World of Darkness

[supple quail]

yeesh, makes sense as abuser logic but like, playing an abuser like that isn’t super great

actually would beast be decent to do magnus archives stuff with? as entities

ik there’s an existing magnus archives rpg but it’s fun to imagine the creepy mr blobby hit someone with domain expansion

[orchid void]

most of the reason beast gets called abuse apologia is bc of pink flags in its pitch, and the lead on it being a long-term sex pest who made some interesting choices on the forums

Plus the fact that Beast requires a Lotta Work to get it up to snuff and play in a way that works well

So it gets abandoned and at a certain point im just thinkin about the Beast Voy Would Write instead of actual beast

[mighty zephyr]

A lot of the pink flags are due to the fact that the devs were not all on the same page

some thought they were making Just Monsters, and others thought they were making Queer Victimization Allegories

unsurprisingly, if you combined the two into one book

the message becomes skewed

[chilly vault]

I have not read Beast but I have a friend who did and basically live-blogged the whole thing and uh

Found it largely incoherent

I also just don’t like the “everyone’s pal” dealy

But that’s a personal gripe

[mighty zephyr]

I actually had an idea for a different tone of Beast where you eat nightmares and amalgamate your horror based off the things you eat

And Heroes are basically still just Conquering Heroes Heroes who are people that you or another Beast have unintentionally scarred in the process

[supple quail]

i mean i guess you’ve got to figure out what components are core to a beast experience

like you’d definitely have to have a hunger/compulsion of some sort

[mighty zephyr]

See I think this is fine but what I HATE more than ANYTHING is the Family Dinner mechanic

it's so bad

it's such an anti-fun mechanic

[candid shadow]

What is it?

[mighty zephyr]

Beasts are able to gain Hunger by voyeristically seeing other splats do their Thing.

[candid shadow]

Wait why?

[supple quail]

that’s just boring

[mighty zephyr]

cuz it's bad

[versed zodiac]

lame

[mighty zephyr]

Also!

[chilly vault]

“You are what you eat” sounds extremely cool

I love that

[valid merlin]

it might have been the way it was described to me, but the way Beasts apparently try to relate every other splat to themselves sounds annoying af lmao

[chilly vault]

You should write that

[mighty zephyr]

The Shitty Mage Game I was in made it so every Beast in LA was essentially press-ganged to join Cabals to feed by watching Mages solve mysteries

[chilly vault]

It would be funny if that were an in-universe thing

[mighty zephyr]

My bastard, Connie, hated this, because he wanted to scare and murder people as he saw fit.

[supple quail]

i really like the ‘kind of reincarnation of a mythological creature’ part, i’d like to see something where your body and your set of impulses etc are entirely off set from each other

[valid merlin]

"wow you also have [superficial similarity]? just like me fr, we are so similar"

[candid shadow]

More accurate version is every splat is kinda annoyed with them for trying to hard to relate

[chilly vault]

Beasts like the “I, too, am 1/64th Cherokee”

[mighty zephyr]

I think the Dark Mother is a fun setting element actually

[valid merlin]

I thought that was the case, yeah

[mighty zephyr]

And because of the way CofD lore works it's just like, Beasts coming up with theories on why they're able to mesh so well with their boys.

And that's fine

[supple quail]

could you get a beast who’s like, beast thing is the nightmare/horror of another splat (e.g vampire, werewolf etc)

[candid shadow]

To my knowledge every splat starts off friendly with them

Because said superficial similarities are treated with more weight then they probably should be

[velvet sparrow]

Like Mages, except not explicitly wrong?

[mighty zephyr]

Every Supernatural has a Good Impression, however that doesn't mean they like you, just that they're more willing to hear you out

[chilly vault]

No like “we literally all share the same lineage”

Not “you fit into our worldview in XYZ ways”

[mighty zephyr]

Beasts claim that every monster is descended from the Dark Mother

And through that other splats are siblings or cousins.

[chilly vault]

“I’m 1/256th vampire on my mother’s side”

[supple quail]

echidna was nice to me she helped nuke a cornish town that one time

[velvet sparrow]

In the "Everything uses our rules and cosmology" sense is more what I meant, where in Chronicles Mage that is kind of just... textually wrong to my understanding?

[mighty zephyr]

I mean in Requiem Gangrels LITERALLY claim to be descended from Echidna, Mother of Monsters

[candid shadow]

Wait are beasts still a thing in chronicles?

[mighty zephyr]

Beasts are a Chronicles only thing

[valid merlin]

and AIUI Beasts also often encourage other splats to be their worst version?

[mighty zephyr]

they weren't in owod

[supple quail]

but yeah what emotional experience should you actually go for with beast? because honestly seems mostly like a power fantasy than anything else

[chilly vault]

It’s at least very clear that the mage cosmological picture is incomplete

[valid merlin]

this is all Chronicles

[candid shadow]

Oh I thought they were in owod

My b

[velvet sparrow]

I don't think owod has anything Chronicles doesn't

[chilly vault]

And that’s been stressed for a long time

[velvet sparrow]

Splat-wise

[chilly vault]

Kindred of the East

:P

[velvet sparrow]

You didn't have to remind me about that

[mighty zephyr]

There's playable Jiangshi

[candid shadow]

Something something larp group in LA

[supple quail]

?

[mighty zephyr]

but also Demon the Fallen is incredibly different to Demon the Descent

[velvet sparrow]

(Also, arguably, that would fall under the greater category of 'Vampires' although yeah I agree)

[mighty zephyr]

Victimization, and the discarding of humanity for power are fantastic bits.

Beast doesn't have a morality gauge, it's up to the Beast in question to dictate their own code.

[velvet sparrow]

Yes, but Demons are both an owod and nwod thing, and I'm not looking at the specifics of how they differ for this because frankly the only Chronicles splat that is like the old one is Vampires

[mighty zephyr]

And thus struggling to keep yourself self-actualized and not a ravening monster is a valid throughline

[supple quail]

it feels kinda hard to take something so powerful and have victimisation going but i guess im probably looking at things from the wrong angle

i guess being victimised and then in turn deciding to sacrifice your humanity to gain the power to no longer be victimised/be safer does make sense

[mighty zephyr]

You only start powerful if you're willing to kill the shit out of people every time you feed

which if you are then character arc done I'd say

if you respond to literally any situation with Domain Expansion you're probably not gonna last long

[supple quail]

yeah fair

domain expansion is fun though

[mighty zephyr]

Domain Expansion is very fun.

Lair Mechanics my beloved

I found one of the dev comments on Beast, the main one I was thinking about

I am about to post, it is a WALL

[clear delta]

Mages understand well one part of the cosmology, that kinda helps understand other stuff
Anything that doesn't fits their understanding gets thrown under the label Lower Depths and they feel very smart
Mages are deeply curious but can be dogmatic and stuck in their views

[mighty zephyr]

Then the rest of the loving book comes in painting them as good guys, and it looks really dodgy.

I'm not particularly interested in making excuses for or helping OPP. They're grown men and women who make their own decisions.

Yeah, Matt's role was minimal - and as Liv says, that was the problem; he should have realised how horrid the assembled product was. OPP shouldn't have made him rewrite it during the Kickstarter (I would have pulled it and brought it back later). He should have had a much clearer vision of the game before writing started.

Beast is the unique chimeric horror that results from a bunch of enthusiastic newbies writing CofD like it's a LGBTQ-metaphor supers setting, pressured old timers writing awful monsters, and a Dev who didn't have it in him to blend the two or provide the leadership needed.

Deviant spent years in pre-writing. I designed it down to the game mechanic dice pools before hiring anyone. Mage has a writer's bible longer than some of its published sourcebooks. That kind of obsessive prework makes me chronically late, and it's *not incentivised*.

My personal view of Beast, from the inside, is that Matt phoned it in, had to react when the kickstarter went bad, and didn't understand people's problem with it when he rewrote it on the fly .. It is a clusterfuck.

But use Matt's alleged crimes as a means of not copping to when I played a part it in? gently caress that. I should have tried to steer the new writers, even without the authority to do it. I should have paid more attention to the emerging tone.

OPP *has* learned lessons from this. Deviant had, like, triple the gateways of approval to go through and it's not entered development yet. Nowadays, new writers *are* organised in teams under senior writers, so if, say, I was doing the core template I'd have a formal way to tell the Merits author what to do.```

[grave gulch]

Im very excited to use the promethean today

Thanks again for all the feedback and tips friends

[mighty zephyr]

Personally I think I could actually make Beast about my own personal mental illness very easily

And make that the major theme

At least making the Crossover theme be about masking and changing yourself to counteract loneliness

I think Loneliness is actually a fantastic thematic throughline for Beast

Beast being a game about being lonely, finding a "true friend" (your Horror), but that just making you lonelier and lonelier, and even getting other friends, such as your Brood or other supernaturals, you are still lonely because you haven't actually fixed the lack of self-identity and actualization

and that being the goal, to form your Horror into your shape and become the best version of you, be it the eater of nightmares and defenders of dreams, or the rampant horror rampant in the flesh.

fuck

i wanna write beast so bad

PARADOX! BRING BEAST INTO THE WORLD OF DARKNESS AND MY LIFE IS YOURS!

ALSO MAKE CHANGELING THE LOST THE ONE THAT SURVIVES

YOU DON'T HAVE TO BRING BACK DEMON THE DESCENT JUST DON'T REMAKE DEMON THE FALLEN

[clear delta]

Was fallen bad?

[versed zodiac]

Fallen kinda just ain't for anyone

[mighty zephyr]

I hate to say it this way but no other way really gets it across, Demon the Fallen's writing is so schizophrenic that it's off-putting in an extreme.

And the mechanics are just "what if you were every other splat but better"

Demon the Fallen is what people think Beast is

just also saying christianity is the objectively correct religion at the same time

like not even in the vampire way of "we're just going to talk about biblical figures only with any real weight" just explicitly

"every religion besides the Abrahamic ones is false"

[grave gulch]

is there a chronicles version of demon?

[mighty zephyr]

Demon the Descent

[grave gulch]

Ooh

Is it any better?

[mighty zephyr]

Where you play as fallen angel robot spies

yes

infinitely better

[grave gulch]

Neat

i was thinking about using demons and fae for me wizard game

[clear delta]

Aren't other religions also the worship of Earthbound demons?

[mighty zephyr]

ya

or Fallen cults

Fox has seen me get into fights about Demon in the WoD server I think

Fox do you know how funny it is that people there do not have any idea I work on HTP

[velvet sparrow]

Hey, they're not always worshipping demons

[mighty zephyr]

i'm not even in disguise

[velvet sparrow]

Sometimes it's Vampires

[grave gulch]

not in the wod server, i usually stay at splat convos, i like going there for feedback and stuff

[grave gulch]

HTP? Hunter the parenting?

[mighty zephyr]

ya

[grave gulch]

You never told me

[mighty zephyr]

y

yes i have

[grave gulch]

Well i wasnt paying attention then

[candid shadow]

Voy is experiencing the Tony Hawk effect

[mighty zephyr]

I swear to god I have an actual superpower to remain anonymous

[clear delta]

Foks forgor

[grave gulch]

I still think i wasnt here

[mighty zephyr]

fox you have definitely been present in the conversations when I talk about it

also I'm in the CREDITS

[grave gulch]

I DONT READ CREDITS I look at them with a blank stare and think "hehe words moving"

||make the family run over fox hunters with the bus||

[clear delta]

I remember you were there Foks

One time when Voy talked about being on HTP

[grave gulch]

Well i was probably like:

[clear delta]

Yeah, I notice you sometimes don't seem to remember some stuff

[grave gulch]

and thats with my therapist saying i have good memory hehe

[spice abyss]

oh hey Voy, you're on HTP? 😛

[mighty zephyr]

https://tenor.com/view/visualization-of-death-gif-23712250

[grave gulch]

.w.

Idk what to say

I just feel silly now

[radiant marsh]

Just give me a Werewolf PC game that isn't unmitigated ass and I'll be set for life.

[mighty zephyr]

Fox I have done this with like 8 people in this server

you're fine

[grave gulch]

[mighty zephyr]

but yes don't tell the wod server

it's fun that I'm just anonymously getting into edition wars with people

[grave gulch]

Dont worry i wasnt planning to do so

[supple quail]

REAL AND TRUE THATD BE SO GOOD

[supple quail]

schizophrenic in ‘encourages paranoid delusions’ or a ‘all over the place’

[chilly vault]

Yes

[supple quail]

i always do a little point when i see it like that’s him that’s the guy

[supple quail]

yeah fair

[grave gulch]

they almost killed the promethean in one fucking go

so close

[clear delta]

Damn

[grave gulch]

They just made a molotov

Like a bunch of psychos

They didnt even need a hint

[short quiver]

https://tenor.com/view/manny-jacinto-jason-mendoza-jameela-jamil-tahani-aljamil-problem-gif-11001298

[clear delta]

Haha

Wish they had succeeded. Their faces when the promethean came back would be funny

[grave gulch]

True

He did recharge tho

[clear delta]

May have come up with an idea for a clavicularius/bene ashmedai called Ahab. Which is funny, considering there historically was a mage called ahab associated with those two groups

So was thinking of how you can see the incarnations of cultural ideas and structures in the Temenos, so we can have a mage obsessed with hunting a specific one.

Like a prejudice, or death penalty, or the prison system

[mighty zephyr]

Someone recognized me in the wod server day after I talk about being anonymous

[grave gulch]

I swear i didnt tell anyone

[supple quail]

it’s how it always goes

[grave gulch]

I hope they werent weird about it

[mighty zephyr]

Oh no they were actually really nice about it

It's just really funny timing

[grave gulch]

i see, that's good then!

[clear delta]

I forget. Can Draugr still somewhat function as people?
I think I remember reading about one who still thinks and leads, but just can't get humans anymore, and is terrifying to them

[mighty zephyr]

Not really, they're feral so any people functioning skills are used entirely for hunting

[clear delta]

Strix going on about how vampires are pansies clinging to humanity, but striges get to have higher thought without humanity

[grave gulch]

Meanwhile Prometheans wanted to be more human

[grave gulch]

i'm thinking

maybe it's a good moment for the police to give my hunter characters some problems

they broke into highgates cemetery, got hurt in the barbed wire, stopped the promethean from robbing a grave but NOT from opening said grave

and they basically destroyed his stash of body parts that were hidden in a warehouse in the middle of the city

[chilly vault]

That all seems pretty visible, aye. Complications are fun!

[grave gulch]

also....

reading on the mage orders now

awakening orders btw

[mighty zephyr]

yes

[grave gulch]

the Guardians of the Veil sound like something i would like to use

i like the idea of them coming for you if you do way too much vulgar magic

[mighty zephyr]

The Del order.

[grave gulch]

Del?

[mighty zephyr]

@orchid void

[orchid void]

Hi wha

Oh!!!

are we talkin Gaurdians

[grave gulch]

i am!

[orchid void]

The Guardians are, well, the Spooks of the Mage world. They are keepers of the orthodoxy, they are in many ways an enforcement of the accepted normas and practices of awakened society. They come for you when you do Vulgar magic, when you threaten the Veil, because the sleepers must not know

They cannot behold the Mysteries, the eyes of the Sleeper upon them causes Pancryptia, for the Mystery to degrade, fray, be destroyed.

And Vulgar Magic before the Sleeper, why, that threatens the Veil, that threatens the Pattern that threatens everything

The Abyss is an active enemy, as active as the Seers, and maybe worse. So why are you being a moron and tempting anti-reality with your flashy spells. Are you stupid? Have you no subtlety?

I tend to play the GoV as somewhere between devout catholics and CIA guys on deploy in the USSR.

They know with the kind of conviction only a zealot can muster, that what they do they do for Good. They are also liars, bastards, thieves, and maniacs scraping together an infiltration and sabotage campaign in the middle of a cold war for all reality.

[grave gulch]

i'll use em for sure i wanted my players to have at least a reason to not do vulgar magic, since sleepers paradox die dont really matter all that much with them there's at least something spooky coming your way

[orchid void]

eg: Catacomb Lucy keeps the Labyrinth. Her duty, as a Guardian, is to fuckin Gaslight, Gatekeep, and Girlboss sleepers away from the Mysteries. Or if she thinks the Sleeper might be useful, shuffle them into mystery cults that are actually training programs.

But at the end of the day, her job is to lie. Her job is to manipulate. Her job is to trick. She is a test of your worthiness.

Every Guardian you meet, is counting and weighing, and deciding if you are Worthy.

And if you are not, you should be removed. For only the Worthy must grasp the Mystery.

[grave gulch]

i read some of the stuff you sent me

she's scary but really really cool

OH BTW

@orchid void you think you could help me understand how wisdom works?

[orchid void]

Wisdom is as it says, its basic human morality with some extra steps of "Hey man, showing Sleepers Magic makes them see the Abyss"

which is. you know. a bad thing. don't expose people to antireality.

and also generally following the,,, trope? method? advice?

a good wizard shouldn't have to do magic

You should be responsible with your world-warping powers. You have to be, or you become consumed with your Obessions and forget how humans act until you go Rapt.

You have to touch grass and remember that normal human people do not know about the secret mechnics of the universe, nor can they know, nor would they really care because right now they need to get home and take care of the dishes or laundry or something

and so do you, at the end of the day, if you keep that wisdom Very High

[short quiver]

At the high levels, Wisdom is also going "hey man, you're playing with the unseen truth behind the nature of existence, the metaphorical fire of God, and the fire of God is not for heating your coffee use a fucking stovetop."
(The Silver Ladder would call people at this level of Wisdom cowards.)

[clear delta]

Wisdom also helps you control things, it keeps the nimbus (your magical aura) contained

At 0 wisdom, you lost all control. Your broken soul is a broken valve leaking magic, and one Obsession has overtaken you, becoming the focus of your life above all else.

Sleepers no longer really remember encounters with you, I think?

Yeah, people who encounter Spiral remember only a trippy experience with the world tearing open, and blood and organs spilling out

[versed zodiac]

Wisdom is the thing that keeps you from metaphorically doing the grad student thing of retreating from public life, inverting your sleep cycle, and going completely and utterly insane

but like, as a wizard

[short quiver]

And/or deciding that instead of talking out your differences with the bouncer who doesn't like your shoes an appropriate response is to turn him into a frog and head on in.

[clear delta]

So, Spiral is obsessed with transhumanism through spirits
Another Rapt, is obsesses with doorways and cracks in space
Another, is obsessed with death and reincarnation, past life memories
Another, is obsessed with powerful storms

[short quiver]

Because Mages in a whole lot of situations can just do whatever they want with no consequences, and a big part of Wisdom comes from being grounded enough not to just do whatever you feel like all the time, or at least not leave a trail of harm behind you.

[clear delta]

Often, it's best to do things the mortal way, or take the L and leave

[short quiver]

Yeah, although I'd say that "best" can be quibbled about.
You can pretty much always preserve Wisdom with inaction, but inaction is de facto support of the status quo. Often it means letting the less Wise act unchecked.
Shades of K6BD's "violence is corruptive, and refusal to do violence is forefeitting the universe to the utterly corrupted" going on.

[grave gulch]

right! thank you delilah!

[strong bronze]

...i have a question

with a unresonable amount of prep time, could a non-magical human potentially capture a vampire,force him to feed his blood to become a ghoul and have another person kill his new master so he just gets the cool powers of being a ghoul witouth the enslavement

[velvet sparrow]

Yes

The enslavement only actually happens if you drink from the same vampire 3 times

[midnight grotto]

I think that this is something that happens in canon, like a repeating phenomenon

ghouls are a dangerous rogue element when they're not on a tight leash

[velvet sparrow]

It's the risk of taking a ghoul

Well, one of many

[mighty zephyr]

Most of this is canonically what Vlad Tepes III did

[short quiver]

In V:tR, making someone a ghoul or maintaining that state takes both Vitae and a Willpower point.
Importantly, either the vampire or the ghoul can spend the Willpower.
As said, it is a known issue to have a Vitae addict with some supernatural powers and the ability to walk around in broad daylight if they don't have a vampire keeping them under control.

[radiant marsh]

The issue is if you kill the vampire, then you need to get Vitae from another source

But yeah. That Midnight Roads visual novel. Minor spoilers.

||The one Hunter antagonist lady you keep running into has this going on, apparently. She has a captive vitae supply, so she's actually a ghoul that's over 200 years old.||

[strong bronze]

||How does she not bloodbond||

[velvet sparrow]

||Doesn't drink from the same vampire three times||

The first stage of the bloodbond is like, fuckin nothing

And if you're in a position where you're drinking the blood of a vampire who doesn't want you to be, you're almost certainly a bad enough motherfucker to not let the second stop you from putting them down

Or smart enough to not let it get that far

[supple quail]

which is what the technocracy in the original mage wanted to stop

[chilly vault]

I’m not Delilah and I’m hella late, but I wanted to add: Wisdom is the knowledge of when not to act. The Mage backstory is a failure of Wisdom writ large: the Exarchs climbed into the Supernal and fucked up absolutely everything because they believed, as mages, that the power to do anything is the same as a reason to do anything.

Wisdom is being the sort of person who cares about things other than power, and who understands how power can harm those things.

A high Wisdom mage can still be a terrifying force of nature — when they should be.

[mighty zephyr]

boyy howdy

people are upset about the new vtm book

[spice abyss]

What's the cause this time?

[mighty zephyr]

Elder and Methuselah things

[spice abyss]

That'd do it.

[clear delta]

What happen

[mighty zephyr]

a tiktok came out that revealed a bunch about the new book

then war were declared

[clear delta]

Were the methuselah and elders brought back?

[mighty zephyr]

For the Gehenna War book yeah

[grave gulch]

i wanna fight the methuselah

[candid shadow]

Is them being brought back the reason for the war?

[mighty zephyr]

no the war's the reason they left

[candid shadow]

Oh why did they?

[mighty zephyr]

The Beckoning

a thing that called all the Elders out to the Middle East and other areas

[candid shadow]

Oh

[grave gulch]

Questiom about mage

Is the Mysterium like the Arcanum as in they like to collect information?

[velvet sparrow]

The Mysterium is your most Wizard of the Wizards

They are the archetypal "Wizard in a tower with a big library"

[valid merlin]

also they are discriminating against non wizards

[velvet sparrow]

Both positive and negative, of the stereotypical wizard

[grave gulch]

I thought the silver ladder was the one that didnt like non wizards

[velvet sparrow]

Only in the sense that they believe everyone deserves to be a mage, no?

[grave gulch]

[heady kestrel]

nah the Silver Ladder loves non wizards
they think literally everyone ever should go to heaven and be an archmage

they found homeless shelters that secretly teach everyone esoteric lore and try to guide them towards awakening

[grave gulch]

I cant tell if ur being serious or not

[heady kestrel]

not at all joking

[velvet sparrow]

Like, they hate non-wizards in the sense that, they represent what the Exarchs stole from humanity, if you get what I mean

People should be Mages, and that they are not is a crime

[heady kestrel]

but its not their crime

they hate that people aren't wizards
rather than hating people who aren't wizards

[velvet sparrow]

It's the crime of the Exarchs

[grave gulch]

Oh, they are cool then

[spice abyss]

Ehhhh

[velvet sparrow]

Well

[spice abyss]

Depends on how much you acknowledge wizards

[grave gulch]

There is always an if

[spice abyss]

As, like, a good thing

[heady kestrel]

They Do Say Shit Like "Its not over till its over we should build the tower of babel again and make everyone gods"

"so that we can kill the Exarchs"

like making literally everyone ever an omnipotent being might not be the best idea depending on your perspective

[velvet sparrow]

They're also the ones who view Hubris as a skill isse

[spice abyss]

I am Guardian-pilled

[heady kestrel]

yeah

[grave gulch]

Skill issue

[velvet sparrow]

"I know the Exarchs toppled reality and became tyrannical god-rulers of reality but like, I'm built different."

[heady kestrel]

they think that Hubris is just the cost of being Good

[spice abyss]

Silver Ladder also gets along the best with Seers

[grave gulch]

Tell me about the Exarchs, i didnt quite get how they came to be

[velvet sparrow]

"You avoid doing unecessary magic because it harms people? Wow you must fucking suck then lol"

[heady kestrel]

The Seers and The Silver Ladder used to be the same organization and then there was a split in the bronze age(or maybe it was in Greece?)

[clear delta]

Silver ladder are also hierarchy. Mages should lead non-mages

[mighty zephyr]

Exarchs are (presumably though not able to be confirmed) some of the most powerful mages who ever lived who reached the absolute pinnacle of Creation and then kicked the ladder out from under them so no one else could get up there.

[grave gulch]

i imagine that they dint get along with the guardians then

[mighty zephyr]

And now they are the CEOs of Everything Wrong with the World.

[grave gulch]

Wizards scary

[supple quail]

it’s kinda annoying because it doesn’t seem like there’s anything you can really do against the exarchs, as compared to the technocracy

[spice abyss]

So you know the whole "Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely" saying? That's the Exarchs

[clear delta]

Mysterium have a prejudice issue, but it's not offical part of their beliefs that sleepers are bad.

[supple quail]

why’re people getting angry about it then?

sounds neat

[spice abyss]

You can. They wrote themselves into reality. But they need vectors to do things in the Fallen World, and you can fight those

[clear delta]

Also drove away or imprisoned the old gods

[grave gulch]

also...damn

[supple quail]

oh so like fighting against the god machine?

[spice abyss]

No

It's Pentex

You're fighting Pentex

[grave gulch]

There's a whoooooole lot going on with mages huh

[grave gulch]

would that also make the wyrm a vector?

[supple quail]

yeah but isn’t fighting the god machine just fighting like, individual plans that it uses to work its way into the world as opposed to the thing itself

[spice abyss]

I am absolutely the wrong person to talk to about the God Machine because I fuck8ng hate it

[heady kestrel]

yeah a bit, except there is a lot of them

like a lot of them

[supple quail]

oh, why? genuinely interested in like trying to understand view points different from my own

[heady kestrel]

They and the god machine work together sometimes on bullshit

[supple quail]

nws if you don’t feel like it

[supple quail]

yeah that tracks

[supple quail]

so a bit less alien in intention/operation but also a lot harder to disrupt directly?

[spice abyss]

Because it sticks out like a sore thumb and does the OWoD bullshit of interfering directly with all of human history

The Exarchs are Tyranny. They are Greed. They are Factionalism. They're not unknowable eldritch forces: They're jackasses with too much power.

The God Machine is just this unexplained thing that has its fingers in everything for reasons, and actively doesn't mesh with the rest of the setting

[grave gulch]

isnt there a mage order that serves the exarchs?

[spice abyss]

The Exarchs need humanity

[supple quail]

that’s fair, i like it conceptually as this outside of context thing that has shown up and no one really knows how to deal with it, but i also agree it overreaches with how influential it is

[spice abyss]

The God Machine is just there

[supple quail]

i’d love it as a thing that showed up a couple decades ago and people can actively fight it off somewhat

[spice abyss]

The God Machine flies in the face of a core assumption of every other splat in chronicles: They need humanity

Sure, demons need humans.

But that's only to hide

And sure, humans can become a part of Infrastructure

But they aren't necessary for it to exist

Vampires are defined by humanity.
Humanity shapes the shadow in ways nothing else does.
The Abyss and Awakening are present in every human.

The Gentry take people because of the fun of it all.
The Underworld needs Humanity.
Prometheans want to become human.

So what is the God Machine doing? Why is it active? Why does it care?

We get a shrug as the answer

That is why I hate it.

[mighty zephyr]

Because you're missing probably the big thing of what the God Machine is imo.

The God-Machine as a narrative element isn't a Big Bad Evil Guy, it's just
Structure.
Society.
It is the grinding banal machinations that ruin the world.

The God-Machine needs humanity because it wouldn't exist without them.

Nor could it do it's thing.

[spice abyss]

That doesn't address my fundamental questions though. The ever present why

The other splits address that why

Even the Exarchs go "Because this is what we worked to achieve"

[heady kestrel]

I think like soceity, its just a Self Perpetuating system
its not an ideaology with goals, its just hurting and killing people and creating monsters to keep itself together

[mighty zephyr]

Why do cities get bigger, why do we dig up more and more shit from the ground, why do we keep doing genocides
The God-Machine doesn't have a goal, nor is it even entirely sentient. It is a machine sustaining itself on humanity.

[supple quail]

i like to think of the godmachine as a prion in the code of the universe - there is no thought nor intention behind it, it simply occurs like how a prion replicates itself

[spice abyss]

Except everything else is in response to humanity

[mighty zephyr]

No they aren't.

[spice abyss]

Which other splat isn't?

[mighty zephyr]

Are you asking splats or antagonists

[spice abyss]

Splats, because Demons have to come from the GM first, and aren't functioning as intended.

[mighty zephyr]

but the God-Machine predates Demon.

by a significant margin

[spice abyss]

In a one off line from the fiction, yes.

Like

[mighty zephyr]

no...?????????

I mean the God-Machine Chronicles.

The bluebook.

predates demon by years

[spice abyss]

I could dig up exactly where that starts

It's 1e's corebook

The God Machine evolved entirely out of a piece of fiction that was alongside other stuff

And that was one paragraph

[mighty zephyr]

Oh okay so it predates Demon by a lot

[spice abyss]

Correct, and it evolved into this weird thing that doesn't really vibe with anything else

Because none of that original fiction was supposed to actually be in setting, just generic vibes

[mighty zephyr]

I mean not a lot of CofD vibes with anything else in it

[spice abyss]

Some things do conflict, but not because they intentionally dive into other splats like Demon does at times.

[grave gulch]

chronicles demon is demon the descent right?

[mighty zephyr]

you mean not like mage or beast or werewolf or changeling or

yes

[spice abyss]

Voy, I'm going to be honest, this is feeling more like you trying to say I'm wrong for disliking the God Machine

[supple quail]

from my perspective this seems like the bits a lot of people like about the GM is stuff you don't gel with

like, kinda the point to the god machine is that it just is, everything wrong with the world that people do without thinking about it codified in systems

hell i'd argue the godmachine is less of an antagonist and more of a setting/ setting feature

and fair enough if you don;t like it

[mighty zephyr]

My thing is that you say you don't like it because it doesn't answer why and then I give you the answer why and then you just kinda say the answer doesn't count

And that is mildly frustrating

You're free to not like it but your reasoning for why you don't is based off things that seem like an objective fact that I can show you rather than subjective taste

[spice abyss]

I do not see myself doing that in our conversation though

It's a nonsense expansion into canon from a thing that was a paragraph, it does the "secretly manipulate all of humanity from the shadows they can't comprehend" that I hate, it doesn't really relate to humanity in some fundamental way, Infrastructure tries to ductate how other splats work (a thing I also hate in Mage). And worst of all, it does this in a setting that I otherwise enjoy.

[supple quail]

i agree on the secret manipulation point, but didn;t it start out with the godmachine chronicles which is a whole book? and it does relate to humanity in the way the post i have replied to states

[spice abyss]

Again, no, it did not start in God Machine Chronicles

[supple quail]

even so, new stuff has to come from somewhere, expanding on an existing snippet is a perfectly valid way to do so

[spice abyss]

I can absolutely dislike something because of its origins

This happens every time

I am not telling anyone else they have to dislike the God Machine.

People asked why I don't like it, and then I get told I'm wrong when I explain why

I do not have to like something that other people enjoy

[supple quail]

fair enough

[grave gulch]

i also wanted to ask about the free council

and what they are all about

[spice abyss]

There's not much of a consensus there

The unifying factor is "We don't like traditional Mage thought"

[grave gulch]

So going against most orders?

[radiant marsh]

Seers of the Throne

[hidden rock]

I think the Council's core point is that Supernal truth isn't just only generated in the Supernal, but is also spontaneously generated by humanity, even Sleepers.

(Also the Seers are even more monstrous because they destroy the part of humanity that is a genuine source of Supernal Truth)

(and not just corral it for them and their masters)

[radiant marsh]

Seers are all about power and control. To the point where various 'Ministries' are dedicated to different forms of control

Like Praetorians are control throuhg violence and force

Paternoster are control through religion and tradition

Panopticon is control through surveillance

etc.

[hidden rock]

Don't let humanity dream bigger.

[grave gulch]

They sound like horrible people

The seers that is

[valid merlin]

Yes

[hidden rock]

Yeah, they're not the grey/gray idealists of the Technocracy

[radiant marsh]

Well yes. The Technocracy in Ascension at least had the escape clause of actually having a point. Magic and the supernatural was chaotic and dangerous, and maybe it was better for humanity to be contained, but safe, as opposed to whatever incoming supernatural cataclysm was going to happen.

[valid merlin]

Kinda happens when you choose to serve the gods of fascism and oppression

[radiant marsh]

The Seers are just "We do this because it benefits us/our inscrutable god kings."

[grave gulch]

They sound like great antagonists tho

[radiant marsh]

They're the magical equivalent of a CEO destroying his own company and laying off all the workers because it will increase his stock portfolio.

[hidden rock]

There's room to have actually gray characters, but yeah

I think the term is ladder pullers?

"Fuck you, got mine"

[radiant marsh]

"It's not enough that we succeed, everyone else must fail."

[hidden rock]

There's an argument to be made for the "pick yourself by the bootstraps, lazybones (also, don't mind me adding weights to your soles)" Seer.

[velvet sparrow]

Is there room for grayness in the Seers?

[mighty zephyr]

Yea

[velvet sparrow]

What is it?

[mighty zephyr]

There's no fundamental difference between you and a Seer

[supple quail]

you get a power from it, and people can want power for like, any reason

[mighty zephyr]

They have the same wants and obsessions and desires and free will as you

And they are just doing their job when the Exarchs tell them to do things

[velvet sparrow]

And when the Exarchs tell them to commit horrible atrocities, that's not a bad thing?

[barren vortex]

a seer, more or less, is a cop for the gaolers of reality

[spice abyss]

You are still shackling yourself to active forces of oppression. So you know, there is a certain level of gray that can be involved, but there's a definite point where it stops being sympathetic at all.

[velvet sparrow]

Their whole thing is "keep all of humanity enslaved under a system of horrible oppression that allows, if not encourages every atrocity ever committed" unless I have some misunderstanding of the Exarchs?

[spice abyss]

Nope, that's them.

[velvet sparrow]

I don't see any gray in them. I can definitely see why people would be a part of them, yes, but no gray, unless I also have a misunderstanding of what gray means

[supple quail]

The world isn’t a paradise, but to the Seers of the Throne, it’s the best place the unenlightened can hope for.

According to the Seers, the Exarchs ended the chaos that ruled the Tapestry in the time of Atlantis. Stones stopped moving. Trees stopped demanding the blood-price for their fruit. The Exarchs made a new age of mortal flesh; an age of the ax and the miner’s chisel; of pain and toil, unanswered prayers and eternal death. Out of chaos and potential, the new world created limits and certainty. In it, some will be slaves and some will be kings, but only initiates of the Throne see the secret shape of its power: the way to Ascend from iron chains to adamantine crowns.
kinda sums it up, they're definitely wrong, but definitely some people who mean well could end up in it

[velvet sparrow]

So do I, but that doesn't make them gray?

[versed zodiac]

What is well-intentioned people doing their best but ultimately making things worse if not morally grey

[velvet sparrow]

Are they doing their best? They don't have to join the Seers

[versed zodiac]

“Just don’t be mislead 4head”

[velvet sparrow]

Okay, fair

Even then, though

Being mislead does not shield them from their actions

[versed zodiac]

Like to be clear: the Seers are bad (who knew?)

[supple quail]

agreed!

[spice abyss]

At some point, you have to pointedly ignore some things to think you're doing the right thing with the Seers.

Like the company you keep.

The actions you're demanded to do.

[clear delta]

I guess the lower levels of the seer pyramid can be misled

[versed zodiac]

But I think you can have a morally grey take on an antagonist that still concludes with “they are doing the wrong thing”

People do bad things for understandable, even sympathetic reasons sometimes; it doesn’t make them right but it makes you go “maybe it’s not as simple as just being right and not being wrong”

[clear delta]

A seer can also be someone who thinks the exarchs are unbeatable and it's best to appease tgem, for your loved ones and you

[velvet sparrow]

Part of it is, I guess, that I kind of... don't view being mislead as 'morally gray'?

[versed zodiac]

“Morally grey” is a term the internet has chewed up into paste

[velvet sparrow]

It's kind of, hard to make a judgement, on the situation, if they aren't really making a choice?

So, morally gray, I suppose

[supple quail]

well yeah exactly

[velvet sparrow]

Yeah okay

[versed zodiac]

If it means not clearly an evil person who just fuckin’ loves doing evil things then lots of characters are shades of morally grey

[velvet sparrow]

There is room for grayness in the Seers

[versed zodiac]

If it means legitimately arguable for as doing the right thing, a much smaller slice of antagonists can be “morally grey”

[spice abyss]

There's also what the book says.

No mage serves the Throne out of altruism. Even the deluded or willfully ignorant find themselves quickly disabused of notions of fighting the good fight. Yet there’s great profit in tyranny, and no shame in admitting that.

[supple quail]

oh fair

[spice abyss]

You'll need to go to the demon-worshipping vampires if you want some grey. 😛

[grave gulch]

vamps do that too?

[spice abyss]

The 1e Belial's Brood book is honestly rad.

[clear delta]

Werewolf does have the bale hounds

One sample npc is a trouble teen preyed on by a demonic spirit

[radiant marsh]

Bale Hounds are honestly one of the most Black Hat of antagonist splats.

[grave gulch]

tell me about them

i've been stealing stuff from chronicles

give more

[radiant marsh]

They've basically sworn themselves to Maeljin: Incarna-level spirits of corruption and human evil. It's go-between is a spirit that claims to be one of the Firstborn (The WtF tribal patron spirits) called Viruhk-Ur, or 'Soulless Wolf.'

Basically it doesn't matter your reasons or why you decided to call up Viruhk-Ur. You're going to end up doing shit that, at the low end, makes the world objectively worse, and more likely is outright monstrous, because that's what gives the Maeljin power.

And trying to back out of this arrangement generally leads to very painful, excessive, and fatal consequences.

[spice abyss]

Pretty much like working with the Exarchs.

[radiant marsh]

A bit more black hat, because a Seer can at least claim that they're doing what's best for reality, even if it's bullshit

A Bale Hound, from the word go is spreading Wounds in the Shadow, and casually committing atrocities.

[chilly vault]

I feel like the point is less "the Seers have some good in them" and more "the Seers are humans, and therefore complicated and contradictory, as all humans are"

[grave gulch]

are the true fae just a bunch of jerks cause yes btw?

cause the exarchs feel somewhat human, bad humans but yeh

[chilly vault]

On the one hand they're pretty much eldritch entities from another dimension

On the other hand CtL pretty strongly makes it clear it wants you to think of them as abusers

And they are in that way much more human than perhaps they themselves believe

[grave gulch]

i see

how do they interact with the world aside from the whole making people into changelings deal?

[chilly vault]

Conversely the exarchs are perhaps less human than they immediately seem, they have to some extent become ideas. Really awful ideas.

[grave gulch]

human ideas?

[chilly vault]

Yeah, a way to think about it is that the exarchs are what you get when a person -- a pretty nasty person, in fact -- ascends to the realm of ideas and forms

[radiant marsh]

True Fae are like sentient self-propagating narratives

[grave gulch]

i wanna use them so bad

[spice abyss]

Belial's Brood, as I said, is interesting

[radiant marsh]

They're archetypes, roles, titles.

[spice abyss]

Some of them are Black Hats.

[supple quail]

what's the deal with belial's brood

[radiant marsh]

And it's heavily implied they've chosen to become this way out of boredom.

[grave gulch]

i should probably get the changeling book shouldnt i?

[spice abyss]

It depends on the internal faction they're a part of.

[radiant marsh]

For 1e, Autumn Nightmares is the book that has a bunch of the deep-dives into the nature of the Fae

IDK if there's a 2e equivalent

[spice abyss]

The most visible members of Belial's Brood are devil-may-care anarchists.

[chilly vault]

I guess my sense is that like ... yeah the True Fae are eldritch beings, but when you get to the core, when you strip it all away, there's a component of them which is just sadistic cruelty covered in self-justifications

[grave gulch]

[chilly vault]

But they're many things

There are a lot of good fables in nWoD, and like any good fable, they map to an allegory of your choice

You can lean into their eldritch nature, or their essence as narratives, or their simple cruelty, or any combination of those things

[radiant marsh]

It's also mentioned in said book that one thing the True Fae consider to be an unforgivable sin among their own, that's worthy of banishment from Arcadia, is actual genuine interest or emotion.

Like one that honestly falls in love outside the the strictures of the role it's built for itself.

Or contrariwise, one whose grudge against a Changeling former servant has exceeded being interesting or diverting and has instead become an obsession

[spice abyss]

Contrary to the oft-rehashed stereotype, the vampires of the Brood are not maddened arsonist nomads, charging into town and causing random destruction at every turn. They are vampires who have turned from the “damnable lie” taught to them by Kindred society, and by the Man within. They are vampires who have chosen to deal with the eternal struggle of Beast versus Man by accepting the Beast’s dominance and power, rather than by fighting with it for what could amount to eternity. The Beast, they feel, is not some curse leveled upon their race, a fate to which they are doomed for all time. Rather, the Beast is their own dark soul, given them by the deity who claims dominion over the physical world — an entity some call the Demiurge and others call the Adversary (and others still even call by its Biblical name: Lucifer). If the supernal deity figure (which some call God) was responsible for their lives as mortals, and for the part of them that is Man, then His infernal opposite, the primordial Other, is responsible for the Beast, and thus for who and what vampires are once bereft of life.

[grave gulch]

i mean the lore can't be THAT much different can it?

from 1e changeling to 2e i mean

also since i'm going to use a fae in mage i probably dont need to worry that much about it

as long as it is something i can use

[chilly vault]

Yeah, play them in a way you find interesting

[spice abyss]

To help clear things up about the Brood, they simply believe that holding onto humanity is pointless. You're not human anymore: You're a god-damned vampire.

And you should take a good, long look at what that means.

The Brood encourages its followers to inspect what is actually the important survival skills pushed by the Beast, and which is just remnants of a life you're not a part of anymore.

[short quiver]

Well, that depends. If the Seers of the Throne know your name, your face, where your dad works, where your girlfriend lives, you could decline their offer of membership. That is an option that is open to you.

[spice abyss]

How far are you willing to go to do the right thing, yeah.

[chilly vault]

There's a reason Occultation is a whole merit

A very important merit

[spice abyss]

There's just good-old fashioned spying.

You'd be surprised how many mages forget things like "I paid a bum 40 bucks to watch this place."

[short quiver]

I feel like the question of "grey" in the Seers has a couple answers depending on what you mean.
Like, is there a perspective where the Seers are on the side of right? No, they're servants to the Platonic notions of tyrrany and oppression at the expense of the human race as a whole.
Do they have relatable human reasons to do so? Yes.

[spice abyss]

There's always the point of "Cool Motive, Still Murder."

[chilly vault]

And also a merit that involves abandoning your old life

For the safety of everyone else

And, tbh, it doesn't even keep them safe

You just avoid painting a target on them

You hope

It's called "World of Darkness" for a reason >_>

[short quiver]

For sure!
Which is why, like I said, I feel like the question of "grey" in the Seers is debatable.

Some of them are just in it for the perks (and oh there are perks), some of them just don't believe there's anything that stops the machine from working so their only choice is between turning the crank or getting fed into the gears

[short quiver]

(Also: trying to work out when Atlantis existed doesn't really work. Atlantis fell so hard it smashed right out of the timeline. So now it never existed, and when you do find splinters of it left nothing matches up with the cultures and chronology of the world you know.)

[grave gulch]

@radiant marsh this the book you talked about?

[spice abyss]

yeeee

[grave gulch]

time to learn about the spooky fae then(once im actually done reading about mages)

[mighty zephyr]

The Exarchs are as alien as the True Fae btw Fox

But the Exarchs aren't the Seers

[heady kestrel]

nah seers and silver ladder both showed up way after Atlantis

though Silver Ladder claim they are descended from Atlantis that is more of a wiibly wobbly fate magic thing

or well not necessairly after due to the whole... thing with Atlantis but you get what I mean

they showed up at a date on the timeline

and then split off at a date on the timeline

[short quiver]

Also, okay. The Council of Free Assemblies.
They have always been and remain my jam since the book came out.
The other Mage Orders all make claims to being the continuation of magical tradition going back before the dawn of recorded history (even when the Orders have changed and split or joined in the time since, they're still calling back to this Atlantian origin).
The Free Council is very well aware that it's less than a century and a half old; the Order formed at the turn of the 20th century, from a loosely-aligned collection of politically and occultishly radical groups into a slightly less loosely-aligned Order

[grave gulch]

[grave gulch]

the seers just work for them right?

[grave gulch]

i see

[short quiver]

A big part of their deal is "do whatever" so any kind of write-up is kind of waffly, but the fundamental disagreement with the Diamond is that, broadly, the Diamond Orders see the sort of Truth and enlightenment in the Supernal as fundamentally top-down. The Fallen World is somewhere between lacking in and actively hostile to the Supernal truth, being under the control of the Exarchs, but sometimes there are hints of it hidden among the Lie if you can sort the wheat from all the chaff.
The Free Council fundamentally sees enlightenment and the Supernal the other way, bottom-up. Humans and humanity are inherently magical. Music can be magical. Technology can be magical. Human effort seeks the Truth on its own accord, and the only thing thwarting this inherent striving is the Lie and the Seers enforcing it (those fuckers, someone should set them on fire)

[velvet sparrow]

I love how the Free Council's three like, Core Tenets are: Humans are magic. Democracy is cool. If you see a Seer, kill that motherfucker on sight

[short quiver]

Yes! It's extremely funny to me.
Because, like, this is the Order of choice for all the geeky tech-mages and quirky art wizards
but while the magic kung fu guys and the sneaky spooky sin-eater wizards are like "these are fellow Awakened, in service to the Lie; there may be a time in the course of our duties and our obligations when there is no choice but to take on the burden of ending their life"
& the Free Council are just here going "ONE! HUNNERT! SEER! SCALPS!"

& yeah, also the "democracy" is a big thing in the Council
All the other Orders are very hierarchical, with the Diamond being at least theoretically built on a model of teachers and students with the more enlightened guiding and nurturing the less enlightened, while the Seers are just blatantly a pyramid structure where "sure it sucks being lorded over, but if you work your way up you'll get to lord over schlubs like you, and that's fun right?" is explicitly part of the draw
Meanwhile the Council is very "one man one vote," with everything good and bad about that kind of direct democratic structure.

[spice abyss]

I will also note that Free Council members will do some funnily stupid things sometimes.

I think one of my favorites is the band who decided to put high speech onto their records when you play them backwards.

[short quiver]

"we wanted to see what would happen"

[spice abyss]

It works as a grimore

[short quiver]

so yeah
The Council of Free Assemblies. Either the occult democratization of Truth working to kill the Exarch in your mind and empower humanity to reach their own liberation through the realization that the Fallen and Supernal are of a kind if only we could see it or a bunch of disorganized overgrown children playacting century-old revolutionary ideals and mistaking trends and whims for fundamental Truth
either way they rule

[spice abyss]

Found the description of the record!

a Libertine experiment designed to turn teenagers into
radical occultists. It’s the record fundamentalists warned
you about. It really is designed to teach you magic, get you
to worship Satan and turn you against authority figures.
Dark Revolution came out in 2006. It was released in
two formats: a CD with a thousand presses in circulation
and a limited edition of 10 vinyl LPs. The vinyl edition is
the grimoire. Schattenbahn hopes that even the ordinary
CDs will inspire Sleepers to study magic and attack what
it calls “slave institutions.```

[mighty zephyr]

btw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_leNmT7xvM

Pentex Inspiration

[spice abyss]

Oh god, I'm reading the Record Grimore again. The stupid bastards encoded a spell into it that goes off when you play the LP forwards and backwards.

with a version of the Mind 5 spell “Psychic Reprogramming.” Each record started with a reserve of 11 Mana. He
doesn’t believe he’s subjugating people with mind control.
He thinks the enchantment is a cure for society’s pervasive
influence on human thought — what he calls “the received
fallacies of the modern, ascetic slave mentality.”```

[short quiver]

oh my god that's great
What does it Reprogram them into?

[spice abyss]

The effects.

[short quiver]

aha, that's great
"How do I get someone to throw off the shackles of restrictive hierarchy and empower them to pursue their own will? Mind control"

[spice abyss]

Yuuuup

[clear delta]

I love that. Seers tried to recruit the nascent free council

They fucking declared war on them, with the diamond joining in

And the seers lost a chunk of their population and power

[grave gulch]

Neat

[clear delta]

What happens if Helios gets eaten by the planet spirits?

[mighty zephyr]

Probably the end of the solar system

[clear delta]

The planets would gain the sun's concepts, right? Do they gain bright, fiery areas?

[mighty zephyr]

They probably would! As they'd have collided with the sun in the flesh.

[clear delta]

Oh.

Yeah, guess a spirit can't separate from their thing over literally astronomical distances

But how would that work?
Do they just throw their planets at the sun while protecting them enough so they don't get destroyed?

[heady kestrel]

My favorite thing to do with Seers is make them one of four archetypes

Goofy as hell
Sad
Crazy(in like a way that is normal for mages)
Prelate

And then just give them their own little dynamics as the shittiest people on earth with their own gradient of how much they know that

Prelates are the only ones who actually like… buy in

[clear delta]

They really made an antagonist faction that's

• Cool and interesting
• You hate the members

[heady kestrel]

One of my fav things to do is make “Seer Parties” as antagonists and then dip them in crude oil

Just the soggiest, saddest authoritarians you have ever seen

[midnight grotto]

I love a Rival Party

[heady kestrel]

Giving a lot of them decent-high wisdom because the Prelate will “fucking handle it for you cowards” if none of them can go through with actually doing something awful and if that doesn’t happen the sad ones will step in to take the morality hit for the goofy ones

[grave gulch]

what is the pentacle in mage the awakening?

[spice abyss]

The Not-Seers.

[short quiver]

It's the five allied Orders of Mages that form the default PC options, with the five Orders represented by a pentacle.
Adamantine Arrow, Guardians of the Veil, Mysterium, Silver Ladder, and Free Council.

[orchid void]

The Diamond Orders and the Free Council make up The Pentacle

Vs the Pyramid which is all the Seers

[short quiver]

Then you get the Banishers, who are mechanically an Order even if they're not necessarily organized together
and the Nameless Orders, which are unafiliated (generally small) Mage organizations

[orchid void]

Also, Scelestus

Abyssal mages who are kill on sight cause they want to sink reality into Anti-Sophia

[short quiver]

indeed
Although, I really did like the Archmage Scelesti, where sometimes their motive is like
"The Abyss is the source of all Lies, and everything that is impossible and antithetical to existence as we know it tries to seep through into the world... which means somewhere in there is a universe where justice and kindness are physical laws and none need ever want or suffer, and if I commit enough crimes against man and nature I can find it and pull it out."

[runic timber]

Its vampiring time

One of my players has that defect where the sabbat is trying to recruit you, and they got helped for his contact there earlier

So she (toreador who considers battle an artform and whose goal is to train this dude in The Blade so that they can have a duel to the death) will go: hey you're kinda pale and all scrunkly, are you eating well??
No, don't answer, let's go hunt, where's your hunting zone? (In the middle of the camarilla city)

[chilly vault]

I kind of suspect you don't typically make it to archmage as a scelestus without picking up some truly impressive self-justifications

[clear delta]

Seems most archmage scelesti chose the abyss after achieving archmastery

[chilly vault]

This also tracks

I feel like in general being a scelestus is about as safe for you as it is for everyone around you.

[clear delta]

It's just not a survivable life path

Oops you were faster

[chilly vault]

Ninja'd

[clear delta]

Also, other archmages would not want you to achieve archmastery

[chilly vault]

... hm, this is ttrpg land, but not D&D land, so not swordsage'd

[clear delta]

And would probably sabotage

[chilly vault]

Nelson'd

?

[clear delta]

Guardian'd

[chilly vault]

Of the Veil? Are they fast?

[clear delta]

Sneaky

[chilly vault]

Acanthus'd, perhaps?

[clear delta]

Anyway, scelesti archmages (I forget the name) are opposed by all others, so any of their picks to help achieve archmastery would be opposed by everyone else

[chilly vault]

Ooh, concept: a high-minded scelesti archmage very, very secretly trains a misanthropic apprentice, teaching them scelesti nonsense but telling them not to do any of it

Maybe even programs them as a sleeper agent

They make their way to archmastery and only then reveal that they are the worst person in the world

[clear delta]

Y'know, ogres from cain are making me think of a sort of scelesti that, rather than actively going against reality and truth, they "broke" and became passive vectors of the abyss, like qlipoths
Like, instead of being confused shells, they're depressed, confused and lost, while occasionally causing abyssal effects from their nimbus

[chilly vault]

That seems fitting

The Abyss leaks through them

[clear delta]

Would really have to hide the secret scelestus proto archmaster from prime, mind, fate and time magic, that'd know they're planning to be awful. Such an effort to hide them, if noticed, might draw attention from other archmages

[chilly vault]

Yeah there's a lot that could go wrong with such a plan, it's not likely, but I think it might be fun campaign material

[clear delta]

Yup. Just tragic mages taken by the abyss, being little hopelessness engines. Who might wander around, or plop down in one place that becomes a distorted mess

[chilly vault]

A bit like prometheans but somehow worse

The Abyss might also actively protect them

Or Abyssal beings or whatever

[grave gulch]

take me to the abyss

i'll come back evil

like Ru

[clear delta]

Good luck in the abyss

[grave gulch]

Question

Do the seers communicate with the Exarchs?

If so, could they be tricked into doing the biding of a true fae in that case?

[mighty zephyr]

They get visions and dreams of what the Exarchs want

[grave gulch]

[valid merlin]

you can also become a Prelate, and have the Exarchs constantly talking to you

(this is generally a bad idea, unless you really drank the coolaid)

[grave gulch]

aye i can work with that

[valid merlin]

also whenever the Gate tells you something, you need to ignore it

[grave gulch]

what is the gate

[mighty zephyr]

Exarch of the Abyss

[clear delta]

Also, seers try to divine the exarchs' will in multiple ways. Like using the ashes of the deas

That's why they're seers

[clear delta]

The forbidden exarch
Do no heed His commands. Her promises mean nothing

The Gate apparently became an enemy of the other Exarchs, likely due to Abyssal corruption

But the Abyss is still necessary for the whole scheme of the Exarchs.
According to DaveB. It's why the world can be permeated in the concepts of the Exarchs, while remaining in ignorance and denial

[grave gulch]

i feel like the abyss is also something i wanna use it sounds spooky and cool

is there a book besides the summoners one that shows abyssal creatures?

[radiant marsh]

Intruders: Encounters With the Abyss

There's some Abyssal stuff in Grimoire of Grimoires

Specifically 'The Hildebrandt Recording' in said book

Which is disturbing implications on the levels of its content, its effects, and the fact that it seems to break every rule of being a Grimoire while still, in fact, functioning as one.

[grave gulch]

does the abyss want anything in particular?

[valid merlin]

corrupt everything into nonsense garbage noise

[radiant marsh]

The Abyss is basically anti-reality. What it 'wants' is probably incomprehensible and unknowable, but the effects of said wants are basically the corruption and horrific dissolution of pretty much everything

But the thing about the Abyss is the vectors can be...Weird. It's not just Cthulhu Bullshit ™️

the PCs can fight Cthulhu. But what do they do against what's essentially a sentient timeline that's trying to overwrite actual history?

Or a manifestation that's essentially a neurological disease transmitted through language?

[versed zodiac]

Or sinister organ qigong

[spice abyss]

Don't forget the False Demenses the Abyss can create!

[grave gulch]

i didnt really understand what a demense is when reading the book

is it like a pocket dimension for a mage to do their work?

[mighty zephyr]

Yeah basically

[grave gulch]

i see

[grave gulch]

@radiant marshthe book has fox, this was a good suggestion

[clear delta]

Oh ho ho

I'll love your reaction

I love the intro fiction

[grave gulch]

sounds like this is an evil fox

[clear delta]

A very suspicious fox indeed

[grave gulch]

this shit is going crazy

[clear delta]

What part are you on

[grave gulch]

||"you are the boy who wont go to meat church aren't you?"||

[clear delta]

Haha. Yeah things are crazy. ||Town isn't doing so well, eh?||

[grave gulch]

|| it aint but i do like the fox even more now||

i finished it

that was a neat story

[clear delta]

Fun, isn't it?

[grave gulch]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/emojis/1014538127722946600.gif?size=128&quality=lossless

[clear delta]

I think I mentioned the stories the fox tells in here

I loved those

The doll, grandpa's favorite, the leg

[grave gulch]

i remember you telling me the one about the mannequin

[clear delta]

Scary, ain't it?

[short quiver]

If you can say the Abyss "wants" things it's to expand.
Either by having real things consumed by it, or by spreading into and corrupting the real world (turn people into monsters, spread an alternate history into the universe where cannibalistic Abyss-worship is a sacrament, replace the laws of physics with something hostile and nonviable)

[short quiver]

& yeah, to the Exarchs/Seers, the Abyss is necessary but dangerous.
The Abyss is what separates the Fallen from the Supernal, which is what allows the Exarchs uncontested rule and grants them dominion over humanity
but the Abyss will, if allowed, consume everything that exists, which isn't something they want either

So Pentacle and Seer Mages can sometimes wind up allies against Abyssal threats

[clear delta]

Now what do abyss worshippers want?
They are filled with despair and desperation.
Mages who invert their path embrace nihilism and often some belief that absolves them of responsibility. Their corrupted magical aura makes things worse, and their mage sight is suffering and misery

Also, the abyss does not follow rules of reality and truth. So it can be a way to get something difficult or impossible

One archmage wants a better version of the spirit world and is trying to get it from the abyss

[orchid void]

But it only offers poisoned chalices

That’s all it can ever give

[clear delta]

And every time you abuse your magic too much abd invite paradox, you could make the presence of the abyss in our world stronger

Also abyssal magic is addicting.
It involves befouling spells (intentionally inviting the abyss into them)

[grave gulch]

yes!

[clear delta]

The forbidden exarch cult, the Secret Order of the Gate, both summons and banishes the abyss, believing it must be used to "prune" the fallen world, as it's unworthy of the heavens. In fact, giving too much of the supernal light is dangerous

It's an interesting distortion of seer belief

[grave gulch]

since im already mixing both old wod and chronicles i wonder if there's anything from ascension i would like to steal

[grave gulch]

im going to bed but lemme know if yall think there's something worth stealing from it

[chilly vault]

This is also a case where it's only not a bad idea because drinking that much of the koolaid was such a bad idea in the first place that you have run out of bad idea juice

You can no longer have bad ideas, having already reached maximum bad

[sacred viper]

You are already in a hole, dig deeper and maybe find diamonds

[chilly vault]

I would say it's more like ... once you fall in the bottomless pit

It doesn't really matter how much further you fall

The distance down is infinite and the distance up is n

[grave gulch]

The abyss has coolaid? 😮

[midnight grotto]

It's a turn of phrase derived from the Jonestown cult mass suicides

[grave gulch]

i uhhh....i feel like i shouldn't have said anything

[clear delta]

So whenever someone is deep in a cult's beliefs and brainwashing

You say tgey drank the koolaid

[grave gulch]

i'm never using that again

[midnight grotto]

It's pretty fucked up when you dig into it yeah

[grave gulch]

Lets talk about something else

I was thinking of somehow including the technocratic union, maybe as a minor order

Mostly because i like the idea of tech mages

[chilly vault]

Being a tech mage is pretty normal in Awakening, I think there might even be a legacy or three that leans into it? You could say a bunch of such legacies have joined up

[hidden rock]

It's more diluted, since tech vs mysticism isn't really a key point here

[chilly vault]

But like, IIRC a high-mind mage can just create a true AI. It’s hideously unethical because it’s temporary and the AI knows about its impending death and is probably gonna go into crisis over it but

[grave gulch]

that sounds evil

[chilly vault]

Yeah, don’t do that!

But magic and tech are not in opposition

Tech is just stuff, and magic works on stuff

[grave gulch]

a friend who's going to play wanted to do a tech mage who thinks that magic is science kind of like princess bubblegum

So i thought that having some other guys around who think that way as well would be nice

[chilly vault]

Yeah, that’s absolutely a valid take in MtAw

Again, pretty sure there are Legacies looking at that question

[grave gulch]

i'll need to check the book

[clear delta]

Unfortunately, one of the groups of science mages just, really sucks

Threnodists. The way they're written, the guardians should've fallen on them like a sack of bricks

[grave gulch]

Maybe i should just steal the technocratic union then

You know any other awakening tech mage group?

[clear delta]

There are others!

I just wanted to warn you of the worst one, in case you went on a search

There's the transhuman engineers

They like studying technological advances

And trying to usher in the singularity

[grave gulch]

do they also try to transfer their minds into machines?

[clear delta]

I think noy

[grave gulch]

I see

[clear delta]

There's a mentioned group of mages that turn themselves into data

[grave gulch]

That sounds neat

[clear delta]

They found a realm representing technology and the singularity

But I don't remember much about those guys

[grave gulch]

I see

[clear delta]

There's an astronomy group, lemme look

Celestial masters. They study astrophysics

And wield forces and matter to study the energy and transformations of stars

[grave gulch]

neat

I can work with that!

[clear delta]

Then, we have the uncrowned kings. Each of them devote themself to a craft as a way of self-perfection
Programming and engineering are valid choices

[grave gulch]

im taking hunter, vampire and werewolf from wod, and mage, changeling and demon from chronicles

[grave gulch]

I heard of a player who had a cellphone as their dedicated tool, turned his spells into apps!

[clear delta]

Uncrowned kings have a persistent mind shield from their meditative crafting. And can stack a protective spell on top. Their minds are protected. They also get mental enhancements

Another group is the tamers of blood. They study sympathy through blood, ans in the modern day have entered jobs involving medicine and medical research

A dev mentioned yoy can to those guys to help with blood bonds

[grave gulch]

There's a lot of cool stuff to use

[chilly vault]

They are outrageously powerful, it should be noted

They can do matter-energy conversion

And vice versa

They were originally interested in physical exploration but then got really into E=mc^2

[grave gulch]

what does that result in?

[clear delta]

And like, looking at the path write-ups, there's mention of science here and there
Thyrsus mages, besides biology, are into psychology. And love Jungian theories, though those are not accepted by science afaik
Moros mages are obviously into chemistry, and the way medicine has fought death and made it more gradative.

[chilly vault]

A lot of stuff if the player is creative, to the point that I would hesitate to allow a player to use them as written

[clear delta]

Obrimos and moros mages are just generally the ones who tend to be into engineering and crafts

[chilly vault]

The Pentacle in general embraces human civilization and technology to a reasonable extent

Especially since it eases up the need to risk paradox

I could call down a lightning bolt on a guy but I could also just shoot him, that kind of thing

[grave gulch]

neat

[clear delta]

Thyrsus mages have some interesting kegacies for tech, but also a chunk of sucky ones no one cares about

Lords of the inanimate are interesting. They command and care for the spirits of objects and tools

Dreamspeakers, I like 2e version more. They're expanded to be a union of many scientific and religious groups, all studying the world soul.
The 1e version is very focused on Australian native religion, and I think it's bad about mental health

However, only the 1e version had their powers detailed

Imagineers are bargain bin dreamspeakers. No reason to be their own thing rather than members of the dreamspeakers, and literally no one posts about them

Neocologists make no sense to me. They create weird mutant spirits by forcing nature spirits to take on artificial traits? And think they're saving nature?

[grave gulch]

i feel like werewolves would want the neocologists dead

very dead

[clear delta]

On both wod and cofd

So really, I think they can be freely discarded

[grave gulch]

intruders encounters with the abyss is 1e right?

[clear delta]

Yeah

Most books are 1e

The devs simply think it's unecessary to rewrite them

The players just need to make some adjustments, for most of them

Oh, there's that villain making an app that predicts the future and builds a schedule for you. She's a Seer unde the Exarch Prophet
She wants to create a world where all free will is drowned under the Prophet's direction

[grave gulch]

oh noe

[clear delta]

Anyway, there're tech mages all around

[grave gulch]

Good good

I'll be reading on the fae once i finish mage stuff

[clear delta]

I now wanna think about mastigos scientists
It's pretty easy to just think of psychologist, sociologist or physicist mastigos. Anyone seen an interesting idea for them?

[patent talon]

Could do Mastigos as a anthropologist, studying the Mind in aggragate

[chilly vault]

Or even the mind as it relates to space

[grave gulch]

Also

The meat church thing just gave me a whole idea for my hunter game

I was also thinking a lot about the pigs in darkest dungeon

look up formless flesh

[clear delta]

Anyone saw the new thyrsus space legacy?

Engineers of the system

[grave gulch]

never heard of it

[clear delta]

It's from a new book

[grave gulch]

show me

[clear delta]

I donxt have it

That's why I'm curious

All I know is that they're "societal manipulators"

They use space and life

[grave gulch]

is it on rpg drive through?

[clear delta]

Must be

Curious too?

[grave gulch]

i am now

[clear delta]

Book is tome of the pentacle

I tell ya, it has cool stuff

[mighty zephyr]

I have the book but I'm at work

[clear delta]

The way thyrsus relates to society is nice to explore

[supple quail]

hildebrant recording my beloved

||we love a 'the audio is listening back'||

[clear delta]

Well, through a successful "please show me the book" roll.
Engineers of the system is a seer legacy, exemplified by a cop

He's obsessed with a System tgat nature and people are fed to

But there's an interesting other seer, serving the Eye. She manipulates social media and is actually the most powerful local seer, but prefers her low position. Turns out, whoever becomes head of her ministry suffers identity death? She's moros, but her perspective on humans being instinctualy driven by culture, flitting like fireflies acros messages as they act as a mass, can fit for thyrsus

[radiant marsh]

The whole thing is just great from a creepy flavor perspective on multiple levels.

||For starters, it shouldn't exist. Hildebrand himself was a Sleeper using off-the-shelf equipment to do an EVP recording. There was no possible way he could have snagged an Abyssal entity, but...He did.

The 'voice' of the entity itself, also only appears on the original recording. Any copies made of it only copy Hildebrand's voice (and later screaming). Likewise, it's only the original recording that functions as a Grimoire. This despite the fact that an audio recording really shouldn't be able to function as a Grimoire. Even examining it with Arcana gives no indication of how it was made or how it can function as one.

Which sort of leads to the supposition that the recording itself is an Abyssal entity, or at the least a window that allows it to access reality. Which would also account for the weird/horrible shit that tends to happen to anybody who possesses it for any amount of time, as well as how it keeps disappearing and reappearing.||

[grave gulch]

I'LL USE THE EVIL BURGER COMPANY IN MY GAME

or at least my own version of it

[clear delta]

Oh, had forgotten the free council had a YA novel series satirizing the Diamond and disseminating stolen spells

[chilly vault]

Some copies also have weirdly high rates of triggering Awakenings

The Diamond is, needless to say, very interested in this phenomenon

It wasn't even written by a Mage IIRC?

But by a Mage's son

[clear delta]

Yup. There's some weird Mysteries there

It's unknown if his mom helped or not

[chilly vault]

The funny thing is that the Diamond probably couldn't be happier than to have this case to examine -_-

[clear delta]

But the books are used to circulate stolen rotes, to their annoyance

Awakening through special grimories a nice idea.

Also, reading bout the book of life. Turns out the Free Council has a Federation of Immortality

[chilly vault]

And people say the Silver Ladder has a monopoly on hubris (no they don't)

[grave gulch]

i wonder if i would awaken if i left Brazil

[clear delta]

?

[grave gulch]

this place is Crazy

[grave gulch]

Just watched the Hall of Egress an adventure time episode

That episode feels like it would be a sick awakening

[clear delta]

Anyone wanna share cool magics? The methodologies of individual mages, or entire groups

[chilly vault]

Oh is that the one where Finn is in the weird maze?

[grave gulch]

yes!

[chilly vault]

That’s a good one

[grave gulch]

whenever he opens his eyes he's back at the start

[chilly vault]

Tbh if you told me that Ooo was a 6th Supernal realm I would believe you

It has such a vibe

[grave gulch]

it does indeed!

[chilly vault]

Love Adventure Time

[grave gulch]

It's one of my favorite shows

[grave gulch]

ok

with the Promethean having escaped now they'll have to start searching for the lad

he has some alieases, and a few different houses, since his creator was in the camarilla he ended up getting some good money, before she tried to fricking kill him

[grave gulch]

@chilly vault @mighty zephyr what kind of profession would a promethean have considering their need to always be on the move? what do you folks think?

[chilly vault]

Courier of some kind, maybe?

Riding around on a motorcycle?

Transporting quasi-legal objects

[grave gulch]

Courier works

[mighty zephyr]

Trucker, consultant, gig economy, railroad worker

Flight attendant

[grave gulch]

i wanted to be a trucker when i was a kid

[clear delta]

Occultist

I remember some exorcist prometheans

One was even on TV shows?

[short quiver]

so, my favorite Mage PC was a FC Mastigos got a whole lot of milage out of the fact that "worked" objects are viable magical tools for a Warlock
so while everyone else has silver wands and bone daggers, Wagner was scrounging up a cracked coffee mug for a chalice and some loose quarters for the coin. His magical workings were mostly random assemblages of junk and it was both a joke and very serious that you don't need fancy Occult Instruments to work your spells; believing that a bejeweled chalice is more magical than the "WORLDS #1 DAD" mug is a function of the Lie
His dedicated tool was a switchblade knife. He'd chosen it as a powerful symbol of concealment, criminality, and rebellion, and also because it has the occult significance of being capable of stabbing a motherfucker in a pinch

[grave gulch]

what kind of books would a promethean like to read? i'm thinking anthropology would be a popular subject among them

they didnt kill him nor didnt they try to talk to him now i gotta figure out more things about him

[radiant marsh]

Depends on the Promethean

[short quiver]

(Paradise Lost)

[short quiver]

||this is a Frankenstein reference sorry it is funny to me||

[clear delta]

Popular novels, to understand human culture

Common fantasies humans crave

Also, think of the promethean's own journey figuring out what he likes

And how to engage with stories like humans do

[clear delta]

Gonna workshop this idea a bit more, but this iteration is funny.
Spell that extracts stress and negativity. Person is relaxed for a few days. The substance extracted is creepy and alive organically and spiritually (think blood having cells), will die after some time. It causes effects in the shadow

Werewolves: you went and created a new type of host?

[clear delta]

Legacy: keepers of memory for a community

• Perfect recall. Know spirit. Better keep lore, understand local spirits
• Mental shield.
• Read the depths to catalogue skills. Could involve entering dreams, for flavor. Summon or rouse a spirit to talk
• Gain skill. Bind spirit
• You and a group of people form an organization for a purpose, gaining skills and a familiarity to working together on the task. Bolster a spirit to help

[grave gulch]

they survived the encounter

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/449651567948464128/1269990275908894800/NotL.gif

[grave gulch]

ok i just found out what leet speak is i wonder if i could use it for a puzzle....

[chilly vault]

Yooooooouuuuuth

[grave gulch]

i blame you GK

now i want to make a computer monster

[midnight grotto]

Maybe you could have a bunch of little alien monsters that use leet speak.

Hey you know how annoying people online are called trolls? You could play off of that.

[chilly vault]

She is trying to make you do a Homestuck, Skully

So definitely do that

[grave gulch]

[midnight grotto]

I think vampire society would develop the Quadrants if given the opportunity

[short quiver]

d0 j00 sp33k 1337

[grave gulch]

nope

[velvet sparrow]

Virtual Adept bossfight

[chilly vault]

You're giving me Megatokyo flashbacks here

[clear delta]

I like the Sumerian tablets from Grimoire of Grimoires, but the spells don't feel that impressive?

Only exception is tge one that lets you sustain yourself with dream food

Otherwise you have. Find leylines, animals ignore you.

Oh, turning into a swarm can be useful. It was mostly characterized as a combat power. I guess it can be good for spying too

Key of Brass and Flame, everything that made it precious is gone in 2e.
Goetia are no longer a wisdom problem. Getting a goetic familiar is now something any mage can learn to do.
Wonder how to change it to make it precious again.

[patent talon]

Wasn't there a hypothetical fifth watchtower in a 1e sourcebook based around Brass and Flame or something? Inferior was prime and it's denizens were djinn

[mighty zephyr]

Wasn't it Spirit Prime

[clear delta]

Coincidence

[patent talon]

Could have been 🤔 can't remember off the top of my head which book it was in

[clear delta]

Prime was the inferior. I remember finding that tower suspicious due to this

[clear delta]

In mage, prime is truth and magic.
A watchtower of magic that has a realm weak in prime is rather strange

[grave gulch]

Ok

I thought a bit about a tv monster

This feels more like a werewolf monster

BUT

What if i had an evil TV guy going around

He forces you to watch his evil adds(tv head)

it makes you go wanna eat on the evil BURGER place

[high hornet]

That's just a business degree

I do like the idea of a TV monster

maybe a type of fae?

[grave gulch]

The evil burger thing was mostly a joke even tho im using one

Maybe i wanna use it for my hunter game

[high hornet]

Could even have a devil, but those are pretty powerful

[clear delta]

The relationship mages have to truth is interesting.
They speak of a civilization that never was, fruit of contradictory shards of broken timelines, sorted together according to bias and politics, used to unify and explain their social organization. That's the extent of its truth: a founding myth. And they eventually granted it Supernal resonance, making the myth useful to the Diamond Orders' magic.

What we have is accurate lies and lies lived enough that they started becoming true

[mighty zephyr]

https://tenor.com/view/skibidi-toilet-70-titan-tv-man-pointing-gif-11980570803287203273

I actually had an evil tv guy in my old game i ran

[grave gulch]

tell me more about said guy

[velvet sparrow]

@heady kestrel

[clear delta]

I feel silly. Dreamspeakers are already community focused, and do have knowledge storage in the Dreaming Earth, though with limitations
In the same book we get skalds, also mind and spirit legacy, but acanthus and more focused on people's personal stories, such as praiseworthy or shameful behavior. Also mind control magic

[mighty zephyr]

https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Evan_Heals-The-Past

I hate to just stinkpost but this came up in legacy wta discussion

And just hhghgggghHHHHHH

[royal river]

so that's who sambrano was referencing

[velvet sparrow]

What is that

[royal river]

a distillation of shitty 90s-era writing poured into a character

[mighty zephyr]

Did Sambrano reference him?

[royal river]

they did, alluded to calling him "steals-the-past" lmao

[velvet sparrow]

[royal river]

WTA was pretty forward-thinking for 90s era RPGs, but that bar was staggeringly fucking low

and W5's solution to address the, charitably, culturally clumsy writing was in fact to not address it whatsoever

but that's not really here or there

[velvet sparrow]

It was to kill off everything that was problematic, no?

[royal river]

pretty much, yeah

[short quiver]

so, Evan Heals-The-Past was the signature Wendigo character in Werewolf: the Apocalypse
the Wendigo were one of two Native American/ First Nation Tribes in WtA, specifically the "kill whitey for his crimes against mother nature" flavor (as opposed to Ancient Spiritual Teacher flavor, which was a different Tribe)
Even was... some kind of prophesied something for the Wendigo, and was also unusual in that he was accepted by the totem spirit despite being white, so he was the specialist of boys because of his "I'm 1/64th Cherokee" ancestry
it was perhaps not the best of calls to make

[velvet sparrow]

So

Exactly what I was hoping it wasn't.

[royal river]

so there's the double whammy of Chosen White Boy Hero with Radically Insensitive Clan Name, just bundled into a nice package of fuck

[short quiver]

I really love WtA
I do
but it was the 90s man

[velvet sparrow]

I think it was kind of bad even for the 90s, tbh

[royal river]

for 90s era RPGs, this is pretty ahead of the curve. which is very damning with faint praise