is as close as I see in the book: Beast: the Primordial posted:In any crossover game, a Beast’s primary role should be to subvert, challenge, and otherwise change the narrative. That’s not to say that Beasts should be hogging the spotlight or dragging the story off the rails to follow their own whims; rather, just as a straight Beast chronicle challenges the classic “hero slays the monster” narrative, the introduction of the Children into other chronicles should look at the themes and expectations of, for example, “a vampire story” and cast new light on them. Just as the best monsters of fable tell us something about ourselves, the best crossovers tell us something about our other monsters. So, the same drum Beast keeps relentlessly beating about "subverting the story," but turned on monsters instead of Heroes, usually in the context of contrasting the gribbly with a character who embraces and is comfortable with and unapologetic about her monstrosity. Not really anything specific about being a Grendel or what a Grendel means in another game, and I can't say I really follow what the appeal of subverting a story of, say, Changeling or Demon would be. Actually, I can't say I really follow what subverting the story of Changeling or Demon would even mean in this context.
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Jun 6, 2015 18:20
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Loomer posted:The coterie has a covert meeting with their informant in the Wraped Parking Lot of an Evil McDonald's in Sinister Los Angeles, Shadow California. To get to Shadow California, you just want to take Phantom Five down from our Washington and drive until you reach the outer darkness. If you run into prehuman spectres from beyond the dying stars, you went too far, stop for gas and ask a spectre for directions.
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Jun 16, 2015 01:00
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MalcolmSheppard posted:This is stuff I designed. I think it's going to be a hard sell in some quarters, but we shall see. Bravo on this one, Malcolm. I was waiting to form too concrete an opinion on the Sardonyx previews until we saw more, and this preview is the first one that really shows it coming together and how the preceding pieces fit. I like almost everything in this bit, the scale factors, the focus mechanic, the inclusion of cooperative social actions. My misgivings about Sardonyx as previewed thus far overall are pretty small and nitpicky; it's perhaps more in-depth mechanically than I anticipated, but I understand there's a large sector of the audience that digs that, and it's not so onerous as to put me off it. So, good job Mal, good job Neall, good job Ian, good job Dave (I think Dave contributed, or at least helped playtest?), and good job anybody I'm missing who made their mark on the stuff we've seen so far. I like it.
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Jun 18, 2015 18:23
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Twibbit posted:googling Sardonyx gets me nothing but iphone games. What is this system and setting all about?? It's the preliminary name for the new system backbone that's going to be used for both Scion and the Trinity Continuum games, so respectively modern mythic and sci-fi action thrillers (although Trinity spans various genres in different eras). You can find the blog teasers listed here or here, where some of the core system rules have been shared.
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Jun 18, 2015 19:28
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GimpInBlack posted:It says he only lets it feed with abandon every few years. Presumably in the interim he stays lean and hungry and only gives the Horror little meals just to stay above starvation, but every few years the hunger gets to be too much and he gorges. That "with abandon," of course, is an amendment to the original draft. Its addition sort of makes the example fit but points to the larger problem with the revisions thus far: they're piecemeal, and the new pieces don't mesh with the old ones. One can kind of understand this problem, given the magnitude of changes necessary to fix Beast, and the short crunch of time in which to make them; if you can save time rewriting everything you kind of have to. But it just reinforces how poor the first draft turned out, and how it simply wasn't in a suitable state to launch a Kickstarter. The only truly satisfying solution to Beast, I'm growing to feel, would be to cancel the Kickstarter and take your time rewriting the whole book so that the text coheres, because the old text still reflects that radically different direction originally taken. But that won't happen; it'd be a PR black eye and a tremendous money sink. The stereotypes indeed now overcompensate from "Beasts are so much better than you shits" to "I hope sempai notices me!" The change isn't much better. They remain superficial and lack any particular insight. The exception, of course, being demons, who have unchanged stereotypes still reflecting their arbitrary designation as hostile strangers. Beasts are still so much better than those shits. What a shame. Edit: So hey, how about that neolithic period? That looks pretty cool. I really like the idea of Pangaean beings, the material proto-spirits native to the Shadow Marches. They feel like a natural fit, they add dimensions to Father Wolf and the Hosts, and they're material that can be used to fuel weird exception case poo poo right up to the present day. I Am Just a Box fucked around with this message at 00:47 on Jun 23, 2015 |
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Jun 23, 2015 00:42
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Dave Brookshaw posted:I was round at Chris' flat this evening (he wrote the Neolithic chapter) and commented that we seem to have gotten away with revealing that Father Wolf was not actually a Spirit. I was expecting more fan push-back on that one. In addition to what Daeren said about Rank 8+ entities, which just generally holds true, it fits with how I had already been viewing a lot of the overdeities of the Shadow, like Rat and Father Wolf. It didn't seem like, for example, a very big spirit would split into many small material shards the way the progenitors of the Hosts did. And it's an elegant solution, because while Pangaeans are not spirits, they are described as being akin in nature, so it's not like declaring he was an alien monster from beyond the stars or something.
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Jun 23, 2015 01:22
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DJ Dizzy posted:I have no idea. Maybe just to achieve archmastery in the first place. And the Mind one, I do mean an actual Third Eye, as in the mystical Third Eye, so life wouldn't be able to whip one up. As Threshold Seekings, I dig the symbolism for Life and Mind. I'd add another possibility for Death, perhaps less rare but more dangerous to confront: the heart of a death-god with the aspect of the death of blindness or ignorance. The deathmask of a geist of drowning in darkness, for example, or the essence of a cthonian unborn with eyes sewn shut, which strips the knowledge of that of which it speaks from listeners.
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Jun 24, 2015 15:03
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DJ Dizzy posted:I dont know anything about Geist, except they deal with dead stuff. My main reason for the Golconda vampire thing, is that I think it's an aspect of the mythology that hasn't been anywhere near explored enough. As for the Cthonian and the death-god, I could do the Cthonian aswell, but that would work just aswell as a Spell Quint with some pretty severe memory loss and false memories, perhaps on the nationwide scale. Dunno about the god though, because to me, a god implies near all-mightiness, although I guess once you reach archmastery as a mage, you are pretty much playing with that kind of power anyway. Eh, as Mors says, I just meant "death god" as in "some powerful and symbolic deathly thing." There isn't a separate class of beings called "death gods," there's just high-Rank inhuman ghosts, cthonians, maybe supernal Stygians, etc. Geister aren't the PCs from Geist, they're the things that make deals with the PCs to give them their template. They're effectively ghosts with some traits more reminiscent of spirits, powerful enough to grow less human and begin to conceptually embody causes of death. I dig trying to give Golconda more of a mythology, but I don't think an archmaster seeking a vampire in Golconda to burn for fuel really accomplishes that much. It's a task that doesn't really require learning much about Golconda, the behaviors that engender it, or what a vampire who has achieved it looks like psychologically and metaphysically, because the wizards don't actually need to talk to or interact with the vampire much once they find him, they just need to gank him. So if you're burning something for fuel, something alien and powerful feels more the way to go, while Golconda may be more interesting in a game where vampires have more of a presence than as a source of materials and information. On the other hand, you don't need to strip the soul from a vampire in Golconda and burn it for fuel to gain something valuable from them. Maybe Golconda grants some wisdom into the hungry darkness. Maybe travelling into the vampire's Oneiros may reveal pathways into strange and distant realms. Maybe you just need a draught of the vampire's blood, freely offered. Anything that focuses on negotiation and parley works well for exploring Golconda as a hook in itself.
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Jun 24, 2015 16:52
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MonsieurChoc posted:gently caress it, let's change the subject. Is there anything else we could be talking about other than Beast or Ascension? There's always Demon, the Best Game. And for oWoD folks who liked the Stolze background chapter, the Demon Translation Guide came out yesterday. The Translation Guides haven't been great products but I do like this one better than the others thus far. It ends with a chapter of setting hooks to combine the old and new types of monster into one game, and there's a little badwrongfun itch in the back of my head being scratched by the thought of more traditional fallen angels merged with human hosts meeting Fortean fallen angels who've defected to the human race.
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Jun 26, 2015 02:46
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Kellsterik posted:Q: isn't DtF Hell a featureless psychic void where you can't touch anything Also the God-Machine isn't the Adversary, first of the rebellious angels, transformed and evolved into a vast animate network of cosmic machinery to keep the Creator and the Fallen alike from entering and influencing the world, and the Fallen aren't hungry dominions of sin and vice from the Lower Depths. When you're dealing with setting permutations designed to fuse two games from two game universes together, you ought to be a little flexible in altering the premises.
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Jun 26, 2015 21:08
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The feeding example is unchanged except to specify that the bully is a frat bro. The section that identifies "Descended from the Dark Mother" as a mechanical category is unchanged, but now followed by a paragraph asking "...but does that really mean they're descended from the Dark Mother?" Would have had the same effect and been so much simpler to just rename that category. The automatic good impression has lengthy "clarifications" that don't actually clarify anything that wasn't already clear because it still does exactly the same thing it did before. The silly front-off with demons where either the demon gets scared or the beast gets universe-blackmailed by the demon, without any conscious effort on either part, is unchanged right down to still implying that demons know why it happens and just won't say. You Are Meat is unchanged and can still strip the magic from a wizard and remove the soul of a demon who doesn't have a soul to remove. As the Beast revisions march on, they're looking more and more like they're not at all the foundational overhaul that the Introduction looked like, but just a fresh coat of paint on the fluff text in the front of the book and little else. I'm kind of not even convinced the oogy root problem with Beast is addressed, let alone all the big secondary problems we knew were probably going to stick around. Ferrinus posted:Gaston isn't even the Beast's antagonist! He's Belle's antagonist! Why does no one see this!!! This is another of those big secondary problems! Beast also does not see this. If Beasts are, uh, the Beast, and Heroes are Gaston, then Belle's central role in the story as a normal human who matters is completely elided. Humans are mostly just juiceboxes for Hunger. Belle is there to be kidnapped and kept in the Beast's basement until he's not hungry anymore, and there's no acknowledgment I can see that Belle might actually connect with the Beast and talk some loving sense into him and make him grow up.
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Jun 27, 2015 23:12
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Kavak posted:It's really hard to read because Kickstarter's layout is terrible, but when you subtract the goal from the amount of money raised, I think this has been one of OP's least profitable Kickstarters. I know the various Vampire supplement Kickstarters have made a lot less, but it's making less than half of what Demon raised. I think I see the math you're performing and it checks out, but I'm not necessarily sure that subtracting the initial goal from the final take is an accurate estimate of overall profitability. Setting aside the fact that Demon's initial goal was $10k less than Beast's, it depends on how many backers have gone for which reward, as the reward tiers that ship physical books bleed some of that take to fulfill. If I had to guess, I'd peg Beast as having performed around on par with Mummy, looking like it's going to end significantly behind Demon but not in a glaringly obvious, panic-inducing way. But gently caress, take my guess with an enormous grain of salt. Man. Saying this as a usual detractor of Mummy: the Curse, it still didn't deserve to place somewhere next to Beast.
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Jun 30, 2015 00:34
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Emy posted:I'd have to wait until I get back home to my books and oDemon powers spreadsheet ( Nope, even in the translation guide that still holds (although Patterns 3 has an extra effect you can spend Faith for on top of its normal effect). DTG even suggests that if you're converting evocations to Embeds and Exploits, you split them down the same line. Passing observation: is it just me or is the DTG's adjudication of high Torment evocations really harsh? You tally up successes on the evocation roll and add any dice you bought by spending additional Faith, even if those dice weren't successes, and if your permanent Torment is greater than the result, you get the high Torment manifestation. One or two die successes aren't rare in nWoD even with a large dice pool.
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Jul 5, 2015 14:49
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) to confirm, but I was under the impression that all rank 1-3 lore powers were without a faith point cost and all rank 4 & 5 lore powers cost a faith point.
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Christ almighty this thread gets up its own rear end about Mage every time. Let's bitch about merely symbolic actions in the gameline about the tangible superreality of symbols.Ferrinus posted:They totally care about "society", because "society" is a machine constructed by the Exarchs. Properly speaking, "evil" Arrows might look like a remorseless mercenary who's 100% in it for the challenge and doesn't even bother to find out who it is he's killing, but a character that actually acknowledges/is in good standing with the Order and the Pentacle would be like, Neo machine gunning down the lobby guards or the "murderhobo" that stalks the nightmares of every rpg.net poster. Murderhoboes and Neo in the scene where he's mowing down non-agents who don't know what they're guarding, seriously? You're complaining about a shallow writeup draft and you'd rather see something more like that? I mean, gently caress, I'm perfectly fine with violent Arrows, I'm not especially emotionally attached to the writeup. But Arrows aren't robots following their ideology like Asimov's Laws, and a good writeup acknowledges that, too. The tension between fighting the Lie and losing touch with the world around you is pretty core to Mage.
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Jul 10, 2015 18:32
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Yawgmoth posted:As I understand it, Swarm Form gives me the option to be a swarm of whatever in addition to the Protean animal forms. Have we been misreading it this whole time? The text scans to me like it gives you the option to choose a swarm of things as a Protean animal form, so "swarm of hornets" would eat a slot as much as "bear" would.
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Jul 26, 2015 01:55
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LatwPIAT posted:Demon straight-out says that the convoluted plots should have no discernible reason, and that stopping a GM plot should have no apparent consequences to the GM, because gently caress having anything you do ever matter, I guess? I don't remember getting that impression from the book. Which parts did you get that from? I could believe that's in there somewhere, but there's also a bit that talks about angels lacking free will or personal preference, which runs counter to the premise of the Fall. It's admittedly not a hard pitfall to fall into. I tend to take my major cue from the sidebar at the end of the God-Machine Chronicle's Introduction, which stresses the immediate consequences of dealing with a global angel-machine, and the validity of partial victories and successful stands. Local projects should have some kind of visible impact on the community the ring has settled around. Sure, there might be subsidiary projects around that just reroute essence lines or maintain cult hiring procedures. Those Projects Are Boring. The story isn't about them, don't waste time on them unless the ring comes up with some way to use them as a weapon against the interesting projects. It can be tempting to go whole hog with schemes involving numerological distribution of outdated newspapers, but demons investigating that scheme ought to be able to get some idea of what the newspapers are meant to do without having to foil the whole scheme before they find out, whether it's by occult analysis or working your way through conspirators to interrogate. At the root should be some kind of compelling output or side effect. It makes monsters; it kidnaps people; it monitors your movements; it equips hunter angels. The rest is just (fun) window dressing. I don't tend to focus much on the end-goal of banishing the God-Machine or creating the Freedom Dimension or the like, in part because, honestly, Demon's mechanical support largely breaks down at that level. But I felt the need for practical impact was pretty apparent. Maybe I'm too used to just ignoring some passages to substitute game design instincts.
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Aug 31, 2015 17:05
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MonsieurChoc posted:In what state is Nightvale located? It's sandwiched right between Ogdenville and North Haverbrook. Serious talk, though, whatever the state, I'm pro-fictional city. Real cities are fine too, but one idea I never got to explore because the campaign fizzled was a Mage game set in a nonexistent metropolis in New Jersey. Visiting out-of-towners in the know tended to be very businesslike, get in, do thing, get out, don't get cozy. Because there's no such city as Navidson, NJ, and they knew it just as well as we do.
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Sep 9, 2015 02:04
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Captain Sheepy posted:As someone who knows very little/next to nothing about Changeling: the Lost, does the game feature trolls like in a lot of changeling myth? I know there are hobgoblins and obviously the True Fae, but please tell me I can encounter these cute guys in a session. Yeah, that looks about right. It doesn't even differ that much in style from the illustrations in the Changeling books, except for being more adorable. If you want your trolls to behave as befits how cute these guys look, you're probably either looking at a changeling Ogre (or a different seeming with an appropriately trollish kith in 2e) who's a gentle giant type, a former human kidnapped to Faerie, rendered great and lumbering by his time there, but mindful and protective of the local freehold and neighborhood; or you're looking at some nonviolent but mischievous hobs, which are the miscellaneous lesser fae creatures that wander the periphery between Earth and Faerie. Some changelings make deals with local hobs and offer favors in exchange for helping mind their safe places in the fae periphery. Sometimes hobs come to the edge of the human world and set up big temporary bazaars where they barter weird stuff like dreams or jars containing moments. These guys look like they might be tending a stall at a goblin market like that.
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Sep 21, 2015 21:30
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Pope Guilty posted:What exactly does the one from the clanbooks actually do? It's covered in the back of Mekhet. There are six compositions specially scored for vampires playing the armonium (with the possible option of more out there, maybe for non-vampires as well). Hearing a vampire play one of the six songs in the book has a disorienting effect. One of the songs also functions as an effective exorcism, while the other five each have additional effects if a member of a particular vampiric clan plays the piece. Mekhet have the most interesting composition: they experience visions of the past unlives of any other since-destroyed member of their clan, and if they're Hollow, are temporarily reunited with their reflection, but have to fight the reflection over who retains awareness and control for the duration. Nosferatu isn't too bad either; their Beast turns inward and they find themselves harrowed by their own force of terror. The other three clans have simpler effects that temporarily exaggerate the signature tendencies of the clan.
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Nov 22, 2015 00:24
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Ambi posted:I remember Chulorviah having a writeup in Book of the Wyrm for W20, which basically amounted to "mind-controlling squid things, go full Cthulhu if you like, or Innsmouth, maybe they came from the Wyrm but who the gently caress cares, they are horrible sea monsters that want to absorb humanity". It's a good book. Yeah, Book of the Wyrm W20 is a pretty delightfully written book. It serves as a nice counterpoint to, say, Beast: the Primordial, in that it mostly takes off from the strengths and the high points of the oWoD tone, the over-the-top lurid style Loomer mentions, instead of the weaknesses. You didn't even mention how the evil world-killing corporation's best DIY shapeshifter project to date is Gordon Gekko boardroom gorilla people out to be obnoxious, self-aggrandizing winners. They reproduce by looking up and recruiting the meanest go-getters they can find, and then hitting party after party all night until their guy is either dead or flips out and goes apeshit.
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Dec 14, 2015 21:23
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Daeren posted:Like what? Those fan splats like Leviathan or something? I can't really think of much that rides WoD's coattails that isn't just a project on a forum somewhere. Maybe Gangrel, the professional wrestling vampire? A brief wiki check says he's still performing somewhere, although I'm unclear whether he's still going by the name. Hey Loomer, did Gangrel the Wrestling Vampire ever get referenced in any books? I doubt it, but a man can dream. I Am Just a Box fucked around with this message at 04:24 on Dec 15, 2015 |
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Dec 15, 2015 04:21
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Bedlamdan posted:I've read some of the revised version of Beast, and haven't touched the leak or the original KS version. Thus far, it just seems like the standard WoD stuff? It's in the same situation as Sin Eaters where you have no real goals, but it's not really any worse than that. Was it just tainted by how bad the leak was or do I need to actually read the whole thing or??? The original Kickstarter version was tracked back a lot in the revisions, but in a way that rings hollow if you look at what they changed and what they left. That's not necessarily entirely fair, if the revised version is intended to be the final product, to judge it by older drafts, but well, you only get one chance to make a first impression. You can't do anything about a leak, but they felt confident enough in it for a public Kickstarter unveiling. Beyond that, there's a lot of dissonance between what the mechanics produce and what they're meant to produce, and the revisions only stay thorough up through about half of the book. You hit the later half of the book and you start seeing a lot more remnants of that immature Kickstarter presentation where Heroes are two-dimensional and Beasts come off as more petulant and entitled than anything else.
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Dec 23, 2015 08:41
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I still want to know why their two page splash illustration has them wearing Iron Fist masks. Was that in the art notes or was that the illustrator's idea? I'm not sure which possibility is more confusing.
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Dec 28, 2015 07:05
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Zereth posted:The Demon one could actually be pretty clever if it was in something more self-aware. Indicating that the Beasts very much do not understand Demons. I'm still confused by the way they went about executing the supposed feud between demons and Beasts. I get the base idea fine: it's interesting on both ends to have an exception case, and the kin-sensing power rubs the wrong way against Demon's spy genre, so there's a little conflict there already. The suggestion that it has to do with how the God-Machine is mechanical doesn't fly, but whatever. More importantly, you read the stereotypes and they're all "man, gently caress those guys, I hate 'em." I like my prey to be multiple choice, what would happen if I tore off all your masks, apparently didn't fall far enough, etc. You read the fluff text and it says "Beasts and demons don't understand each other and aren't comfortable with one another." You read the mechanics and there's a clumsy and roll-intensive (since it involves Family Resemblance and spoofing in addition to its own roll) clash that just automatically either intimidates the demon or... makes the Beast blackmailed by the demon somehow? This happens without any input or intent from the Beast or the demon, but one passage implies demons know why it happens and aren't telling, which is a weird thing to state about another gameline in your crossover game when players of that gameline don't have access to any answer. And Beasts can't use most of their team-up powers or sign pacts with a demon. The pact thing is presented as some big deal reason why demons wouldn't want to work with Beasts, when pacts are a relatively minor concern when dealing with a fellow supernatural being, being much easier with regular Joes. So the only thing really in there to inject more than a moderate amount of unease and inconvenience into their interactions is an arbitrary mechanic where either the demon gets scared or the Beast finds out the demon knows his email password, and neither party knows why this happens. Why are the stereotype quotes talking like oWoD splats having monster wars again? I mean, yes, this is a drop of water in Beast's ocean of problems. But it's just so strange in how clumsy it comes out.
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Feb 10, 2016 07:56
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Kurieg posted:I'd be loving floored if they return the Get and Furies to their 1st ed portrayals. Literal Nazi Werewolves and militant cryptofeminists go. Apparently there's some fooferaw over the Mind's Eye Theatre Werewolf playtesting, and Paradox/White Wolf had some input in the little setting tidbits sprinkled in? I have no idea how much of it is just the By Night Studios folks and how much, if any, is reflective of White Wolf's plans, but from what I saw when I glanced it over one of their free previews, the Get is diversifying from necessity. On the other hand, an "Age of Apocalypse" has been going on for nearly a decade, the entire tribe of Fianna are under a faerie curse of lover's truth placed by a werewolf's spurned lover the Samhain Queen, and the natural balance is replenishing Garou ranks by evolving dormant genes that are activated by a werewolf's bite, causing the Garou gene to proliferate through the subject's DNA. You know, the gene that makes you a shapechanging earth spirit person who can meditate to cross dimensions. It almost feels nostalgic.
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Feb 16, 2016 07:08
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Zephirum posted:Is there an oWoD flavor justification for a mage getting powers from being possessed? I have a character concept that's a katana-and-trenchcoat neckbeard who gets possessed by a dead samurai from the 1600s and now thinks he's an immortal warrior poet. Something something Avatar. Your Avatar takes the form of an immortal warrior poet.
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Feb 17, 2016 00:48
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Attorney at Funk posted:Who's your favorite nWoD character and why? Carl, the folksy Brineborn of few words who just wants to live a quiet life giving boating tours, watching people go about their lives and reading his Bible (Jesus – now there's a man who makes sense), but who's about to be caught in the middle of a religious war between the creepy sacrificial Deep One types and the moon-worshipping wolf-people they've inadvertantly pissed off. Dizang, the God-Machine's exiled bodhisattva, who considers the Unchained a wayward flock to earnestly convince to return to God, and who only resorts to violence defensively, to protect bystanders. Sergeant Delgado, the portly, past-his-prime desk sergeant who's been working the night shift and bringing in donuts and coffee for six months now since he died peacefully in his sleep. He's been growing increasingly alarmed since he quietly noticed he was dead. Hendaid Bran, the Promethean who has labored for centuries on a seemingly pointless Pilgrimage. He's old, and tired, and stubborn, and all but ready to just lie down and die, but it's not done. And he doesn't know how to do it. The Great Work is the achievement of humanity. How is your Great Work even supposed to end when you were patched together from the body of a crow? I'm a sap.
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Feb 17, 2016 06:32
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bewilderment posted:I'm pretty sure this literally shows up in the Daeva book for VtR. It's had a callback or two (including in the 2e corebook), but it has an entire section writeup in Mythologies.
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Feb 22, 2016 01:17
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nopantsjack posted:Oh also when you're rolling your dicepool for an attack, i know the number of successes determines the damage but what determines the DC? This has already been cleared up, but it sounds like you're coming into Requiem from experience with Masquerade, by the mention of the Sabbat and all, and I've got a pointer to add. This is an important point about the difference between the WoD and CoD rules that not everybody gets tripped up by, but when it does trip somebody up, it can mess things up good: outside of combat rolls and extended actions, CoD doesn't care about gradients of success as much as WoD does. By that, I mean if you're rolling in WoD, you could have, like, a middling success from one successful die, or a solid success from three, or whatever the suggestions were. In CoD, most rolls (outside of the above) only care about two threshold numbers: "any" and "five or more." Zero successes? Failed action. 1-4 successes? Successful action. 5+? Exceptional success. The target number of eight is high compared to WoD, so you're not meant to have just escaped by the skin of your teeth or only gotten cursory useful information if you roll a single success.
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Feb 23, 2016 01:38
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nopantsjack posted:I'm probably going to keep the number of successes thing though, just as a rough indicator of how well you did, I like the granularity it gives your rolls but good to know about the chance die and crit thresholds! It's your choice to make, but just remember I brought it up in case it doesn't work out. Rolls in CoD are very swingy, but it matters a lot less when you're mostly just checking if there are any successes at all. It's what it was balanced around. nopantsjack posted:e: Oh a question, is there any difference in trying to use a discipline on a vampire than a human or is it just higher stats to oppose? Check the dice pools for each power; some mention that they subtract the target's Blood Potency from the activation pool (resistance), or add it to the target's opposing pool (contested). Mortals, of course, have zero Blood Potency. (If you later pick up any other CoD games, other supernatural characters have their own traits that directly slot in here too, so if you had a vampire trying to Dominate a werewolf, they'd apply Primal Urge at the same rate.) There probably will be a lot of cases where it's smoother in play to just let a power succeed against a minor NPC. Also check out the Down & Dirty Combat rules to simplify violent confrontations with ordinary schmoes. nopantsjack posted:Yeah I think they are cool things, but could do with being a bit less opaque for new players, mask kinda makes sense but why dirge other than it sounds like a cool gothy word. They used to be Masquerade and Requiem, respectively, since they directly correspond to what those terms mean in-universe, just in a more personal sense. They got changed to synonyms because it was confusing to have Requiem be both "a vampire's unlife" and "this system trait about a vampire's personality." I'm not a huge fan of the alternate Anchors the second edition rules have introduced for supernatural characters. First edition just had vampires use the same traits mortal characters used to recover Willpower, Virtue and Vice, and the 2e incarnation of Virtue and Vice (page 169 in Vampire) feels pretty versatile and intuitive. Just pick a character flaw you lean on to keep going and a heroic drive you risk all to achieve. nopantsjack posted:Whats the deal with willpower, is it basically action points i.e. spend to take an extra turn or do some specific cool thing? Extra turns don't happen in CoD; this is an important balancing point. They don't work well with the dice system. Some abilities or powers cost Willpower, but mostly you burn a point (you can't burn multiple at once) on heroic effort when you really strive to succeed at something, which gives you +3 dice on a roll or +2 to a trait you resist another character's dice pool with (so, for example, Resolve or Defense). Willpower is meant to be pretty easy come, easy go. In a fight, for example, you pretty much have no reason not to burn Willpower every turn you can, because your unlife might be on the line, so you're meant to be pretty lenient with allowing Anchors to recover it. Mortal characters also recover a point of Willpower for a restful night's sleep, but the Vampire developer has said the intent was that vampires don't. It's a common house rule, though.
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Feb 23, 2016 18:51
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nopantsjack posted:Nice, my rules-readiness is approaching 50%! Noob question # 6789: If something says "buff x adds +2 to social rolls" am I right in thinking that adds +2 to the roll results (i.e. 6s become 8s and so succeed) or does it add 2 bonus dice? GimpInBlack has already answered this nicely, but just to underline it because it's a significant difference: nothing in CoD ever changes the target number of 8 for normal rolls or 10 for chance dice. (Actually there's some weird stuff that's only in Mummy but you're not playing Mummy and it's not very good anyway.) The primary means of tweaking the difficulty of an action is circumstantial dice modifiers. The ST should feel free to add or subtract a few dice from any given roll that seems like it's harder or easier based on circumstance. When you factor in rerolled tens and all that, a dice pool of 3 is about an even chance of success or failure, 4 is where you're more likely to succeed than fail, and each die from 4 on yields diminishing returns. But again, the target number of 8 means these dice pools are prone to a lot of random swinginess, which is why you don't want to diminish the value of a single success, because it won't be uncommon that that's exactly what you'll get on even a large dice pool.
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Feb 23, 2016 21:17
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nopantsjack posted:Cool, thats quite a nice system, I was thinking that having to get 8s for everything made stuff quite hard. Makes a lot more sense if 1s dont cancel and you only need 1 success. Seems like it makes dealing damage quite tough though. Also am I right that that means exploding tens are mainly only useful when dealing damage or opposing someone? The 2e weapon ratings (which can be conferred on unarmed attacks by Protean or Vigor) are the main factor in dealing damage. On a successful attack roll, you add the rating of your weapon to the damage inflicted. So there's not generally anything that gives you one unqualified success, but there are effects like weapon ratings that increase your total of successes if you already succeeded with your base pool. And yes, the N-Again qualities don't affect your likelihood of success on most rolls outside combat, but they make you more likely to achieve an exceptional success. Their effect is also proportional to the size of your dice pool, so it can sound nice on paper to apply 9-Again to all your rolls of a given Skill or something (like the Professional Training Merit does), but it really only makes a difference if your pool was already strong by itself.
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Feb 23, 2016 21:40
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