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Ferrinus posted:You can also come up with character motivations for mortals. I'm not saying it's impossible to play a sin-eater game but rather that it's pointless - regular old humans who happen to have the sixth sense at the low end of the power scale, or Moros and Bone Shadows and so on at the high end, can pretty much take care of the entire helping annoying ghosts<---->becoming lords of the dead spectrum. No one said that it was just about helping ghosts. I just posted a bunch of huge posts detailing the stuff they can do that other lines can't. Also on the mortals thing: Regular old non-conspiracy humans really aren't a match for most supers without prep time and the advantage of surprise. A group of Geists can just roll into a building and start putting holes in things while taking what would normally be fatal hits for anyone else. All while using powers from the various keys to sling death related curses everywhere that slowly rot the faces off of everyone nearby and have their corpses get possessed by vengeful ghosts. Or to put it another way, a Geist is a super. A potentially benevolent one that humans may tolerate but is too alien from the perspective of Hunters most of the time. Also, even Moros and Bone Shadows can't do some of the stuff that Geist characters can do. You're ignoring the different keys they have access too and the fact that at the top end the dead conspiracies make you even able to laugh off attacks from a mage doing their damnedest to destroy you. Though I have to say that I don't really get your logic. By your own logic the idea that Moros, death interested mortals, and Bone Shadows can do some of what Geist's do ought to mean that all but one of them ought to be invalidated and don't need to exist when it comes to interacting with the dead. Archonex fucked around with this message at 05:46 on Jan 15, 2017 |
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Jan 15, 2017 05:39
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Ferrinus posted:No, because Moros, Bone Shadows, vampires, and other death-centric subdivisions of the other supernatural lines actually come with built-in defining conflicts that, among other things, generate believable answers for "so what do these guys do all day". So wait, your argument is that "I don't believe you when you say they have things to do?" when I describe stuff that came directly from the books that shows them doing things that no other supernatural can do? What the gently caress. How am I supposed to argue with that?
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Jan 15, 2017 05:50
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Ferrinus posted:I know they can do all sorts of stuff. Sin-eaters are insanely powerful. They just don't have to be insanely powerful because they don't have compelling motivations for doing the things they do besides "I'm feeling charitable" or "I'm feeling bored", because sin-eaters as a whole are not united by some underlying hunger or threat or tension that brings them together/sets them against each other/underlies their existence. But...They do have uniting struggles. A bunch in fact. The Geist in your head is going to push you to do things. Bad things. And if you don't then it's going to take over and do them anyways. Every time you die and ressurect you're going to lose a piece of yourself to the thing living inside you, similar to degenerating. And then there's the trouble that comes from having an ancient and likely insane super-ghost living in your skull that has every reason to drive you bonkers so it can take over your body. Hell, even beyond that one guy up above even mentioned one of the "class" descriptions for Geist's that mentioned how they're driven to seek out occult content. Something that's likely to bring trouble separate from all of the trouble they come pre-equipped with. Like, these things exist. Just because you don't see them having merit doesn't mean they have merit. Geist has a ton of issues, the biggest of which is that all of the details regarding antagonistic content seems to be located in other books that you're expected to already own. But they have the things you're saying they need. If the ST isn't enforcing these things then that's not the game line's fault. Archonex fucked around with this message at 06:04 on Jan 15, 2017 |
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Jan 15, 2017 06:01
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The idea that heroes are rape survivor analogues and beast's are Gamergate analogues puts the fiction piece in the preview where a hero jumps the beast and tries to carve him up in a new light. He's ranting about killing the Beast as being his claim to fame while the Beast is begging him to just calm down and be reasonable about the horrible people murdering monster existing and to think of someone other than himself. Now that i've heard that take on it it really reads as a hosed up take on the whole bullshit "blame the victim" poo poo some people do where they claim that ____ person is only accusing someone of rape to get their fifteen minutes of fame.  Assuming that metaphor is intended then that...Uh, kind of puts a really dark and hosed up tint on the chapter fiction, actually. Heroes basically got mind-raped into being what they are because the Beast hosed up. Which puts the blame pretty firmly at the Beast's feet. That's not dark in the good sort of way that VTR or other games with dark themes have. That's dark in a way that's more like "What the gently caress is wrong with the author of this. He's some sort of sick bastard that wrote in victim blaming as part of the chapter fiction.". Archonex fucked around with this message at 09:38 on Jan 22, 2017 |
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Jan 22, 2017 09:32
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Zereth posted:The intended metaphor is that Beasts are oppressed minorities and Heroes are Gamergate Etc. That's...Actually really frustrating. I can't figure out if the author was just utterly stupid when it came to trying to slot in social justice metaphors or if they're just so hosed in the head that they don't see that they basically sided with the gamergate/bigot side of things.  Either way, that's still a terribly written way of writing them out. Just for different reasons. If Beast's are an oppressed minority then...Well, they aren't. Everything they are flies in the face of that. They're clearly shown to be loving awful monsters trying to justify their existence while literally subsisting off of fear and human suffering. Even if heroes are unilaterally murderous dicks after they get mind raped into the role that still comes back to the fact that the supposed oppressed minority did this to them either through one of their own gently caress ups or because they simply dared to exist at all. Like, you can't have your metaphorical oppressed minority actually be guilty of being the monster that the metaphorical bigot claims they are. The point at which the oppressed minority turns out to be a horrifying monster that murders people and/or is a severely ever present danger to society and the people immediately around them is the point where the bigot starts being thrust into the role of being the hero of the story. Which is entirely hosed up for all sorts of different reasons that i'm not even going to get into here. It'd be easier to just direct people to all the "Let's Read" threads dissecting right wing fiction than to try to get into that. Edit: I think the most mind numbingly stupid thing thing about it all is that even vampires (Which is inarguably the line that Beast is trying to ape with the "Beast I am lest a Beast I become" theme of having to do harm to avoid doing greater harm.) are written so that they can end up existing for good reasons. Hell, there's even at least two novels where that's subtly hammered home. From what i've read of Beast so far they somehow missed even the themes of heroism that run in all the other game lines. Even vampire has the whole "tragic/gothic heroism" thing going for it if the players want to approach it from that angle. And it's arguably one of the darker lines due to needing to literally eat people to stay existent. VTR in particular works to allow for sympathetic protagonists despite the whole "eating people" thing because of the underlying themes of a tragic struggle to stay human in the face of overwhelming odds. If a vampire stays well fed and keeps out of the Danse they can usually resist some of the worst temptations that'd see them fail that struggle. Humanity even touches on this as a mechanic by pointing out that low humanity vampires stop being able to connect to humans while high humanity vampires are not going to be vampires that interact with vampiric politics unless they have too. Heck, having a high humanity is part of one of the only confirmed ways to turn yourself back into a human, too. If a Beast gets too much satiety things still get hosed up irrespective of them doing their best. And each of their "ascended" states just turns them into a bigger sort of monster that lacks humanity entirely. They literally can't win except to become the monster that in every other line would be considered a "loss" state. It's not just a tragic narrative right from the start, it's a doomed one. If the characters want to stay human and not be a bunch of monsters then they're utterly hosed one way or another from the word go. I'm not even sure what the hell they were going for given that. The game doesn't seem to work from just about any perspective I read it from. Archonex fucked around with this message at 11:46 on Jan 22, 2017 |
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Jan 22, 2017 10:49
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bewilderment posted:I was under the impression that the Werewolf 'buffs' mean that a sufficiently determined werewolf can be an issue for a non-master Mage that doesn't put significant effort into hiding themselves. Also the Know Name werewolf Gift is probably very rude to use. Plus mages at the top end of things are only super powerful until you realize that the world breaking super-mages have equivalent or greater counterparts in the other game lines. Imperial Mysteries even mentions this. We just never got books on what they'd look like. The vast majority of mages (IE: All the regular ones, and probably the PC's too if the GM is doing their job and not letting them break the game over their knee in a few sessions and is enforcing consequences.) will probably get torn apart by pretty much any major type of supernatural in a straight fight. It's when the mage has time to prep for the encounter that they start to really get dangerous. They're really similar to Tier 1/2 Hunters in that way. Of course this also means that unless the GM is proactive then Mage games always seems a bit overpowered by comparison since players in tabletop games tend to be proactive in handling the issues they're presented with. You can do a lot of damage if you have time to prep and plan out some ideas in Mage. Meanwhile NPC mages don't really get that benefit unless the GM is clever enough to counter the player's actions. Edit: Actually, having a group of werewolf/vampire/sin eater/hunter PC's get into a fight with a group of mages only for it to turn out that the mages knew they were coming and had prepped to fight them off would make for an interesting reversal of roles. Archonex fucked around with this message at 06:18 on Jan 23, 2017 |
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Jan 23, 2017 05:55
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Ferrinus posted:It was never intended that EVERY line produced PCs of equivalent power - Changelings and especially Hunters seemed on-purpose weaker than the big three, Mummies aren't really comparable because they play the game backwards, etc. But you can't actually make the decision to make splat X weaker than splat Y unless you're thinking about rather than deliberately ignoring the question of how powerful, generally, a splat is. Funnily enough, Changelings can apparently do some pretty ridiculous stuff. I remember a write-up showing some munchkin Changelings years back. The stuff they could pull off was just insane. Like a changeling that could break the sound barrier and swim or sprint faster than a modern day jet. Or one that could pretty much assassinate anything by popping in and out of the hedge to make their attack for multiple turns. Or a Changeling that could theoretically tank a nuke to the face. I'd be more worried about a munchkin Changeling than I would a Mage at least. With Mage it's fairly easy to tell when someone is getting stupid and trying to break the game over it's knee with ridiculous infinite buffs or whatever. All the munchkin'd Changelings seemed to come about from things that'd be hard to see coming without intimate knowledge of the mechanics.
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Jan 24, 2017 07:18
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Jhet posted:Combat changelings are terrible beasts that are best left not at my table (because I just can't plan for them). Those characters work really well with the paranoia while trying to fit into the world too. They really can make some great characters, but holy wow the power gap between the people who can crunch that system and those that can't is very large. Yeah, this is what i'm talking about. If you've got a group of people who know how to work the mechanics then it starts to look like the reason the Fae keep to their side of the hedge isn't because they're self obsessed eldritch abominations but because there's a Justice League of supernatural abuse survivors sitting on the other side that could punch them out of existence in two turns.
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Jan 24, 2017 19:46
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Xelkelvos posted:If Changelings can get that powerful and the theory about True Fae being top level Changelings is correct, then presumably the Fae are full of even more statistical shennaigans than PCs. They're pretty limited outside of their home dimension, actually. Inside their own personal realm they're basically equivalent to low level exalts. Complete with being able to warp the terrain in some extreme cases. Like a lot of super powerful beings in the setting however once they step out of their home dimension their power level goes down by a lot. At that point they're basically just extremely powerful changelings with potentially a lot of allies or extra weird powers. It's part of why the Summer Court continues to exist. Sure, charging into Arcadia is a suicide mission, but the second some True Fae steps out into the world without some meat shields they're fair game to any combat capable changeling that can output large amounts of lethal damage or knows how to make cold iron bullets. Archonex fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Jan 24, 2017 |
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Jan 24, 2017 21:25
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:I prefer the explanation that the True Fae aren't interested in "winning" in the traditional sense; it's more that they literally feed on being the cliche'd, melodramatic storybook villains, and actually exterminating or recapturing the Changeling courts simply isn't in their best interests. Being a Changeling is about fighting a complacent enemy who wants to control and manipulate your life, about living on your own terms instead of those of your abuser -- it's a different flavor than Mage's revolutionary struggle against the tyranny of mundane reality or Demon's surveillance and paranoia. Yeah, the True Fae feed off of conflict. So they're not so much interested in beating down the Changelings so much as they are in making them hate and fight them. Granted, they're utterly amoral to the point of being alien. So if they think it's a good time to exterminate a freehold that's what they'll try to do. But even when they do that they're not playing by the same mental rules that the rest of humanity is playing by. Hate and conflict is about as close to friendship or love that a True Fae can get. Which kind of does everything to explain how monumentally hosed up they are from what they used to be. Archonex fucked around with this message at 22:23 on Jan 24, 2017 |
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Jan 24, 2017 22:20
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Tiny Deer posted:I find that so interesting, because it suggests that a valid strategy of dealing with a True Fae is becoming a sufficiently stimulating rival to the point where outright killing you isn't satisfying and you have the leverage of refusing to be their frenemy anymore if they don't abide by some rules. That might work for a bit. But keep in mind that at their heart of heart's most True Fae aren't really the True Fae in the Exalted setting's sense. You can't cut a deal with them that sees them pass you by like you could in Exalted. At least, not permanently. Eventually they'll turn on you if there's a way for them to do so. The True Fae of the NWoD are incredibly mutated humans that have had their thought processes altered to the point where they're utterly solipsistic in their outlook to the point where they're utterly alien and amoral. Only what they want matters, other being don't really exist as beings with rights, and everything else is a mere amusement to their whims at best. Eventually they're going to have an idle thought about what might happen if they found a loophole in the agreement and went after you. Then everything is going to go downhill. Or to look at it another way: The True Fae are basically what would happen if the Ladder got their way and managed to rewrite reality so that it was a conflict-less existence. Divorced from a true sense of reality humanity would inevitably find alternate means to fight each other (The True Fae's story telling is actually this. And their domains in Arcadia and titles are an extension of that workaround.) and would prey on alternate realities instead. You'd end up with an entire race of The Mad that eventually settled out on some really bizarre communal thought processes. It would make for a good plot though. The changeling fiction pieces are littered with people and changelings that are stupid enough to think that you can cut a deal with them. It never works out well though. Someone ends up suffering horribly for it. There's even an entire "prestige class" focused around negotiating with the True Fae and locking them into agreements that mean they have to gently caress off and leave the world alone. Archonex fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Jan 24, 2017 |
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Jan 24, 2017 23:35
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Ferrinus posted:The true fae are not what would happen if the Ladder got its way. For that matter, warping terrain in extreme cases is not the hallmark of a low level exalt. I'm beginning to think you're just making this all up as you go along. Nah. Exalted 2e has some spells that Solars and Abyssals can pick up that lets you do that. Though you have to stat specifically for them to get them early on. Charms are off the table as far as active world shaping though, from what I recall. And if you don't see the comparisons between the potential downside of the Ladder's end game and the nature of Arcadia then I don't know what to tell you. The comparison is pretty on the nose. The True Fae are essentially a society of really hosed up beings that's dropped direct conflict entirely in favor of becoming some sort of bizarre living narrative. Even the given rules we have for playing a game as the True Fae touches on this, with "killing" a True Fae not being a case of actually needing to physically murder them but instead win their story telling game. Which if done too many times will strip them of their titles until they don't exist any more or get kicked out of Arcadia. If you want I can see if I can find the quotes in the book that explains how they work? Archonex fucked around with this message at 23:48 on Jan 24, 2017 |
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Jan 24, 2017 23:40
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Ferrinus posted:I don't think there's a single White Wolf gameline that does not contain spells that alter terrain. Your use of "low level Exalt... even warping terrain!" to describe the potency of a sidhe lord at the heart of their territory remains completely bizarre. You forge into the heart of faerie, draw your blade, and find yourself fighting... a guy that's maybe as dangerous as a BP 2 or 3 (blood and smoke) vampire?? The White and Black Treatise book has a few spells that let you raise mountains, create swamps, and generally alter the terrain within a theme at will. I'm not making this stuff up. It is a book that exists. Though this is the only link I can find for it it, since apparently there's no stable wiki for Exalted? https://www.amazon.com/White-Treatise-Black-Sorcery-Exalted/dp/1588466922 Edit: Bahaha. Holy poo poo, that red text. Looks like I pissed someone off!  MalcolmSheppard posted:I dunno. In 1e a Fae can, say, carry around a Title in a scroll, and when he reads from it every mortal who hears it dies, and the game mechanic is, "If you hear it and you're mortal, you die." I didn't say that they don't have some pretty nasty powers. Just that it's possible to kill them if they were outside of Arcadia. Maybe it was changed in 2e but 1e True Fae got all sorts of messed up if they got hit by cold iron weaponry or bullets, for instance. Archonex fucked around with this message at 23:59 on Jan 24, 2017 |
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Jan 24, 2017 23:51
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Ferrinus posted:The problem here is not the claim that characters in Exalted can alter terrain, but the association of terrain alteration, and indeed of the words "low-level Exalt" with the supreme power of one of the true fae currently benefiting from home-ground advantage. It's like you're just saying things at random. It was the best possible comparison I could think of off hand since barring your average arch-mage most mages aren't going to be loving with the terrain on that level unless they're dangerously close to going bonkers and vanishing up their own rear end due to their own hubris. They're about the only ones I can think of that get powers like that off hand, outside of the Exalted. What other game line or antagonist can pull stuff like that off and not get clocked with some sort of potential downside?
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Jan 24, 2017 23:55
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Ferrinus posted:I think you have an extremely inflated idea of what a low level exalt can do, especially in 3E. But, like, even in 2E you'd just just be able to dodge attacks for an annoyingly long time while swinging a sword that's barely to moderately dangerous by the standards of WoD supernaturals. Well, yeah. 3E Exalt had a massive power nerf applied to it compared to 2E Exalt. 2E Exalt's absolutely were that nuts if you knew the mechanics. But I wasn't trying to make some definitive statement of superiority of one game over another. Just use the best comparison that I could think of offhand. You seem to...Uh, take this a bit seriously.
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Jan 25, 2017 00:00
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:It was me, more because it's funny than out of any real ill-will. What did you get the original one for? It was either because I pointed out that someone had absolutely no knowledge of how to read and interpret statistics way back when I first made the account or because I got caught in Utnayan's $200+ forum rampage to red text everyone in the SWTOR thread after they laughed at him freaking out over the game possibly ending up being a dud back before it was released. I'm hoping it's the latter, really. I really don't want to believe that someone would rage that hard over what was basically a math debate.
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Jan 25, 2017 00:05
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Ferrinus posted:2E exalts, sure... but 2E low-level exalts? You start with like ten Charms in that game. People literally just brought up how bad you can break some of the White Wolf and Onyx Path game's with knowledge of the mechanics. Do you really think that Exalted 2E in all of it's gonzo appeal and age doesn't have some absurd potential there? Keep in mind that the standard of power in 2E Exalted is way higher in the CofD/NWoD. You can start out with a Solar or Abyssal that deals flat unhealable aggravated damage per attack that can't be dodged or soaked even by perfect defenses. It then escalates until everything that takes a solid hit basically gets turned into chunky salsa in a turn or two. Flavivirus posted:As for comparable creatures in other lines, I'd probably go with a Noble from Nobilis - acting on a completely different paradigm to mortal effort. Or possibly one of the stronger Rakshasa from Exalted - the ones that are an area, a story and the actors within it at the same time (almost as if one set of game authors were adapting the work of another). Yeah, those are probably better examples now that I think about it. Archonex fucked around with this message at 00:14 on Jan 25, 2017 |
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Jan 25, 2017 00:10
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Daeren posted:You're talking to Ferrinus (mistake 1) and you mentioned Mage (mistake 2). At this point I sincerely regret at least one of these mistakes.
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Jan 25, 2017 00:15
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Like it'd be cool if as a Changeling you could transcend into being a human story rather than a hosed up cautionary fairy tale, standing as an inspiration to others and feeding off of compassion and happy endings. It's very frilly and feel-good for what is ostensibly a horror game but ask me if I give a poo poo. Isn't that like a positive and happy version of what a Beast eventually becomes? At least one of their end games is all about turning into some horrific story made manifest.
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Jan 25, 2017 00:19
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LordAbaddon posted:I'm gonna stop you right there. It is true that sufficiently powerful Changelings can become True Fae but it has never been stated that this is where all or even most of the True Fae come from. In fact it is impossible for this to be true since we then run into a chicken and egg scenario with the True Fae where Changelings had to exist to make True Fae, but True Fae had to exist to capture Changelings. This is true. Given that the rules for playable True Fae state that the winners inevitably ascend to become something else I always figured that that meant that by modern times the only True Fae really left were former Changelings. Since old ones would inevitably either get killed or ascend. My mistake, regardless. Edit: Or not, in fact. Apparently I totally missed the "first true Fae" thing when reading through the books. LGD posted:That's a direct consequence of your meaningful interactions being with similarly powerful beings though and a combat metagame totally designed around the ability of everyone who matters to say No to anything you do cheaply over and over again though. Optimization boiling down to maximizing the efficiency and frequency of cheap "good enough" attack spam and the duration of your regenerating essence HP-bar, and the complete pointlessness of gonzo offensive combos in 2E aren't because Exalted are weak or because the potential for such combos don't exist- it's because anyone who can't deal with such things is not credible opposition to begin with, so they're at best a luxury that lets you more quickly dispatch irrelevant fodder. NWoD supernaturals often don't even have access to the sorts of effects that would let them begin to oppose a purpose-built starting 2E Exalt. I admitted that comparing the True Fae to an exalt was a bad comparison. The Raksha are probably a better example if you have to go with Exalted, though. They're pretty much the True Fae in spirit. Only with a bad soul and reality devouring habit on top of the abductions into slavery. Also, there's no hedge present to stop them from sodomizing reality. Like you mentioned in your posts it's also kind of hard to compare the settings since the beings in them are mechanically and canonically operating on entirely different scales of power. I mean, even if you tried it quickly becomes apparent that a mid to late game Exalt would crush anything in the NWoD and probably just about anything in the OWoD. The 2e and 3e core books even point out in a blurb that they're wielding what would be considered literally mythological power by many of the heavy weights in later eras. Shards of the Exalted Dream and Dreams of the First Age are really good examples of what I mean. They give a peek at possible charms past essence 4/5 charms and show what they're like past the core book stage of power. A mid range Abyssal Exalt in the modern setting variant is given a charm that literally lets them turn everything from his or her position to the horizon into a smoking crater with nothing but a semi-automatic pistol. And that's not even the highest power setting that specific charm goes to. Once you hit either essence five or six (I forget.) you can literally spam explosive bullets that create necrotic explosions almost nearly a mile in size. That's downright apocalyptic in it's usefulness when it comes to combat against things without perfect defenses. Never mind crushing just about any monster in one of the WoD settings. It's total nerdy fan wankery to try to match them up either way. I just used the Exalted as an example for my comparison because it was the first tabletop game that sprang to mind that could potentially act at that level of world altering power. Archonex fucked around with this message at 03:20 on Jan 25, 2017 |
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Jan 25, 2017 01:56
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Joe Slowboat posted:Really, I think the thing that the Solars would do to wreck the nWoD would just be... be Solars, culture heroes whose powers are decent for destroying monsters and who are amazingly good at drawing together armies of humans to their cause. A Solar who decides to hunt vampires might be someone like Blade, but they could just as easily turn a city's human population into hunters. All of them. As far as I'm aware, Solar recruit-and-train power didn't really reduce that much from 2 to 3. I always figured that most Solars would be busy off outside reality dealing with the heavier poo poo if they were around in the NWoD/CoFD setting. Lunars would probably be busy in the Shadow keeping some of the more insane and insanely powerful spirits contained. And if the Neverborn aren't around to corrupt them any more the Abyssals would probably not give that much of a poo poo what was going on outside of the (potentially literally infinite in size) Underworld since there's always more souls coming in and something more to conquer and dominate. Stuff like the Helminth are stuff that'd challenge a circle of established Exalt's. Or Abyssal alternate dimensions that are trying to eat reality, assuming they could pop into one. It's basically what Malfeas wanted to do to the world in 2E anyways. No way in hell they'd ignore that. Or a major incursion of the True Fae into reality. Or hell, good aligned Abyssals would probably try to reform the Underworld into something less masochistic and insane once they took a good look at how batshit it can be. Y'know, the stuff that in Creation would be the stuff the Exalted would be expected to deal with as part of their job as management. Wiping out a vampire court would be the work of an evening or two and could be delegated down the line to some mortal flunky. The stuff that's inside what most people in the setting think is the sum total of reality is so low tier they'd mostly all be extras. And Exalt's are literally driven to achievement and to wield and display power. Essence Fever is a thing, and I can't help but feel that only the starting Exalt's or a high compassion one would stick around in the living world once they looked outside the spotlight that illuminates existence and realized that the darkness was nothing but an infinite ring of potentially godlike teeth waiting to close in. The effect of course would be that no one actually knows of or gives a poo poo about the Exalted until they chance across them in some alternate dimension. Or something makes them put in an appearance in all their glory and insane social manipulation. At which point people start coming up with new legends about the Crone, or Mithras and his hinted interactions with Rome, or the few times a Lune shows up to hand a quest out to some werewolf pack and give some advice before loving off to deal with some bigger issue. They'd basically be devices to drive the plot in NWoD/CofD's games. Since otherwise they'd end up either breaking the setting over their knee or end up fixing all of it's more low tier problems forever. Probably both. Archonex fucked around with this message at 17:41 on Jan 25, 2017 |
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Jan 25, 2017 17:34
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Ferrinus posted:All exalts magically transported to the World of Darkness would find themselves barely superior to mortals since they're suddenly tracked in a vastly less magic-rich environment in which even a single mote of [whatever your magic bar is called] is a precious commodity rather than something you freely respire five or ten of by the hour. That's only within the confines of the living world though. It's pretty clear that outside of it it's magical as gently caress. They have the same workarounds that a lot of supers of that tier have. Like those super-essence pyros dudes in the Promethean line just pop into existence until they exhaust their essence supply. Or they could just one up them and grab an essence gem or hearthstone/manse and leech off of that as a way to substitute respiring essence. And Abyssals have a workaround for that anyways. Sprout some fangs and start eating people. Or just murder them if you're a Midnight or pick up the charm they have that does that. Or the dozen other ways they have to regain essence by inflicting harm on people. Plus outside of Sidereals Exalt's can always invent new charms to compensate. Hell, after a certain point having people believe in you literally gives you essence per few hours too since you're literally playing a nascent god. Now i'm wondering if they're still working on all the NWoD line equivalents for the new Exalt types. The Fae are getting an equivalent apparently and the Prometheans are too. Always made me think that the talk of a crossover might involve an option for that setting. At least, before they had to change it over to being Chronicles instead. Either way there's really no way to include them in the setting without using them as a plot device or having them be busy with slugging it out with the heavier things that are mostly off screen in all the game lines. Mulva posted:Or the fact that save or die powers aren't based on Shaping in this world, and there goes like 99% of their defenses. To be fair, Mage kind of makes a pretty good case for Shaping being nothing but the usual reality alteration tricks that occur in creation. That's literally all Shaping is in fact. Archonex fucked around with this message at 17:50 on Jan 25, 2017 |
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Jan 25, 2017 17:43
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Ferrinus posted:Surely in the essence wasteland that is the WoD there's just no such thing as a hearthstone, your ability to even store more than a dozen-odd motes at a time is arrested by the incredibly hypotonic atmosphere you live and breathe in, etc. Eh, it's a canonical plot point in Exalted that the Exalted are complete bullshit by the standards of anything in the WoD if they're linked together. They can literally invent new charms (except for Sidereals, who get theirs handed down from the Maidens.) on the fly with enough dedication and hard work. They'd probably find a way. Barring that they'd just hang out outside of reality in all the magic heavy areas like the Underworld, the Shadow, some Supernal realm or pocket dimension, etc, etc unless they had one of the alternate charms that lets them harvest essence in a way that's different from respiring. Or they'd parasitize themselves and leech off of humanity like spirits and the lower realms do. Heck, Abyssals already do that by default when outside the Underworld. Do solars even have charms that let them have alternate means of getting essence in their existing charm set though? If they can't even function inside the living world (Which is low essence as heck for the most part.) then I can't see them hanging around in it for long. The other Exalt types do in a way that'd mostly fit but I can't think of any that Solars have off hand. It'd sure be a way to explain the old New World of Darkness title. Having the Solars taken out of the picture gives the world at least some room to end up as dark and monster filled as it is. They're the only ones that'd explicitly be driven to try to make the world a better place. Archonex fucked around with this message at 18:01 on Jan 25, 2017 |
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Jan 25, 2017 17:53
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Ferrinus posted:I'm not sure that otherworldly is the same as magic-heavy. The Shadow, for instance, is a Darwinian nightmare in which everyone is hungry and looking for their next meal at all times. The astral is imaginary, the underworld is dead and slowly draining... magical resource scarcity and the danger of backlash are present pretty much wherever you go in the world of darkness. And, like I already said, what if existing magic pool maximums for published supernaturals are the best you can do? What if, when you have Essence 1, you can't hold more than 10 motes because the rest just get sucked away into the void? I guess it really depends on what game you give narrative primacy too. Not like it matters that much beyond nerdy fan wanking anyways. It's been years since there was talk of a crossover book coming out. If nothing else I suppose if you wanted to say so then you could point out that the Underworld is also draining into the void in Creation. It doesn't stop the Abyssals/Deathlords from busting out some insane charms or Arcanoi at a whim. Not that anyone ever uses the Underworld in Exalted. Deathlords are explicitly mentioned as existing in 1e NWoD too, though we have no idea what the hell they are in their NWoD format. Kaza42 posted:2e Solars have a number of ways to gain motes that are independent of their surroundings. Immanent Solar Glory gives you motes for leading, organizing, administrating etc. groups or organizations. Essence Gathering Temper lets you turn being hit into motes. Stunting gives 2-6 motes no matter where you are. And there is absolutely valid design space for custom charms to let you gain motes from doing other Cool Solar poo poo. Oh wow. I totally forgot about them. Now i'm picturing a perpetually aggravated Solar being barred from glory and prestige due to being shackled to some mundane middle or upper management position so he can keep getting his essence fix. He's the best manager the company has ever had! But he accomplishes gently caress all in the grand scheme of things.
Archonex fucked around with this message at 18:17 on Jan 25, 2017 |
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Jan 25, 2017 18:03
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:Also in plausible actual reality, (n/o)WoD creatures of the current edition (CoD, X20) win over virtually any Exalted group (other than Solars) of the current edition by virtue of the books they appear in actually existing in a tangible, readable form that human eyes will ever see. Hey, you can't hold 3E being loving terrible against them.  I'm still amused that they scaled down the power level with the justification of making it more classically "epic" (One of the authors has gone on record as complaining about the Exalted being as powerful as they are. Which was kind of the point of the game?) and still managed to make the game something of a complicated mess. While also just changing the meta game so that Exalted were still as potentially powerful, just in different ways. Talk about aiming for the moon only to end up smacking into the side of a mountain. Especially given how long it took just to get a core book out and how much some of the previews came off as being horrific in that "Beast: The Primordial" sort of way. Edit: You know, Ferrinus, i've seen you post in that thread.
Archonex fucked around with this message at 19:21 on Jan 25, 2017 |
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Jan 25, 2017 18:52
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Kaza42 posted:Also, 2e Exalts have at least three charms that say "you take no damage until your next turn, no matter what, this can never be bypassed even by things that say they do" Unless that person is a Midnight or Zenith caste. Then you can just go get hosed while they spam their caste ability that does unblockable agg damage at you. Also they have some great perfect defense charms in 2E, so you can get hosed if you're dealing with a high essence exalt of that caste too. Tuxedo Catfish posted:does exalted seriously not have some predefined hierarchy of rule exceptions by category Exalted really doesn't do balance in the traditional concept. The best way I can think of describing it is that playing one of the most powerful Exalt types is kind of like the tabletop equivalent of nuclear warfare. Everyone's got insanely powerful abilities that'd outright squash most things in other games/have them be the end boss for an entire campaign. Then they just keep getting more powerful. And when two beings of equivalent levels of power clash then poo poo just gets wrecked for potentially miles in every direction until someone fails their perfects or runs out of essence and gets annihilated since everyone at every character at the top level of power can spam perfect defenses but usually not perfect attacks. See my post about what an Abyssal gunman can do to get an idea of the kind of insane power they can put out later on. It's kind of telling that the vast majority of actual listed charms in 2e capped out at around Essence 6 or 7 despite the fact that charms and Exalt's can go up to essence 10. It was an old meme that at essence 6 a properly combat specced Dawn caste in 2e could potentially pick up a continent sized eldritch abomination, shake it like a ragdoll, and then hurl it into the sun like he's Superman. That's about when they stopped trying to figure out how stupidly powerful the Celestial exalt's could get and just said "homebrew this poo poo if you want to go further i don't loving know". Though the game even points out that any Exalt that gets to essence ten is par on par with the beings that literally invented existence and could probably even outdo them on that front given enough time. And the blurb that describes what Exalt's do at each essence level implies that an essence 8 or 9 exalt could just go make their own existence and gently caress off to it. So I guess I can't blame them for never trying to conceptualize what the gently caress a top tier Exalt would look like in print. 3e tones this down. Or at least tries too. But it runs into the same problem 2e had when it first came out. They haven't really classified what the later essence levels look like charm wise (and it's still a mess mechanically) so to keep things escalating it'll have to get similarly apocalyptic and head-ache inducing to play. The Exalted 3e thread went into that recently, in fact. Edit: Aside from all that it helps to know that Exalted started out as a super powered prehistory for the WoD. Despite the fact that they keep saying that the settings are their own thing (unless you want, evidently) now they're still putting analogues for new lines into Exalt and vice versa too. Or well, they're planned for Exalted because the Exalted team is pretty terrible at actually getting books out. Hell, even the NWoD/CofD is getting into it with a lot of crossover game lines and similar name drops in many of their game lines and both 2e and 3e Exalted. Pretty much no one knows what the gently caress is going on there and there's a lot of fan theories that haven't been helped by years old talk of a crossover book from the devs too. TL;DR: It's a glorious clusterfuck and really needs to be seen to be believed. Archonex fucked around with this message at 04:41 on Jan 26, 2017 |
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Jan 26, 2017 04:07
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Yeah, I just figured i'd explain the concept behind Exalted since he asked. Either way it's probably a good idea to bring questions about it up in there instead of here. Ask them about the Abyssal charms preview from way back!
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Jan 26, 2017 04:16
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Kavak posted:They've both really turned themselves around, surprisingly. Truly, we live in the best time line.
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Jan 26, 2017 04:45
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MonsieurChoc posted:Beast is a worthy successor to oChangeling, the game where psychologists/psychiatrist/etc. trying to help people with mental issues are evil. Also the way it's written appeals to lots of furries and otherkin. Just like how OWoD Changeling did.
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Jan 26, 2017 18:20
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Man, of all the ideas to put a loving prelude to a vampire game in, a mobile game where you chat over the phone is the loving lamest and stupidest thing. You could do an entire real game off of a prelude alone. Especially if you tied Hunter into it. And it's never been done before too! Hell, with the right amount of decent story-telling elements and tying into a vampire video game you could have another VTM Bloodlines cult classic of a Vampire and prelude game on your hands. But no, you get to feel like an awkward douche nozzle while playing a mobile chat game and typing up a bunch of messages that are probably going to be boiled down to "WHAT HAVE I BECOME!?" while on the train on the way to work. No real game play or true character interaction whatsoever. Which is where VTM and VTR actually shine. Someone fire whoever is coming up with these game ideas and give us a real VTM/VTR game, please. Edit: Hell, just give us that VTM MMO and actually support it up to and past release and i'll consider it a fair trade for all this crap. Edit 2: Oh my loving god. I just read through the rest of that article. It gets worse. He considers Warhammer Online and SWTOR as being content heavy at release, and that being why it was too much work to continue on the VTM MMO. IE: Two games that were lambasted for their lack of real content that everyone competent in the industry considered as heavily under-delivering in that aspect despite promising the moon. One of which was shut down due to the issues it had on that front, in fact. The other of which had to spend years basically expanding on their content to get to a state where it retained a decent number of subs on average. Both of which were over-hyped about the amount of content they had and were hamstrung by bloated development leads (Like Ericsson!) on their teams. On the one in a million chance that anyone at Paradox reads this: Fire. This. Dumb. Edgy. Motherfucker. Nothing good can come of keeping whoever is thinking up those ideas around. That poo poo he's on about is literally what has killed game development companies in the past. Heck, some of what i'm reading is literally the same sort of trendy bullshit I saw out of the TOR and Warhammer Online dev team's dev leads, in fact. He's nailing that whole "dumb rear end game development exec that knows nothing about the industry and coasts by on trendy buzzwords and topical bullshit until he kills the company and some other company picks him up thinking he'd be a great hire due to his prior experience" thing down hard. All we need now is an EA Louse style leaker account to reveal that the developer leads for these projects are retaining their position by fomenting discord and competition in the company to ensure that no one boots them out for fear of the chaos it'd cause and the circle would be complete. Archonex fucked around with this message at 13:15 on Feb 11, 2017 |
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Feb 11, 2017 12:47
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Kavak posted:Paradox seems to be putting the exact opposite amount of money into the White Wolf games than TOR or WHO, though. And hopefully nobody is stupid enough to try and start development on an MMO in this decade. I mean, there's nothing wrong with making MMO's. Done right they offer content that's way different from anything else on the market. Done wrong you get another WoW knock-off that the company crows is totally going to be the one to take WoW off the table only to bomb horribly because innovation trumps imitation as far as MMO's and retained subs go. The big problem with MMO's is that the genre is positively infested with bad developers that have basically coasted by on the same generic bullshit and trendy corporate promises both internally and externally for almost a decade or more. Which has caused it to stagnate where it should have been growing and evolving. We're seeing a lot of the same crap pop up with MOBA games, and previously with mobile games (something Ericsson is taking with the same faux gravitas) too. Where people who were more interested in either making a quick buck or just making GBS threads out a game with the least amount of effort possible basically zerg rush the genre and crush out any real hope of something new being done there until the bubble bursts and they find some other idea to systematically run into the ground. SWTOR and Warhammer Online are perfect examples of this, and the fact that he doesn't understand that is literally a spot on example of why he probably has no practical experience working in that industry and genre and should be barred from a game development position until he at least takes a course at a community college or something that teaches him how to plan out and manage projects like that. Archonex fucked around with this message at 13:27 on Feb 11, 2017 |
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Feb 11, 2017 13:17
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The Sin of Onan posted:All I ever wanted was a good Mage: the Awakening game You mean do I think that some rando exec in Paradox is going to hear me when I explain why they should fire one of their major employees? Or at least side-line him in favor of someone that knows what they're doing? Yeah, uh, no. I kind of doubt they'd listen even if they actually did peruse their forums. Funnily enough, there were lots of people inside and outside the industry on both the user, dev, and journalistic end saying the same things about other famous flops like WHO, SWTOR, and even far earlier ones like AoC. The companies in question never listen due to a variety of factors (Sunk cost fallacy can be an awful thing where money is involved, for instance. And firing one of the people in charge of a large project like that looks a lot like scrapping the whole thing and starting over to some people.) up until they've released a steaming pile of crap and the terrible lead devs in question take their paychecks and run for the horizon towards the next company stupid enough to take them in. I mean, if nothing else then given the flaming i'd receive from posting on the official forums about this stuff i'd be better off pissing into the wind. At least that way i'd be able to hydrate myself while ranting on my soapbox. Archonex fucked around with this message at 13:58 on Feb 11, 2017 |
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Feb 11, 2017 13:40
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I just think he's massively missing what made White Wolf games appealing. It wasn't relevancy or issues, it was getting to be a rad monster. The "issues" were always kind of paper-thin nonsense in most White Wolf games, though, and were never really their strength. Yeah, there's that too. Even setting aside the colossal warning signs he's throwing up he's missing a lot of what makes these settings awesome to play around in. Bloodlines got this. It nailed that sweet spot between VTM's over the top insanity of being some ravening blood hungry monster and VTR's more realistic "Being a vampire sucks." take on it. From what i've heard of these game ideas so far i'm not really getting that they're taking that sort of approach to it all. Though maybe they're holding something back? Archonex fucked around with this message at 14:04 on Feb 11, 2017 |
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Feb 11, 2017 14:01
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I mean, you could see Vampire: the Masquerade as a game about class inequality, but it strikes me as more of an ex post facto interpretation than anything Rein•Hagen intended. Who wants to bet that he prefers playing as an Anarch? But yeah, I can't really entirely fault him for that. Vampires have long since been a metaphor for inequality and the negative connotations of aristocracy. That's more of a VTR thing than VTM thing at this point though. Which is weird. Even the Camarilla is more about climbing the ranks of power and staking out a spot for yourself than the inequalities inherent within it. And I don't think you could go up to a member of the Sabbat in the setting and talk to him about class related issues and not expect to get murdered or turned into a shovelhead.
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Feb 11, 2017 14:14
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If nothing else that Project Dogma MMO is literally doing what CCP and White Wolf were going to do. Only they're using crowd funding and actually have a semi-playable early alpha out that people can buy into. So long as that doesn't go tits up at least we'll get some sort of game that's tangentially WoD related. That MMO is literally VTM/VTR with the name and ID filed off. Heck, i'm fairly certain that the original reason the devs started developing it was because they were fed up with the bullshit CCP and WW were putting the community through in regards to their game development plans. It's kind of embarrassing that a bunch of crowdfunded enthusiasts can get further at developing a MMO than CCP and some WW folks could though. Archonex fucked around with this message at 19:55 on Feb 11, 2017 |
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Feb 11, 2017 19:44
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Axelgear posted:Ancient mystery is great. Atlantis being a thing that may or may not ever have actually existed, posited only by desperate, theodicy-seeking sorcerers who want a justification as to why they're the best and should rule the world, is also great. These two things are in no way mutually exclusive. What always got me is that the story of Altantis doesn't even say that they're the best supernaturals in the setting. Just the biggest gently caress ups. You know what Atlantis was? It was a city of monsters. They transcended human hubris and attempted to go further than they were ready at the cost of the rest of the world. They shattered the world and irreversibly changed it's nature forever for the worse. They butchered who knows how many other entities and made the Abyss. The list of potential atrocities goes on and on. If you assume that all the myth's of Atlantis are true then the possible eventual death of the world is at their feet. Hell, just like how no one knows what the Exarch's truly became in setting no one truly knows what the Oracles are too. The most they have to defend the actions of the Atlanteans is that "Oh, well, some of us decided to go up there and kick their rear end before the Exarch's ruined everything." ignoring the fact that it had probably already been ruined by that point. An apology after the fact for a crime doesn't seem always seem all that sincere to those it was perpetrated against. And that's before you get into the sort of double-think needed to believe the Lie didn't exist before Atlantis. If that's true why do the myths usually say that only a select few truly gifted people awoke to their supernal power and gathered together? Sure, the whole "we gifted few" thing plays into an arrogant mage's idea of supremacy, but if the Lie didn't exist then why not everyone? What sort of hypocritical, double-thinking, megalomaniacal monster would want to be associated with a tradition like that? Yet again brought to you by a Banisher/a character in world that might have a good point about the traditions being high on their own farts/someone that wants to trigger Ferrinus again. Archonex fucked around with this message at 15:03 on Feb 14, 2017 |
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Feb 14, 2017 14:56
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Kurieg posted:When we first found out about Atlantis one of my friends first responses was "So we just need a ZPM to dial the eighth chevron and everyone awakens, right?" Your friend is cool and good.
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Feb 14, 2017 15:08
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Jhet posted:I didn't realize scale was the reason that mages are bad. I guess we should just ignore the little slashers because they're only killing a few people a month. Or ignore the vampires and their systematic and methodical wiggling into places of institutional power and control. It's just the scale of the magic that makes them bad. It's like saying that one bomb is worse than another bomb because it has a larger blast radius. Just casting spells at the wrong time can cause issues with paradox though, which can cause the Abyss to seep into reality. Which will ruin people's lives in a variety of new and horrific ways. Or was that changed in 2e? I mean, if it wasn't then I think that getting infested by a reproducing Abyssal parasite that drives people to self destruction or just outright eats their soul is kind of a big deal that puts them on par on par with every other destructive supernatural entity in the setting. Especially with the implications of just how valuable a soul is that crop up throughout most of the games. It's not like the Abyss can get in if mages just stopped being mages. Hell, most of the ones that canonically do have a persistent go-between and foothold only have it because mages hosed up big time and let some world corrupting uber-monster in and then promptly flipped the bird to everyone that said "You need to clean this mess up right goddamn now." before going back to questing for ultimate supernal power or whatever the gently caress their obsession was at the time. Archonex fucked around with this message at 18:00 on Feb 14, 2017 |
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Feb 14, 2017 17:53
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Ferrinus posted:That made perfect sense, since Moros need to wear the trappings of death or else they fail to respire essence in Creation. Moros as a faux gothy Abyssal expy would be hilarious if I was going for a lovely Exalted knockoff game where Mages were convinced they were the next big rulers of Creation. Edit: And possibly strangely fitting given that Exalted now can channel special Supernal abilities in 3e. Which would make it sound like Salina's old working is still around.
Archonex fucked around with this message at 02:47 on Feb 15, 2017 |
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Feb 15, 2017 02:39
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Brainiac Five posted:How much crossover is there between people who're hot under the collar about Atlantis and people who talk a lot about playing an Adamantine Arrow attorney who fights his battles in the courtroom, do you think? Well, they're both spergin' out about the lore of the setting. So i'd say at least a bit.
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Feb 15, 2017 03:04
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