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C20 is rad, entirely playable, and has relatively minor flaws. Considering what CtD 2nd gave people to work with that's a minor miracle. There's nothing too egregious in it, rules or setting-wise, and the majority of flaws are "I wish it had more room to talk about this thing". I'd easily put it over V20 and Woof20 simply because their Revised versions weren't actively painful to work with, so having great releases isn't really a massive step up. M20 is mechanically whatever and fluff-wise.....yeesh. And Wraith is strong and clean and powerful. e: Considering the track record I'd slit throats for Hunter 20, because holy poo poo is that the line that I think would benefit the most from a second pass.
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Sep 27, 2019 20:37
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The cores of Vampire, Werewolf, Changeling, and Wraith are all fine to great. There is nothing massively glaring that will tear down your experience, nothing major you have to work through, in any of them. They are all massive and filled with a giant helping of rules and information to do a lot with. Now this can sometimes mean that you have a bit of a superficial look at a bunch of stuff [Because even though the Vampire core is over 500 pages it can't cover literally everything in perfect detail for instance], so if these are your first interactions with the setting you might want a little more. You are entirely capable of either looking back to the past for one of the Revised era books to give you more general information and using the 20th edition to see how it's changed to get a fuller picture. And Vampire 20 in particular has a ton of new books, most of them great [Including the single greatest revamp of an old concept I think I've ever seen in a PnP game]. With Mage it's.....I'd say it's the only one that's a step back. There's some interesting stuff there, and the mechanics aren't atrocious or anything, but Phil Brucato is a very specific type of writer and he made some interesting choices for the core. And the dude also some ideas about magick WITH A K USE THE K WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU. It leads to a book that isn't as streamlined or usable as the rest. Mostly because the rest of the books just assume that everything that happened happened except for the end of the world and move time forward. Everything else that isn't directly tied to the end of the world or some world shaking side event is up for grabs. Mage doesn't assume anything happened. You can dial it back to Mage 2nd plot points if you want to. That's....certainly a choice, but you'd probably save like 20 pages or more if you just took a stand like the rest and did the same thing. And the changes it did make might be.....less than well accepted depending on your views.
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Sep 28, 2019 08:19
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I've got the broken down player thing where I can't meaningfully differentiate bad and worse versions of old Mage rules. It's certainly not better, but I don't know if it's worse than Revised. It's the same giant clusterfuck it's always been I guess? There are some ideas in Gods and Monsters, HDYDT, and Book of Secrets that are worthwhile. There are others that are not so much, and there are other ideas still where I just want to sit the guy down and go "Stop fetishizing non-dominant cultures for their perceived opposition to or non-conformity to the status quo". I also feel weird busting on them though because all of them are to some degree based on still extant cultural practices to some degree or another, so I want to just bow out of the entire interaction. 20 was a perfect chance for the streamlining of what the games were about, boosting the strengths and ditching weaknesses. M20 wasn't even more of the same, it was literally the exact same stuff beat for beat from a guy that was behind the curve well before the end of the line. It's impressive how much that book does to make as little change as it does. And the change that it does make is "EVERYTHING IS NEPHANDI! And also I'm getting limp at how much the Traditions are just basic western cultural imperialists and racial caricatures, so I've created a new group that is even MORE outsider and revolutionary!". And I suppose I should muster some emotion, but all I can think is "Good job buddy, here's a cookie! Go draw in the corner why I see how much work it'd be to ignore all of this.".
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Sep 28, 2019 12:14
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Beast: Players Guide posted:Connected Lair (••)
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Oct 4, 2019 23:11
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Deviant wraps up one of the larger untapped fictional pools. God's own prototypes, the weirdos and misfits of the occult world that conform to no particular standard, probably hunted by someone [Often the group that made them], whose powers are whatever the plot needs them to be. Beyond that......urgh, the truly inhuman? Literally something not tied to this world at all, the absolute Outsider. Be it your Elder Dark or literal aliens or whatever, something that doesn't care about Earth or it's cosmology in any sense, but for some reason has been bumped up against it.
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Oct 5, 2019 00:53
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BENGHAZI 2 posted:Morlocks I don't know, I feel pretty secure in the knowledge of what that man's fetishes are, because boy howdy did he invent like a thousand excuses to get them into the story.
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Oct 5, 2019 17:34
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You know thinking back to the oWoD there's really no downside to being a vampire if you aren't a monster to begin with and are willing to do some occult research. There's powers that take care of all the flaws. Hell I know like 3 powers that let you walk in the sun, and it's not like they are all crazy 9 dot super powers or something. Want to be immortal but afraid you'll miss chocolate? There are powers for that. Too narcissistic to live a life were your downstairs don't work right? Also powers for that. Frenzy? You can mitigate it. Having to drink blood? It's not too hard to make animal blood as filling as human blood or even pure vitae. Any particular downside you care to name was dealt with somewhere, by someone, and most of them could be learned by practically any vampire. And the Thin-Bloods that can't learn some of them can still learn the rest, and the ones they lose are generally covered by the innate perks of being Thin-Blooded. e: Really, I don't know what those jackasses were so angsty about. Mulva fucked around with this message at 05:49 on Oct 9, 2019 |
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Oct 9, 2019 05:38
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Digital Osmosis posted:my oWoD vampire lore has fallen off the deep edge, care to mention a couple of the specifics of those powers? Like what disciplines or books they're from? Really just a bit curious here so nbd if you don't know them off the top of your head. The Corpse in the Monster [V20] is a necromancy branch *about* your undead condition. It can make you kind of alive-ish at 5 dots [Eat food, go big horny, walk around in the sun fairly easily if you cover up and have increased chance to soak it if you don't cover up] for an entire day at the risk of increased frenzy for a few days after and costing a lot of blood. Bardo [Also V20] lets you, among other really neat perks, get full benefit of animal blood at all times at 3 dots. A cow has about 4 times the amount of blood as a human. Think of all the cows, the pigs, the chickens [Small, but we sure do kill a lot of them]. That's a lot of blood nobody is going to miss as much. The Path of the Focused Mind [Rites of the Blood] lets you think more gooder in general, and at 5 dots makes you completely immune to frenzy for a scene. Beyond everything else those 3 things right there [And the associated rituals you can learn because hey, Necromancy and Thaumaturgy. If you need to fake humanity outside the sun and don't want to drop a person's worth of Vitae fake it with the Domino of Life. Simple 1 dot ritual.] basically cover all the flaws of being a vampire. On the way to those big powers there are other things you get to [5 dot Focused Mind might be immunity to frenzy, but the powers up to it make you think faster and better, and even hold two entirely separate thoughts at once. Bardo makes it easier to regain Humanity and defend from magic before you get to the animal bit. The Corpse in the Monster gives you a cheaper way to resist a lot of the flaws for a shorter amount of time if you want to be more corpse instead of more alive.]. That's just a really solid package of things that aren't exactly state secrets [Bardo was the most secretive and would legitimately be some work to track down in the modern day, but the Corpse in the Monster was a big Cappadocian thing, and the Path of the Focused Mind, while not the flashiest Path, is certainly known]. And there are side things depending on what you are willing to give up. Don't mind having a third eye? Valeren Healer/Obeah 4 Fortitude 4 Penitent Resilience [DA20]. Lets you redirect the sun to your curse, so it burns up vitae before your body. Also immunity to Rötschreck while you have blood in your system. Combine it with The Corpse in the Monster you could be bare rear end naked in the sun and the worst you would be is rolling 4 dice at difficulty 5 to resist, and worst case you still aren't taking damage for a few turns. And there's probably a million other weird things here or there that I've forgotten, and some I've skipped [Bardo 9 also lets you walk in the sun. It's 9 dots. That'd take someone a hot minute to learn even in the best of times]. The general idea is that there are all sorts of ways to get rid of most of the flaws of being a vampire, most of which are fairly well known, and if vampire society was focused on teaching new vampires how to use them and not be monsters it'd take like half a decade for all their problems to be wrapped up forever. Instead, well.....they sure didn't try to mitigate any of their problems it seems.
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Oct 11, 2019 04:02
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Because it's made difficult. It's not like it's objectively hard to learn blood magic. Like 9 different Clans and bloodlines have their own version of it. Same for necromancy, there are like 5 different versions of it. And because there are so many clans that know so many versions of these things, it's as hard as you want it to be. The Giovanni might not be willing to teach you the Corpse in the Monster. What about the Harbingers? The Samedi? The Maeghar? The Tremere aren't willing to hand out magic....what about literally every ancient culture that used Dur-An-Ki? Are they all going to ride your rear end as hard? Is this easy? No, in practice it'd take you years and years and years to jump through all the hoops and learn all the things required. The end result is all your flaws are mitigated. And if you do it, just you, once, you can make it easy for everyone that comes after. You could just...teach them. No hoops, no favors, no dire pacts, no years of study to track you down. You could just do it, and it'd be done. And everyone you taught could do the same thing, and on and on and on, and there would never be a single problem with being a vampire ever again.
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Oct 11, 2019 05:02
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Ah, but you can only lead someone *towards* Golconda. You can flat out teach people stupid magic tricks.PHIZ KALIFA posted:Meanwhile, everyone embraced around the same time as you has built up an undead empire and can use telepathy to send their army of supersoldiers to knock down your door and douse you with kerosene. Well sure, but some of the powers that mitigate the other problems mitigate the weakness to fire too. And their army of super-soldiers are vulnerable to some of the other powers you know. A 5 dot power has 4 powers that come before it after all, and it's a big blow to that reputation you've built up as a stone cold manipulator if our friend the aesthetic makes you constantly poo poo yourself in public. The ability that lets you subsist on animal blood easily comes after the power that lets you dodge literally all forms of pure magic [So someone tries to throw magic fire at you, by all means. Someone uses magic to be strong enough to bounce a car off you head, not so much]. The power that makes you immune to frenzy also makes you able to lock someone into repeating a single action. Yon badass elder can have 8 million extra actions, but if he has to spend one to move at you all the million that follow are going to be related to moving towards and around you. That's what makes it insane. It's not be a badass or be human, you'd be doing both at the same time. Everyone would rather be an rear end in a top hat than just....exist. e: Too many posts, I think I edited one instead of adding. Oh well! Mulva fucked around with this message at 06:55 on Oct 11, 2019 |
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Oct 11, 2019 06:07
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Ferrinus posted:You can’t, though. Setting aside the fact that your one weird trick for defeating the curse of Caine involves learning four or five dot powers in obscure sorcerous disciplines When half a dozen to a dozen disparate groups know a thing, it is no longer obscure. As the inevitable march of time went on it seems every group got a form of blood magic, and every fifth group a form of necromancy, and shockingly most of the necromancy groups have ties to the Caps. And none of those listed Disciplines are required, those are just the ones in easy to have books that require the least hoop jumping and do it in the most direct manner to convey the point without getting into the actual esoteric stuff [Things like the Obeah combo are one of those just to show what they are like. Like one day someone found a way to shunt the sun onto their curse, nbd]. Pretending that it's hard to learn Thaum if you want to and then introducing Anarch Thaumaturgy isn't something you get to do. You officially sailed that ship into the sunset. quote:There’s also, obviously, the materialist/game-theoretical reason this isn’t appealing and doesn’t work: if you spend all your energy learning how to subsist off cows and control your temper, you’ll just be at the mercy of someone who’s instead learned to control minds or punch through concrete. Admittedly, your low iron footprint will make you a great subject and unlikely to raise anyone’s ire. Which is the least relevant, because the thought was about vampires as beings that exist, not about players at a table. The unending horror of their existence, that is in fact really not so bad if they work at it and weren't secretive jackasses. All the work they put into policing activities that would never happen. All the fears they have of tells they'd never give. And also irrelevant because, again, in a game with powers rated on dots like this, you buy your way up to a power. You don't get to complain about it being a bunch of 3-4-5 dot powers and then pretend you don't have 13 disparate powers to work with, nor the fact you have access to the vast majority of all Thaumatological and Necromantic Rituals. If you are this guy your focus is on humanely existing without problems for the rest of eternity. You can also loving obliterate anyone that messes with you in ways that might not be able to comprehend exist. Because this is Vampire, and the closest it has to Disciplines that are pure puppies and cuddles will still have powers that put someone to sleep for a century or eat souls.
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Oct 12, 2019 04:51
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Ok, this could be fun: Why can't they, absent outside interference? You can't say it's explicitly hard to learn with all the people that know those various things, and all the stupid people doing stupid poo poo with them [There are plenty of rituals that are just "Someone was loving around and did this thing". Fangbook is not the development of an occult system that is hard for randos to grasp.]. You can't say it's a time issue, we are dealing with immortals. Literally the vast majority of vampire society is the way it is because these folks are going insane with nothing to keep them engaged. Oh no, you gave bored immortals something to focus on, how ever will they deal with a challenge that requires them to focus on something not their horrific existence!? You can't say it's the dot count, plenty of NPCs have more dots than this requires after a century or so, sprinkled with 4s and 5s. It's about as developed as they expect folks to be over time in the setting. So "You can't do this, it doesn't make sense in the setting".....why? Beyond the obvious elephant in the room of "Vampires are monsters and actively destroy the weak and humane seeming". Which is, again, what the point was. Being a vampire would be piss easy if they stopped ridding each others rear end and just dealt with being a vampire. e: Which has always been the default message of vampire to me. Being a vampire really sucks because you have to hang around with all these vampires. Mulva fucked around with this message at 06:15 on Oct 12, 2019 |
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Oct 12, 2019 06:07
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Ferrinus posted:that's not because every other vampire in the world is simply stupid or slothful. It's because the main magic clan actively murders folk that try to learn magic. Same to some degree for the main necromancy clan. quote:This is completely setting aside the fact that your master plan requires simultaneous use of adept or master-level powers across multiple, sometimes-warring rare subsects or bloodlines that pop up in the game's umpteenth supplement To be done. To just combat those flaws is a bunch of one and two dot poo poo. Like two dots, you never hunger frenzy again. That issue is solved. You will only freak out and murder someone feeding because you decided to. The path to be done with the flaws of being a vampire exists in their setting. Has for centuries. quote:This is the same kind of thinking that leads people to conclude that every last person in the world could found a lucrative startup and then retire at 35 if they were simply smart about their finances. The actual truth is that no, they can't. The world isn't the way it is because for some mysterious reason each individual human has failed to bootstrap themselves into their best self. No, it's saying people die of diabetic related issues because companies are predatory and grossly inflate the price of insulin.
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Oct 12, 2019 06:42
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Ferrinus posted:But does this actually mean that anyone can learn magic if they could simply be given the chance? Anarch Thaum is literally "Some Tremere/Assamites/Whatever join up with the Anarchs and literally everyone starts learning stupid magic tricks". So yes, that actually appears to be the case. quote:Will you, though? Will you never hunger frenzy again? Or will you, perhaps, gain a small bonus on a particular hunger frenzy check at the cost of ending up with even less blood in your system and therefore at greater risk of hunger frenzy later? Are you just lying about what these powers do now? One dot ritual, requires the tooth of a predator [Which isn't consumed or anything, wear it as a necklace], lasts for an hour, takes a turn to cast. You don't hunger frenzy, period, while it's active. You start to get a little hangry, pop it and go out to hunt. When it's go time you won't flip out and drain someone dry. Unless that's who you are. quote:That metaphor doesn't really track because what you were suggesting before is that A) actually in the contemporary world all this knowledge is just floating around out there and there's no reason you shouldn't be able to learn it, even if some of it is like the proprietary discipline of an obscure African bloodline and B) all these vampires should be engaging in decades if not centuries long regimens of study and exercise to learn and use all these powers. One dot is decades of study? Total mastery is the work of years and decades and perhaps centuries, depending on how slow you learn, but getting a handle on things is the same amount of dots any given starting character has. If that was a thing vampire society cared about, it is in no way hard. Mortis is the same as Auspex, it's the defining power of an original Clan. *Now* it's rare, but for thousands of years it was as common as anything else. And common to a clan known for it's studious nature and study of the condition of undeath [Which has quite a few survivors in the modern day, something that would be fairly common knowledge because people love dunking on the Giovanni and vampire society has an explicit position for dunking on people]. e: Really most of this is based on clans who write everything down and are openly known for studying poo poo, and had systems in place for disseminating that knowledge to everyone else in their clan. Considering the number of other clans whose stick is "Spying on everyone" holy poo poo should this not be state secrets. Mulva fucked around with this message at 07:09 on Oct 12, 2019 |
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Oct 12, 2019 07:03
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Ferrinus posted:Literally everyone, Mulva? Or, is it, in fact, those anarchs who both can find a specific teacher, and want to learn, and are actually able to learn and understand? They call themselves the Digital Draculas and openly say "Hey we'll teach you Technomancy and rituals!". And then they do, to anyone that wants it. Literally everyone that wants to, yes. It's not stomped down on because some Anarchs targeted Elders in the crash and said "We will destroy the entire financial system if you push us", but they openly and freely shop that stuff out. quote:So actually, you never hunger frenzy provided you cast a magic spell every hour on the hour, and provided that roll doesn't fail (you don't necessarily know whether it succeeded) Are you hungry? It failed. No? It worked. And it's "Every hour you at risk". How many of those are there? Not like it's hard to store blood, knowing this ritual presupposes something: You can use ritual magic. Store some blood you moron, what's the point of knowing blood magic if you don't use it? quote:and provided you don't suffer some kind of mishap that causes you to lose or break the tooth Wear a few if you worried. Have one in a pocket. It's not like it's a hardship. "What if someone strips you naked and throws you in a pit with babies and pokes you with a stick until you eat them huh? What then?". I don't know, what if they don't? quote:Ah, now we're haggling over how long one dot takes to get, so I guess we can stop pretending that learning four or five out of multiple powers is feasible. Why, because you're losing the argument? Being done is the end of a road, but it's not like the start of the road is without benefits. I won't pretend that any giving neonate could know all this after a five year crash course. That's silly. Anyone could build towards it though, and knowing it is there is it's own comfort. quote:The problem is that one dot may well represent decades or even an unattainable pipe dream for people who don't have the knack You've yet to establish it is a knack, or to what degree it is. You just say it and move on like that's an argument, whereas the setting seems to think it takes root all over the world all the time with the slightest opportunity. quote:Yes, Mortis is extremely rare, because almost all the vampires that used to throw it around are dead. Now. A thousand years ago not so much. And even now there are still the Harbingers, and the Samedi. And unrelateds like the Nagaraja [Who if not with the Tal'Mahe'Ra are known for being mercenary]. And the fact that maybe not everyone called "Giovanni" is quite so Giovanni as they might like. e: Angry Lobster posted:That's a lot of words to justify doing a munchkin thing. It's like that time when I played with a group that insisted that learning obscure rituals like "From Marduk's Throat" was easy even for neonates of any clan. It's the Ordu Dracul mindset in the oWoD setting. What's weird about it? You are a horrific occult abomination, are you telling me nobody ever went "Can I do something about this?". They all just went "Guess I have to slam my dick in the door of all these horrific biblical curses til the end of time or go full tilt into Golconda, there is absolutely zero middle ground". Mulva fucked around with this message at 07:41 on Oct 12, 2019 |
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Oct 12, 2019 07:37
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LatwPIAT posted:Pertinent to the discussion, Blood Magic: Secrets of Thaumaturgy gives the time to learn a ritual on p.86: from 1 week for a Level 1 ritual to 1 year for a Level 5 ritual. And of course this is another issue. Edition differences. In V20 it's just a ritual, in the core book, no mention of the Sabbat. And the learning ritual rules is it's a weekly roll looking for level * 5 successes. Makes learning level 1 rituals potentially harder, but level 5 much much easier. Even in V20 Domino of Life in V20 is one aspect of life, in DA20 it's all of them. Still level 1 [The DA20 version is probably way too powerful for level 1]. Mechanics is it's own weird hassle to integrate into the conversation. Nessus posted:I thought you had to do like advanced exsanguinitory poo poo to crack open Thaumaturgy outside of the Tremere, who just baked that into becoming a dracula presumably. Ha ha, nope. If you do super duper favors for the Tremere they'll teach you, if you give them some of your blood to use against you and sign a magical contract to never use magic against them. Conversely if they end up in the Anarchs or the Sabbat they might start teaching people because they have nothing else to offer and people hate the Tremere by nature. It's just a Discipline, the end. There's really just "Blood magic". What's the difference between Assimite and Koldunic and Setite and Tremere sorcery? Not a lot. The others tend to have a more theological focus, but by and large it's the same poo poo.
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Oct 12, 2019 09:10
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It's not a bloodline, they can't embrace people. It's more of a religion. The timeline of their supposed wiping out is actually....fairly recent in Second Edition. They don't truly die out until Mummy, where Osiris calls them all back and gives them one final test. Those that passed were made human again. Bardo is actually a lot like Obeah. It's not 'innate', it's something Osiris went east to learn from mystics. Lot of that going on in early vampire.
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Oct 12, 2019 12:15
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Lord_Hambrose posted:Holy poo poo is Vampire Magechat a drag. Like, sure buddy everyone is allowed to do whatever dumb bullshit in their own games. No problems there. Hey dude with a half dozen posts, what would *you* like to talk about?
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Oct 12, 2019 12:59
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I don't know, you seemed to have repeated the "They'll just kill you if you try this" bit like it hadn't already brought up, so I don't know that you understood *this* conversation either. On the plus side, you have 20% more posts in the thread! Dip your toe, get weird with it. What do you really, really want to talk about?
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Oct 12, 2019 13:08
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Lord_Hambrose posted:Preying on the innocent because you are forced to in order to live in the central conceit of being a vampire. To some people. To others it's loving people over in highly detailed Social Darwinist hell pits. To others the conceit is playing super heroes with trench coats and katanas. It's a lot of people to a lot of things. I don't judge anyone. Except the people who go to LARPs to be assholes, they just tend to be real real creepy. As I said, I've always found that that the central conceit of vampire is that none of it had to be the way it is. Either version really, but especially the Masquerade version. The Jyhad is a tool designed to keep those in power in power, those outside oppressed, and everyone at each other's throats. And maybe that's a metaphor for our world with characters writ large [Surprise it's a metaphor] and maybe it's part of the biblical curse that turns Caine's children against each other like he turned on his brother, but regardless. Nothing *had* to be the way it is. Angry Lobster posted:Doing it by gaming the system mechanichs using several obscure rituals, disciplines and other bullshit in whatever splatbooks White Wolf vomited it's kinda bad, cheesy and inconsistent with what the game is all about. On the other hand, at least he's not doing it for the usual reasons like making things explode harder or just to throw more dice. We've had this discussion before, but the time between First and Second Edition Vampire was insanely quick. Under two years. You know who had time to show up in that time frame before second? The Children of Osiris. They predate Werewolf. They predate a lot of things. They became more and more rare as time went on [To the point where they are an incredibly niche group filled with vampires that can't embrace that has been being slaughtered for thousands and thousands of years, who also aren't secret because they need to recruit but somehow managed to last til near the End Times], but that's a function of wanting to make Vampire darker and more gritty. Stop pretending stuff like "Literally the signature ability of one of the core Clans" or "Something like one third of all clans regularly practice" is Visceratika. Also it's entirely what Vampire is about, it's just that for a lot of clans that goal of transformation is to eat God or become a giant flesh castle or some other crazy poo poo. Say you want to tear down the barriers between life and death, ok sure, say you want to eat popcorn on the reg and it's suddenly destroying the very nature of Vampire. Mulva fucked around with this message at 13:45 on Oct 12, 2019 |
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Oct 12, 2019 13:31
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You timing is impeccable.
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Oct 12, 2019 15:29
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PHIZ KALIFA posted:Yeah I'm confused what Mulva's point is. That the game is heavy with ridiculous niche powers? That the supernatural abilities tinker with the fundamental assumptions of the world? That a vampire society that focused on teaching people how to deal with their condition rather than be total assholes in a feudal death match with existence would be very, very different indeed. But hey if someone wants to step I'm entirely willing to go three pages of bullshit deep. I earned that red name fair and square.
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Oct 13, 2019 03:55
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PHIZ KALIFA posted:Yeah it's called the Ordo Dracul. Imagine how different the real world would be if we weren't assholes in a feudal death match for existence. THAT'S something worth spilling ink on. Oh I don't give a poo poo about the point I was just there for the argument.
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Oct 13, 2019 07:10
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Don't be mean, that'll be the hottest launch title for the 360 ever!
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Oct 22, 2019 03:00
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The problem with Beast is incredibly banal, and it's that it feels like the draft of 4 different games smushed together and it never commits to any of them.
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Oct 23, 2019 23:08
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joylessdivision posted:
So's vampire in a lot of ways. So are a lot of the elements of a lot of the games. You can absolutely tell a story about playing as an abuse elemental and have it work. It's not the themes, exactly, because they are present in a lot of other games that also turned out fine. The actual problem is that it's trying to do so many different things with it's various elements that it never really comes together in a clear package. The various people working on these things from WW on have done works where you flat out play an unrepentant monster, it's worked before. I'd certainly put Freak Legion as generally better written than Beast, and that's pure schlock splatterpunk gaming. That literally has a power that is "Put a dick on the end of something". The actual thing that sinks Beast is that it's just badly managed, and doesn't really know what it's trying to execute. e: Although even taking the strongest of the concepts at play in the books I think they'd be working at a disadvantage trying to make a good end product. Mulva fucked around with this message at 23:53 on Oct 23, 2019 |
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Oct 23, 2019 23:23
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Archonex posted:The one thing that got me is that in earlier drafts weren't Beast's supposed to feed off of fear? I don't remember when it got down to Hungers, but I thought it was pretty early in the discussion. As it is now they feed [Beyond side powers and the like where they can feed off other monsters doing their feeding thing] off Hungers. These are largely based on emotional resonance from people. So if it's Horde, you feed off taking from someone. It's not the taking but the reaction that feeds you. Power feeds off expressing power over others, stuff like that. Prey is amusing, because if you are actually hungry you can feed off animals. You literally never need to feed off a human being, ever. The key point is that Horrors are totally amoral. They don't care how you express their Hunger, just that you do. Whatever moral judgement you want to apply to the act is entirely on you, reality doesn't care. Or to the degree that it cares it's response is Heroes, the folks made to kill you. You are not a moral force in any direction. Some Hungers are profoundly likely to be horrific, like Ruin or Transgression, but you could feed Transgression by getting a Neo-Nazi to kick the poo poo out of a racist and date a minority or something. Your Horror isn't in this to be EEEEEEEEVIL, it just wants to eat. If you end up a monster it's because you decided that's what you want to be. Which is where the "4 separate game" thing comes in, because any of the flaws you want to come up with about the game [Other than who made it] can easily be countered by aspects in the game, if you played them up or downplayed them to various degrees. All the parts are there, they are just aren't integrated well.
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Oct 24, 2019 00:30
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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. Let's be perfectly honest. The bastards are probably the ones that got kicked back to Earth.
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Oct 25, 2019 05:31
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Valeren is based on KotE philosophy and it's explicitly from an attempt to not be quite so....vampire. And the power he mentions is specifically from the Watcher Salubri, the ones who were made to stay behind and keep searching for knowledge and enlightenment. Their Valeren is even more like Chi'iu Muh. And to be fair it doesn't work for long. You get Path/Road level in days before you need actual blood. All it's going to do is vastly decrease the amount of actual feeding you need to indulge in, but it's not nothing I guess. It's just not an answer, which may be why Saulot set his clan up for destruction. Just bored with that experiment I guess.
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Oct 25, 2019 07:23
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It lacks a compelling theme, which is sort of it's compelling theme. There really is no place for Changelings in the modern world. They posit this is because there is something wrong with the world, but the issue is more the world moved on. You can't really pretend Glamour is an issue in a world where the moon landing and 9/11 completely reshaped the Dreaming back to back [At least on a historical time-scale]. We aren't witnessing the end of the Dreaming, we are most witnessing the end of the Arcadian Dream, which is only an issue because the setting is largely told from the perspective *of* Arcadian Dreams.
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Oct 30, 2019 13:35
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I imagine they considered what he'd do with his free time if he wasn't writing the book and called it the lesser of two evils.
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Oct 31, 2019 17:18
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Here's a thought exercise for you: Is Caine a vampire?
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Nov 1, 2019 17:52
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The Skeletal Lord is cool, because thousands of years of doing his job have left him totally insane, and it's the type of insanity that would see him sow plague and destruction across the entire living world.....but he's also a good guy doing all he can who never breaks. He only wants to devastate the living world because he thinks he's one of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and that's sort of their thing. And he doesn't do it because it's supposed to be part of the Apocalypse, not just something he rolls out any given Sunday. Otherwise he just tries to keep things together, fight Oblivion, and do the best he can. To the point he goes down swinging in the end, and survives his Harrowing. So now he's just wandering the Labyrinth, and I pity whatever dumb bastard ends up in his path trying to preach the good word of Oblivion.
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Nov 2, 2019 16:53
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In Vampire she's a big ol ?, she only really shows up in some endgame stuff. In Demon she doesn't exist, although Caine does. Or to be perfectly accurate claims about her relations with Lucifer and Adam and God are bullshit, she might be some sort of figure from after all that though. Odds are on her non-existence, because there's literally zero reason for her not to get involved with things. Caine is burned out, there's nothing that should keep Lilith from putting a hand in here or there. God might be dead, but is probably playing an extremely long game, Lucifer invented demonology and monotheism, everyone else does poo poo. She's completely absent in a tangible sense except for one end game scenario. The inference is she's supposed to be a Mage though. Mulva fucked around with this message at 19:28 on Nov 2, 2019 |
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Nov 2, 2019 19:24
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......that's odd, as the First Murderer is the turning point of the entire conflict between angels and demons, and Caine is a Known Entity in Demon. When they hear tell of an entire race of blood sucking atrocities that claim descent from him the general response is "Yeah that sounds about right, gently caress that guy".
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Nov 3, 2019 18:01
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Japheth is running around as a Wraith even in V20.Nessus posted:Yeah, what the gently caress was up with that? Buffy crossover ? Pointless grim dark bullshit from an overwrought edgelord, like 99% of V5.
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Nov 7, 2019 23:31
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Hilariously, one interpretation of the True Black Hand is that. That vampires are a cancer on humanity, and that raising up the 3rd Generation will decimate the vampire population and leave humanity better off. Because it's basically a sect of like nine other sects working together, what happens after that point is up for grabs. Their general M.O. is to keep vampires from getting too much control or running too wild.
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Nov 11, 2019 01:44
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Jonas Albrecht posted:Does the weaver have its own version of Fomori? Drones. And to skip to the next logical question, the Wyld version are Gorgons, and Kami are basically that for Gaia. They are all, to some degree, basically the same thing. Kami have more free will, they all tend towards certain abilities, but it's the same basic idea: They are joined with a spirit of a force and dedicate their existence to the defense of that force. e: They are all rarer than Fomori, but generally more powerful than the average Fomor because of it. They are far more deliberate and cared for than the average Fomor, whereas the Wyrm doesn't give a poo poo if some dude just has acid spewing pustules and dies in a few days. Mulva fucked around with this message at 23:00 on Nov 26, 2019 |
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Nov 26, 2019 22:56
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Switching to Mekhet clarifies their intended niche somewhat, in that Malks are supposed to be about perception and understanding. Because they are, you know, vampires that comes with severe downsides. Namely, the fracturing of their minds. The issue is they spend a lot more time playing up their downsides rather than their focus as mentalists and seers. It's just tacked on as "They may be mad, but in their madness lies truth." or some bullshit. You need to build a stronger foundation of them as investigators and advisors, mystics and mindtakers before you jump to "....oh and by the way they are all completely bent.".
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Dec 16, 2019 22:22
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 16:37 |
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DIO? He's insanely Tzimisce, it's not even close, he puts human heads on dogs and cat heads on owls. Why? He's a giant loving weirdo. Stands don't really slot into the oWoD perfectly, closest is like giving someone a familiar spirit of some sort. So DIO would be a Tzimisce with a spirit ally that has time powers. e: The real challenge would be stating up Joshua bin Joseph, one of the more interesting power sets from a JoJo. Mulva fucked around with this message at 07:14 on Jan 25, 2020 |
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Jan 25, 2020 07:10
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