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Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

SunAndSpring posted:

Someone was telling me that not being good for cross-splat play hurts Demon the Descent's popularity and I'm flabbergasted that people actually try to do cross-splat poo poo.

Two-splat games where you deliberately go to the shared themes seems doable, especially if neither of them are Mage or Demon. A shitload of work, but still.

"Anything goes" would require keeping track of too many subsystems for anyone who isn't literally a DtD Demon IRL.

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Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.
another thing that would help is if you have players who are good about keeping track of their own mechanics and can take some of the tracking workload off the GM

in my experience this is rare but i suppose it's theoretically possible

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.
Goku's one of the Bound and King Kai is his Geist.

e: not sure if he's actually a Sin-Eater though. also Beerus is an Exarch and Frieza is a Seer and one of his Pylons

Launch is a Demon, which explains why she can switch Covers, is one of the only DB characters ever to fight with a gun, and was able to retroactively conceal all trace of herself ever existing :v:

e2: Piccolo is a Changeling, and King Piccolo was his Keeper

the Androids are Prometheans (obviously) and Cell was a Centimanus

Chiaotzu is a Vampire. Tien is a Deviant created by Master Shen, and Krillin is some weird non-splat Horror whose defining trait is having no nose.

Mr. Satan is a Hunter, and Buu is a high-ranking spirit who was tainted by the Maeljin but got better (possibly an Idigam considering his progression from formless trickster -> Kid Buu)

and as for woof, well:

https://dragonball.fandom.com/wiki/King_Furry

e3: and finally, Yamcha is a Mummy, because they find him in the desert and he gets weaker with every passing episode

Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 22:24 on Oct 2, 2019

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

Bogart posted:

Well put, Tuxedo Catfish. Including even F-listers like Launch is a pro move.

Launch was my favorite character and I'm still mad that Toriyama just forgot about her.

I also unironically love how weird the Dragonball setting is, with ancient alien wizards and traditional Japanese Hell ghosts on one hand and super high-tech artificial people on the other, despite the fact that as a franchise it barely seems to care about anything that isn't Goku or his immediate circle of friends. It's a good fit for the ChroD in that respect.

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

Inzombiac posted:

How many monsters could a regular person become?

Human, Changeling, Hunter, Deviant, Geist, then vampire or werewolf??

Don't forget "start as a Promethean, achieve the New Dawn" and that the weird by-products of being the child of a Demon can still manifest retroactively if a Demon soul pacts one of your parents.

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.
I had no interest in Deviant based on the premise and how closely it followed the Contagion Chronicle, but the positive word of mouth here is encouraging.

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

I Am Just a Box posted:

It has absolutely nothing to do with the Contagion Chronicle, except in the sense that the CC book itself brings up Deviant like it brings up everything else. The Deviant book doesn't bring up the Contagion.

Even from a design or style standpoint, the Deviant book doesn't read anything like the Contagion book. It's tightly designed, clear on what it's talking about, and lacks the Contagion Chronicle's tendency to go all over the place with superficial connections.

Yeah, it wasn't a fair association on my part.

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.
Some day when I have time I want to write a ChroD fan splat that leans heavily on the astral / oneiros / temenos stuff, because it's one of the most interesting parts of the cosmology, but the only splats that really have easy access to it are Mages, Changelings, and Beasts; it's not a focus in Mage (and of relatively little interest to non-Mastigoi anyways except insofar as it's between us and the Supernal), crammed into too little word count in Changeling, and Beast is garbage.

I'm thinking of something along similar lines to Leviathan: The Tempest except not as comically overcomplicated and unusable. Get as much mileage out of that "Astral Sea" imagery as possible, maybe make the PCs a more sympathetic version of Innsmouth fish-people, that sort of thing.

Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 00:17 on Oct 5, 2019

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

Inzombiac posted:

Are there any monster types that you folks would like to see be a playable book?

I know there are a lot of old weirdo stuff so I'm basing this on what's on offer with the most recent gen.

I have some notes about classic shapeshifters that I'd focus on if people were interested.

Dragons, and kaiju/giant monsters generally. I realize this is way too overt for the ChroD proper, but speaking of the Astral and Beast's wasted potential, you could make a fantastic game about people who are giant monsters in the world of dreams and archetypal ideas, and who fight each other there for territory that corresponds to the social atmosphere of the human community they live in, kind of like with spirits and resonance except more explicitly related to people.

Gorgons / medusae, and more broadly other Greek-flavored monsters that used to be people but got turned into part-monster chimeras as part of a (almost always unjust) punishment by the gods. Scion kind of scratches this itch but it's a heroic setting, I want that horror aspect of being betrayed and degraded because you wouldn't bow to someone who already has nearly absolute power.

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.
in fairness looking back at what I typed a Gorgon would be an extremely natural fit for a Changeling character

that said just because it'd be redundant in the nWoD doesn't mean it can't be interesting in other ways, so if you find that document Inzombniac, I'd love to see it / hear about it

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

EimiYoshikawa posted:

haha, I thought about posting pretty much exactly that, but it seemed kind of 'well, actually', so I kept mum.

I suppose it kind of depends on how you view the True Fae, a lot of people kind of think of them as just being cosmic losers, but I have a couple I've flavored as at least having a credible claim on actually being the, well, Beings, that were thought of as specific deities by humanity in the ancient past.

it can be both. my understanding of the mythos is that the Greek gods don't rule because they're just, they rule because that's just the way it is. they're vain, insecure, and Zeus in particular is destined to be overthrown by one of his illegitimate offspring.

combine that with the way they act like a bunch of wealthy, super-powered rapists and warmongers it's easy to see how you could tell a story about how power and influence don't make you proof against being a loser

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

Dave Brookshaw posted:

Speaking as someone who literally just announced his retirement as Mage Developer ten minutes ago...

I love what you've created enough to have extremely strong opinions about the remaining 1% that I would change. :v:

Thank you, and good luck with whatever you go on to do in the future.

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

Pope Guilty posted:

People only ever see Shadow People in moments of sleep paralysis; perhaps they're eating our dreams?

Mer: The Yearning

The PCs are fish-people who are all fragments of a now-dead Kraken progenitor -- the aquatic counterpart to Father Wolf and steward of the oceans. Kraken knew they were dying and that the Gauntlet was going to fall, so they retreated into the Astral and dissolved themself into the nascent human unconscious.

Mer are technically a single ancient soul divided among thousands of human bodies (you're born Mer, but it's not genetic -- you just need to live near the sea) and as such they instinctively long for connection with others like themselves. When they find each other, they form a Shoal.

A Shoal is significantly more powerful (and generally happier) than lone Mer, but there's a danger at either extreme: Mer who completely cut themselves off from their supernatural heritage and the sea wither into a kind of living death (comparable to the Soulless condition in humans, except they also become a danger to others), but Mer who completely immerse themselves in a community of their fellows risk losing their individuality and collectively ascending into a single mini-sea god.

Mechanically this would be modeled through a system where Mer players can, under certain circumstances, either borrow each other's powers and skill dots or even literally spend their action for the turn to act as the other character, blurring the lines of who owns any given character sheet. You'd want to manage this, similar to Harmony, so that your Shoal can be flexible and support each other, but without everyone completely losing all sense of themselves.

Powers would include both obvious things like being able to manipulate water, change shape, and conceal your fishy tells, but would also tie in to the Mer's connection to the Astral and human dreams and culture -- for example, if you're a squid-person you have powers over ink, but that also implies power over writing and language. And since you're Astral creatures and the Astral is a reflection of human minds, your actions and use of these powers kind of leaks out into any community you inhabit, for better or worse.

The idea is to create a shared framework that focuses on loneliness, connection, and community, and how that can be both healthy and rewarding, or stifling and toxic -- to deliberately draw a line from The Shadow Over Innsmouth to The Little Mermaid, or split the difference between The Creature From the Black Lagoon and The Shape of Water. (With a hint of mythology in there as well, e.g. Tamatori-hime or the Odyssey's sirens).

Antagonist splats (and sources of conflict, so it's not just fish people being romantic and forlorn 24/7) would include fellow Mer who think the best way to form a community is to psychically dominate each other, humans who want to gain immortality by eating mermaid flesh, and Abyssal Intruders -- similar if not identical to Acamoth as in Mage, with the same MO (parasitically insert themselves into human dreams/souls, then use this position to manifest their own anti-reality) except from the perspective of a splat that looks at the world in the opposite way from most Mages -- literally, as in for a Mer the Abyss is an actual abyss at the bottom of the Astral Sea and the phenomenal world is the surface.

More pro-active motivations would include trying to find and help others like yourself (who tend to struggle, what with the supernatural loneliness, inadvertent tendency to project their emotional state onto entire towns, and oh yeah, eating you can make a person immortal), building an ideal community, deciding whether you want to protect humanity from the things that come bubbling up through its own soul or let them hang, and ultimately resurrecting Kraken and/or replacing them with a new way of being that doesn't threaten to erase your personality.

(Also, the Leviathan -- the Kerberos of the Ocean of Fragments in Geist -- is totally the echo of Kraken's death and/or their physical remains trapped in the Underworld.)

Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 08:01 on Oct 6, 2019

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.
anyways, pros:

-- this framework totally explains what motivates Ursula, without making her less evil
-- you can run Finding Nemo: the tabletop RPG campaign
-- captures the critically under-served demographic of fish furries people who voted for Shape of Water at the Oscars
-- it's like Lovecraft, except the racial/cultural outsiders are the good guys
-- you can use Ika Musume as your character portrait
-- you can be sad like a Promethean without an endgame of "lose your powers"

and cons:

-- you're sad like a Promethean but with an endgame of "you sacrifice yourself to resurrect Dagon"
-- probably still counts as a stealth attempt to fix Beast

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.
probably Zamasu

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

pseudosavior posted:

So, what would be the sub sets of Mer, aside from squid?

I'm still sort of mulling that over, or I'd have put something in there. It's surprisingly tricky coming up with related categories that are neither too general nor too specific, and that resemble each other sufficiently (or can be made to; there are a lot of differences between e.g. Osiris and Frankenstein's monster, but Promethean presents them in a way where it makes sense to treat them as conceptual peers.)

Sirens (fish, music) are too fitting to pass up.

Squid (cephalopods, writing/language) has no mythical basis that I know of, the association just tickles me too much to pass it up. I also kind of hate that Mind Flayers in D&D are these irredeemably evil creatures who have to murder sapients in order to eat or reproduce, so doing the exact opposite of that appeals.

Selkies crossed my mind; I'm not sure I really want to include mammals, since the "shoal of fish" metaphor and the alien-ness are both really important, and transformation is probably going to be more of a universal theme than particular to one splat anyways.

Nixies (or one of their many local folklore variations, like Vodyanoi) are appealing because the etymology points to both mer-people and to reptiles or amphibians. The game obviously wouldn't be complete if you couldn't make the Gillman.

Also there's a famous poem about one who laments his loneliness and soullessness, and spares a young boy from drowning. So it's on point, but I'm not sure what the cultural touchstone would be. (Faith? That seems more like an ideology splat than a power splat, though.)

A sea serpent or dragon splat based on the legend of the tide jewels seems appealing, but I'm not sure what the "subtle" pairing to go with "pearls" and "control of the wind and tides" would be.

And finally, I sort of want to fit crustaceans in somehow, but as far as I can tell nobody tells melancholy, tragic stories about crabs or lobsters. :v:

Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 07:34 on Oct 6, 2019

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

this kind of gets into another open question, which is do i want to save some of the really horrifying deep-sea life and associated imagery for the antagonists, or if they should just be something else entirely

e: i think if you're a fish you fall within Kraken's demense but i'm definitely going to make a horror based on Cymothoa exigua :nms:

Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 07:29 on Oct 6, 2019

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

Mors Rattus posted:

The Sirens were bird women.

True, but depicting them as fish women instead goes back to at least the 13th century.

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

Digital Osmosis posted:

Selkies are tough, because they fit your theme perfectly but don't fit your aesthetics at all. I think I'd lean towards including them because I honestly don't know any folkloric creatures whose stories hit the emotional beats you're going for that squarely in the bulls-eye, but it's a really tough call.

On a similar topic -- anyone know any good Selkie movies? Neil Jordan's Ondine might be the only one I've seen.

I'll have to check that out.

e: But yeah, in terms of aesthetic what I'm going for is closer to Spring.

Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 17:21 on Oct 6, 2019

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

Soonmot posted:

Antagonists should def be innsmouth people

Well, no, the PCs are the Innsmouth people. The antagonists are, like, I guess Obed Marsh himself, and only because he's a domineering rear end in a top hat rather than because of some racist nonsense about hereditary degeneration or interbreeding.

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

Nessus posted:

Re-litigating Lovecraft stories gets tedious, but the only real bad guy in that story was the aspects of the Deep One cult that, if I recall, were killing hoboes and people who were not on board the fish-man train. Joining the fish-man train was consensual and led to great benefits. At the end, the narrator even gets on the train! You could probably lean into misanthropy here for funsies, that'd boost sales.

I want there to be certain justified grounds for resenting humanity, without actually crossing into misanthropy. The Mer are kind of stuck, through no fault or decision of their own, between humanity and a supernatural/cosmic disaster that was caused by human beings (e.g. the collapse of the Star Ladder and the creation of the Abyss).

There's an obvious ecological metaphor to be made there, because the threat of course is that something is going to happen to the ocean ( / collective unconscious) that will cause it to rise and destroy humanity as a consequence of human action.

And hopefully I can draw on oWoof as a example of how not to handle that idea. :v:

Soonmot posted:

SOrry, I was phone posting. But just like the Pure and Bale Hounds are still werewolves, there's a sect of mer that take things to a degree that's monstrous and wrong, especially with the melding of minds into a gestalt entity of sorts that shoals have going for them.

Oh yeah, absolutely.

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.
also: Mer or Merrow?

The latter is more natural to say, is already a word, and the etymology is uncertain (there are cognates that mean both "mermaid", "sea singer," and "sea monster"), which covers the range of identities I want to describe pretty well.

The former has the advantage of just meaning "sea" (which fits nicely into the idea of collective rather than individual identity), being completely gender neutral, and difficult to confuse with any particular culture's myths and legends.

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

joylessdivision posted:

So I got bored today and made a little prep material for my players, kinda give them a visual feel for what our game world looks like.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RRXjVvgDdUT8xzNuwriy0TtiEqqmS1IR/view?usp=drivesdk

You've spelled Baron "Barron" in a couple of places, unless that's a deliberate affectation that I don't get.

Looks really cool otherwise, though!

e: What's the significance of the little circular seals? The spider, winged eye, fire/flower, etc.

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

Mors Rattus posted:

The name is stolen from a Middle Eastern deity. Of crops, as it happens, not fish. The confusion results from the fact that his name sounds kind of like the word for fish in a related language, and he's sometimes depicted alongside some dudes who were part-fish.

I was mostly shitposting re: Dagon, I would never use actual Lovecraft entities for anything.

However, that's hilarious and now I'm tempted to work it in somehow.

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

MonsieurChoc posted:

How's about Azhi Dahaka?

I like that when a hero struck Azhi Dahaka with a mace, his blood came to life as all manner of vermin (which fits nicely with Kraken giving rise to all manner of sea life upon their death) but I also don't want to privilege any one particular mythology as more central than the others.

He'd make a good Mer villain, though.

quote:

Ahriman now took another guise, and presented himself to Zahhāk as a marvellous cook. After he had presented Zahhāk with many days of sumptuous feasts (introducing meat to the formerly vegetarian human cuisine), Zahhāk was willing to give Ahriman whatever he wanted. Ahriman merely asked to kiss Zahhāk on his two shoulders. Zahhāk permitted this; but when Ahriman had touched his lips to Zahhāk's shoulders, he immediately vanished. At once, two black snakes grew out of Zahhāk's shoulders. They could not be surgically removed, for as soon as one snake-head had been cut off, another took its place.

Ahriman now appeared to Zahhāk in the form of a skilled physician. He counselled Zahhāk that the only remedy was to let the snakes remain on his shoulders, and sate their hunger by supplying them with human brains for food every day otherwise the snakes will feed on his own.

He's a tyrant who consumes his own subjects, and who aspires to replace the previous ruler of all creation (who was righteous at first but lost the right to rule through arrogance).

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

pseudosavior posted:

Would Grindylow be classified as a Mer sub-group (maybe the squid-mer?) or are they more in the realm of antagonist?

If it's a mythical sea creature that has human intelligence and is in some way liminal between humanity and the sea, it's appropriate for a PC in this game. I've discarded a few things that are either basically just magical animals and a few others that are just giant sea monsters, but nah, that'd be a perfectly viable PC concept.

My categorization scheme so far is something like this, although it's still very rough and I've got half a mind to skip the specific animal associations and emphasize a broader theme and aesthetic for each instead:

Fish Merrow: Inheritors of Kraken's senses. They tend to be artists, performers, and collectors of beautiful things. They're drawn to humanity because we're an endless source of novelty, but also because they crave an audience. Drawn to the sea (and thus most at risk of dissolution) when they feel inadequate or rejected.

Mainly inspired by The Little Mermaid, but also sirens, rusalka, and various other local European myths about water spirits that lure people to their death.

Squid Merrow: Inheritors of Kraken's memories. They tend to be teachers, scholars, and craftsmen. They're drawn to humanity because they appreciate our curiosity, but prone to being pushy and didactic -- they'll teach you or try to correct you whether you ask for it or not. Drawn to the sea when they feel cynical or disappointed.

Inspired by Lovecraft, of course, but mostly in reaction against him. I'm also intrigued by the Hawai'ian squid or octopus god Kanaloa, who in addition to the animal association is sometimes described as a teacher, but I'm hesitant to go all-in on this because there are two different layers of colonial bastardization of the myth -- one by Christian missionaries (who associated him with the devil, possibly inserting/encouraging his evolution into an evil god of the underworld) and then a second by some new age charlatan.

Amphibian Merrow: Inheritors of Kraken's emotions. They tend to be champions, advocates, and enforcers. Drawn to humanity because they find themselves agreeing with a cause, for better or worse. Drawn to the sea when they feel guilty or ashamed.

Mainly inspired by the Gillman, and also some Mesoamerican influences -- someone mentioned La Llorona earlier, which prompted the idea about associating them with passion and guilt, and the idea that the Aztec heaven of Tlalocan was reserved to both those who die of drowning, flooding, or storms, but also for those who suffer from physical deformities.

Serpent Merrow: Inheritors of Kraken's will. They tend to be priests, politicians, and philanthropists. Drawn to humanity because they respect our accomplishments, but expect the same deference in return. Drawn to the sea when they feel bitter or jealous.

Mainly inspired by Ryujin, although I'm sort of playing with the myth a bit -- Ryujin famously resolves a dispute between two brothers as to which should defer to the other, favoring the brother who came down into the sea and married his daughter over the other, elder brother. (It also maps really easily to a power set, since the tide jewels are accorded both the ability to control the wind and tides, and also in some variations of the myth to control minds and compel obedience.)

Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 07:01 on Oct 8, 2019

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.
Tzimisce: No one likes a guest who refuses to leave

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

Loomer posted:

Well, poo poo. Not loving up other people is my weak spot. I guess I'll just have to throw in enough extra content in the appendixes and notes so I don't feel like a total ripoff artist.

Just to push back a little bit here, I think that you're completely justified in either selling your work or releasing it for free. You've obviously put a ton of effort into this and I don't doubt that people would be interested enough to buy it, and you absolutely deserve to reap the rewards if you want to.

But on the other hand, acting like giving something away for free is a betrayal of the creative community is some seriously toxic capitalist bullshit. Your generosity is not to blame for others' failure to value artistic work; the responsibility is squarely on them.

Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 20:58 on Oct 15, 2019

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

Jerik posted:

Hey, question here for people who know more about the nWoD than I do (which is probably most people here; I have a fair amount of experience with oWoD games, but almost none with the nWoD, but some recent reviews in FATAL & Friends have really piqued my interest):

Does anyone know if and where there's any canonical information on Los Angeles in the nWoD? I know about the oWoD material on Los Angeles, but I don't know what if anything has been established about it in the nWoD.

I ask because my current erratic work schedule prohibits me from currently participating in a regular face-to-face campaign, so I'm thinking of starting a PBP game of Demon: the Descent. (It wouldn't be any time soon, because I want to read through all the relevant books and really familiarize myself with the rules and the lore before starting the game.) I'm leaning toward setting it in Los Angeles just because that's where I live, so I figured I may as well make it easy on myself and use a city I'm very familiar with. But I just wanted to know if there's any canonical information on Los Angeles in the nWoD already. I know nothing requires me to stick with existing canon, but, I don't know, I always like to try to be consistent with canon if possible, even though I realize there's no real reason I have to do that.

The "Demon Seed Collection" is a batch of adventure hooks and campaign ideas for Demon: The Descent that includes an entry for LA / Hollywood. I haven't read it, and can't vouch for its quality... but it's only $2.24 on sale from $3, so not exactly a massive leap of faith. :v:

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/135114/Demon-Seed-Collection

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.
Except that's not really true at all.

The nWoD very clearly has canon, and doubly so if you take developer statements into account. It just doesn't have metaplot.

e: and even that statement kind of depends on exactly where you draw the line between "metaplot" and "backstory", because there are tons of little subtle changes to various gamelines that could be read either as advancing the present moment forward or as retcons depending on how you look at them (especially in Mage and Vampire)

Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 05:16 on Oct 17, 2019

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.
what does distinguish the nWoD is the fact that it's consciously designed for play instead of being someone's sickass campaign log proudly displayed to the world with no regard for how anyone else is ever going to use it

but this motivation only sometimes overlaps with their reticence to pick a side on questions that would make a massive thematic difference for the game line or even the entire franchise (e.g. whether the Exarchs were ever human or not -- bulk of the evidence says yes, but that makes the coyness in other places even more bizarre) and honestly a lot of the time it comes off more as a way to cover for writers not getting each other's memos than as anything positive

and there's a fine line between "giving GMs room to create their own stories" and "making more work for the GM who presumably bought a commercial setting + lore book for a reason"

e: in conclusion, put all the splat setting bibles up for sale

Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 05:34 on Oct 17, 2019

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

Loomer posted:

This is also one of the missed opportunities in Changeling's ToJ scenarios - there's no good 'storm the gates of Arcadia to take revenge on the bastards' option.

My favorite Changeling character concept that I've been sitting on waiting for a chance to play it is a nuclear scientist from the Manhattan Project who got Rip van Winkle'd into the present during his Durance.

He'd promptly sign on with the Summer Court and start making plans for a cold iron bomb to nuke Arcadia. :getin:

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

Gerund posted:

Wouldn't the act of exploding count as forging the iron? Or is this an in-built irony?

Well, at any rate, nothing about his plan is supposed to be well-advised. :v:

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.
Just because something is a one-off weirdness doesn't mean it was retconned. The setting is designed to accommodate one-off weirdness.

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.
as someone who has made Magechat into a discussion of actual Gnostic traditions more than once I move that this is not a derail either

Loomer posted:

Since we're back to oWoD chat, remember everyone: Jesus was a sorceror CoG kinfolk who was embraced by the Lasombra and rejected Pauline christianity. It's canon, people, read your vampire werewolf wizard bible.

particularly in this light

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.
Geist 2E was a pretty significant re-invention of the gameline it came from.

Mummy has even further to go but I'm at least tentatively optimistic.

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.
Demon: The Descent 2E with no taint of Matt McFarland would be an instant day-one buy from me, although conversely I would hope that OPP could get Rose Bailey on board and I seem to recall she's pretty busy with her own games these days.

e: also much as I like crunch the comparatively-streamlined design of Changeling 2E would be really good for Demon, simply because Demon has SO MANY subsystems that making all of them insanely complicated doesn't really do it any favors

Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 21:49 on Nov 6, 2019

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

Rand Brittain posted:

It looks like Colin Suleiman is in the. comments on Mummy being salty that he wasn't consulted.

sounds like Mummy 2E's chances of being good just shot up massively

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

PHIZ KALIFA posted:

I'm gonna spitball on this for a minute. What if everyone played mummies, just slightly less OP versions, and the game progresses backwards from your most modern (and lowest powered) resurrection as you slowly remember who you are and what cabal created you for what purpose.

So, you and your buddies are in a museum which is getting robbed by ISIS or some poo poo. You fight them off and protect the museum, and once it's safe you have a flashback to the LAST time you protected this museum from the Kaiser or some poo poo, and in that flashback you encounter some relics from your burial, which sends you back FURTHER to when you failed to protect your city from invading hordes, and finally it culminates in the ritual of your creation, as you meet your cultists and have good ole fun times till, for whatever reason, you're sent to sleep.

End story arc! No moral.

this sounds rad

and not just because it gave me the opportunity to go "lol you just described Mummento"

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Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

PHIZ KALIFA posted:

Maybe the mummy acts as a megazord

new thread title

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