#World of Darkness

1 messages · Page 31 of 1

queen heron
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iirc mummies don't really tend to get out

clear delta
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Aaru is the good afterlife

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Apotheosis grants you independence while mostly keeping your immortality, without mandatory death-sleep

radiant marsh
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Tellingly if you're one of the two Mummy antagonist splats, you're completely hosed no matter what you do

candid shadow
clear delta
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Or: fuck it we ball
Just punch the supernaturals

candid shadow
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Also I’m kinda bummed my vampire campaign kinda crashed early

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Because even though I wasn’t really enjoying running it I did have a plan for one PC I did really like

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Where they were a newbie vampire who hadn’t killed anyone yet and in general was really holding onto their humanity tightly

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And I wanted a Nosferatu bodyguard NPC to essentially force their hand

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Capturing a hunter with connections to a large scale inquisition group and giving them to her with an ultimatum

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Kill him, or he would let him go

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Telling her that she isn’t human anymore and it’s time she realized it

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That she’s a predator, she’ll kill him and she’ll love it

patent talon
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That rocks

marble sorrel
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I miss oWoD demon. nWoD demon just doesn't have The Spice.

spice abyss
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I will hold that grudge against it

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It's otherwise a perfectly fine game, it just took something else I like

mighty zephyr
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This is the thing that always frustrates me when engaging with a lot of older WoD content (as I have to do now because Job)

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I cannot understand what the Spice is because it seems to be the Spice remains in newer stuff but it just removes like

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The Racism

spice abyss
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In NuDemon, it's the reluctantly urban fantasy combined with lessened love for humanity

mighty zephyr
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You don't even fight God in Demon the Fallen! It confounds me!!

marble sorrel
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...fighting god was never the point in Demon the Fallen.

mighty zephyr
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There's no reason for half of the backstory then!

spice abyss
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You already did that

mighty zephyr
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There's no reason for it to be So Big!

nimble gale
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You did that already and lost

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That's the point

spice abyss
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You already gave up everything for humanity

marble sorrel
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...that's like saying that Exalted doesn't need anything about the Exalts beating the primordials as backstory.

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Because it's old and long ago and you can't change it

mighty zephyr
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Well no, because you can still fight the primordials

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Because they're still around

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As the Neverborn and the Yozi

spice abyss
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They are fundamentally not the Primordials in both cases

mighty zephyr
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But the fact Demon hammers it's Abrahamic-framing of the entire world and then does not actually engage with God by just saying He's absent from the present makes absolutely no sense to me

marble sorrel
mighty zephyr
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i wish you were right

spice abyss
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Demon has your character make the choice to save humanity. Now you have to decide if that was worth it. That is the game

marble sorrel
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I mean...gestures to Vampire

There was already a lot of abrabamic theming. Isn't that right, Cain? 😛

mighty zephyr
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Yes and I also think that's the worst part of VtM

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I think WoD in general's Euro-centric cosmology results in a ton of it's implicit racism

spice abyss
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You already fought God and lost. Treading that ground again doesn't matter, because now it is Humanity's time. You lost, you were punished, but in the end you got what you wanted.

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Now you have a bigger question: Was it worth it?

mighty zephyr
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But like
Why do the entire Paradise Lost Gnostic framing of the universe if all the entire point of the game is just fighting Big Demons

marble sorrel
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...because it's the game about playing Fallen Angels?

spice abyss
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Because it fundamentally frames your choices

nimble gale
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You

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You do way more than fight other demons

spice abyss
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You did that

marble sorrel
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Like, that's sorta like asking 'Why is there so much blood in the Vampire book'. It's kinda The Theme.

nimble gale
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You do do that, yes, but you also deal with how broken everything has fundamentally become

mighty zephyr
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You're missing my point entirely by just saying "you did that"

nimble gale
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You sacrificed everything to give mankind paradise and this is all they got

mighty zephyr
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I'm saying that Demon's biggest problems come from it's grand cosmological claims about the real actual world, claims it does not need to make because they do not actually factor into the game you actually end up playing

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It's like an anti-theist tirade that's also attatched to the rest of the game

marble sorrel
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...what part of WoD is the Real Actual World?

mighty zephyr
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All of it!

spice abyss
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Notably real Pentex

marble sorrel
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...I must have missed the Vampires and the Wizards last I checked.

mighty zephyr
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WoD is set in the real world which is why when it makes big grandiose claims like "These people got genocided to the last" when they didn't or "this religion is objectively false" about the third largest religion in the world or "Asian people have special souls that go to a special hell just for them" it's weird!

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So if you try and make Young Earth Creationism canon to the actual Earth that I walk outside and see, then it's Weird!

spice abyss
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You are fixating on the bad parts

marble sorrel
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...it's not Young Earth Creationism. It's Paradise Lost, a fair bit older than that.

spice abyss
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That pretty much all of the fandom dislikes

mighty zephyr
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I'm dealing with the stuff I have to refute from the Demon fandom on a daily basis

nimble gale
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Also again dtf explicitly said the Abrahamatic interpretation is just one possible truth among many, all equally true, it just uses it as a framing because the writers were bad western

mighty zephyr
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I mean yeah but then it doesn't really do any leg-work to make that anything more than a headnod to other cultures existing in the world

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It's also really hard to believe when it tells you almost every religion is false due to the Earthbound being in control of them.

nimble gale
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Also it's great you hate something but the rest of us seem to like it so maybe it's best you just not engage and make everyone's day worse including yourself since I can't imagine you're enjoying this argument

marble sorrel
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...I also think you're making some real stretches there to go 'WoD is set in the real world' when basicly every single splat is a massive divergence on the Fundamental Nature of Reality from the real world.

short notch
mighty zephyr
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It's not set In Creation or a made-up setting, it's meant to be "Our World but (this)"

marble sorrel
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Like, I don't think vampire is saying that vampires really exist any more than owod demon is saying that it's cosmology is really true in reality.

spice abyss
mighty zephyr
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This is a conversation I've had over multiple fronts with multiple people, not just you guys. That's not a specific point towards you.

nimble gale
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There is a difference between 'i don't like x because it's replaced y entirely' and a hundred lines of arguing why things suck and shouldn't be liked

mighty zephyr
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This is hardly 100 lines.

spice abyss
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Like, speaking for myself only, I don't appreciate the lumping in with the folks who want The Racism, as you put it.

nimble gale
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I guess if hyperbole is to be shunned I can go count each one, but it'll take a minute because I'm on mobile

marble sorrel
nimble gale
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40 including the exalted channel

marble sorrel
nimble gale
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Also yeah

spice abyss
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You don't mean for that to be the case Voy

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To make clear that I understand that

mighty zephyr
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Okay so responding to that real quick
Not the intent, apologies. It's just that I very very often have to deal with people who cannot actually articulate how these themes are absent from newer content when usually what happens is those themes are present, just not as hyper-focused on. And usually what those conversations involve is me asking what doesn't happen anymore and it almost inevitably comes down to the alt-history of the setting, which is one of the things that gets panned the most by anyone being introduced to it. This isn't saying anyone here did it, it's saying that's my general experience in a variety of WoD communities that I'm in now.

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I am not saying You Guys Want The Racism.

olive laurel
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Demon is the most different (of the ones I am somewhat familiar with anyways), but all of the nWoD versions of the splats are different from the oWoD versions right?

mighty zephyr
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And the thing is that the promise that WoD tries to do is that you can run WoD in your real world just with that spice of the supernatural in it. The problem that always always arises with this, is the sweeping, generalized claims about real world ethnic groups and cultures.

marble sorrel
mighty zephyr
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There's a scale yeah

spice abyss
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NuDemon is different in that it completely changed the central conceit compared to Demon.

marble sorrel
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Yeah, nWoD Demon is an Entirely Different Game, with no resemblence beyond the name

tough pebble
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My uneducated guess is the "spice lack" is the tendency to be very broad or very vague. Whether or not those are actually marks against CoD is dependant on your opinion.

If you think every splat in WoD having hard set conflicting canon and idea of what this monster is, was a giant mistake, you probably love it

If you play WoD for getting caught up in a deep world with a tangled web of canon then you probably hate it

Though I recall from reading that some CoD lines failed to uphold Vague History as they went on, or were never vague or broad, so it might not even be that

olive laurel
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I am not sure what "spice" means in this case

spice abyss
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It is a game about Fighting the System, compared to the old "What Now?"

olive laurel
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Because nWoD Demon definitely has a lot of "juice" even if it isn't similar to oWoD demon

mighty zephyr
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And these sweeping generalized claims about real world ethnic groups and cultures is almost always to the benefit of white European Colonizers, while to the detriment of PoC colonoized peoples. And I think Demon's complete adherence to it's Abrahamic framework coupled with the multiple indications of Authorial Intent that "Yes, God is actually real and is the one true God" means you can't take Demon's small attempts at ambiguity at face value.

tough pebble
mighty zephyr
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Sure you can do other stuff with it, but that's not the Product being sold.

marble sorrel
spice abyss
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You suffered and bled for humanity, gave up everything for them. What now?

marble sorrel
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And well, for people who wanted the old game...

mighty zephyr
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You can STILL do that in Descent though!

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It's just that's not the whole game, because it's themes are broader

olive laurel
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Yeah, that's understandable. But calling it spiceless seems needlessly provocative 😛 (assuming juice and spice are synonyms?

marble sorrel
mighty zephyr
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The entire goal to Find Your Hell is finding peace with your own suffering

spice abyss
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Descent wants you to fight the system. The majority of its themes are aimed directly at that.

marble sorrel
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it's also very tied to the God-Machine

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nWoD Demon also doesn't do much with the concepts of 'Faith' and 'Torment', which were the primary themes for oWoD demon

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So no, I don't think you could do it in Descent.

olive laurel
spice abyss
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NuDemon is Punk, Demon is Post Punk

mighty zephyr
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I don't know what Post Punk is meant to be

spice abyss
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This physically hurt to type btw

marble sorrel
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So it lacks the spice (flavour) of the previous one

short notch
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Different game is different 😛

olive laurel
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Yeah, that's fair

marble sorrel
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Yeah and nWoD Demon meaning that oWoD demon will never get an update is...a little frustrating.

short notch
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Changeling and Geist both very much overhauled their predecessors' premises

mighty zephyr
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That's also not how WoD works right now as an aside

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Onyx Path lost their license, CofD is over

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Paradox can make a new DtF if they wanted to

spice abyss
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But they won't

short notch
tough pebble
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That was my other best guess

olive laurel
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There is always tensions about how different to make a sequel

mighty zephyr
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Yeah, they didn't mention Descent at all

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They just said there's no market right now for a religious horror TTRPG

olive laurel
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Yeah, I don't think CoD demons has any effect on WoD demons?

tough pebble
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That a not too small part of the fanbase still heavily resents nWoD for ending their game lines, or hate for inspiring the 5th edition rewrites.

Thus that section has no actual reason besides it being a bringer of change, and because the brain abhors a lack of reason, whatever was changed is now uninspired

But this guess is basically the equivalent of "you just don't like it" so it's not a very inventful theory

olive laurel
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I think that's misplaced anger

spice abyss
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So the closest we got to a replacement is a game that refused to do what I liked about the previous game

short notch
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Because it's a different game, yeah

olive laurel
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Well, you can still play Demon the Decent the Fallen

short notch
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That's CoD

olive laurel
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Err, the Fallen lol

mighty zephyr
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Descent also isn't the reason the game didn't get a 20th edition or anything

spice abyss
olive laurel
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No?

marble sorrel
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Yeah but oWoD has pretty bad mechanics. XD

mighty zephyr
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WoD/CofD naming confusion is real

spice abyss
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You literally defaulted to NuDemon

olive laurel
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Me being confused about names proves zero points about anything regarding Paradox's publishing decisions

mighty zephyr
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Whoever decided it should be Awakening/Ascension is my enemy

spice abyss
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And also I have to deal with a conversation like what Voy started with if I talk about Demon

nimble gale
spice abyss
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Or the even worse "What do you mean you don't like NuDemon?"

olive laurel
mighty zephyr
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The conversation specifically started with "I don't like Descent"

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That's a fair reason to ask "Why do you not like Descent"

spice abyss
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And this is what the conversation becomes every time

marble sorrel
spice abyss
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I give reasons, and three separate people go "But that doesn't make sense"

mighty zephyr
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To be fair it did start with "They're probably going to change Infernals"

spice abyss
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Or talk about the things I don't like

marble sorrel
spice abyss
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Like, I was happy to see Iki talk about the topic because it's on my wavelength

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It's nice to see other people get why NuDemon just isn't the same.

mighty zephyr
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You can say you like DtF without putting down DtD though

olive laurel
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I think a poorly worded sentence really blew things up?

spice abyss
nimble gale
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I don't think any of us actually put down dtd, we just said it wasn't the game we wanted

marble sorrel
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DtD is the second best game with that abbreviation! 😛

nimble gale
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Also true!

mighty zephyr
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Dungeons the Dragons.......

marble sorrel
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Dungeons: The Dragoning, yes 😛

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That game is Pure Madness and hillarious that it's dangerously close to a functional game

spice abyss
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But yeah, NuDemon is a well crafted game that I totally see why people like

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But I don't, and probably never will.

nimble gale
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Dungeons: the Dragoning 40k 7th edition

marble sorrel
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Also: Man, I really liked the oWoD Demon Faith System. It had a nice nuance for 'How much of an asshole are you' that made you really want to engage with NPCs as characters, not just like 'disposable batteries' (Like Vampire, for example, can do. As you don't really care how much the human likes you when you're drinking them)

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Which also made the 'Be nasty' options feel nastier.

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As it's not just 'here is a faceless NPC you screwed over'. It's 'This is a person I have engaged with and grown to understand'

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If that makes sense?

spice abyss
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Because it's an active choice, yeah

nimble gale
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The fiction's descriptions of reaping were spectacular at making me feel uncomfortable

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Reaping? Reaving?

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Fuck it's been too long I forget the term

marble sorrel
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Cracking Open A Bro to drink the faith 😛

spice abyss
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The better the bro, the better the faith

nimble gale
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And, hey. You probably have friends on the other side.

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They might not be who you remember but do you want to bet Bro on maybe getting them back?

marble sorrel
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I also really liked how it let you do things with faith beyond just 'It's your Primary Resource'. If you wanted to be nice, you could Actively Improve Lives for the people who had faith in you, at the cost of getting reduced personal benefit.

nimble gale
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Because you can

marble sorrel
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It made it a nice meaty resource system, as it wasn't just 'Here is your battery, here is how you recharge it'

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If I'm being coherant?

nimble gale
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I think so!

spice abyss
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It's a wonderful hook!

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Ties into the What Now thing

marble sorrel
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I think I also liked how nWoD Demon was oddly...one of the most hopeful lines in oWoD.

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Like, you literally went through hell to get here.

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And now there's a chance to do something, to make things better than what came before

nimble gale
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You sacrificed everything for them, and it's STILL not enough. The world is so much worse than the paradise you promised them. And most of them don't even know, and most that do don't even care. You are forgotten, and angry, and it hurts to feel but it hurts worse NOT to. What now?

radiant marsh
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I do think CofD, especially in the early 1e era (VtR and MtAw especially) really ran into the pitfall of being so overly concerned with not having any sort of concrete Metaplot, that they instead overcorrected and refused to commit to a lot of concepts and lore except in the most vague and general terms.

That's really what 'lacking spice' immediately made me think of. It's a bunch of information presented neutrally and dryly with no commentary or real idea of how the players are expected to interact with it.

orchid void
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Oh certainly you have the fight. But you are five strangers who are keeping secret lives from everyone else and that secret life is Doing Terrorism At Seemingly Random to try and understand and undo the horrors of the Machine that grinds lives and souls like grist in the mill

mighty zephyr
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I think iki meant to say owod twice

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And accidentally said owod and nwod

nimble gale
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Yeah

marble sorrel
orchid void
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OH

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im dumb

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yeah no owod was hopeful

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and like a lot of the later owod games does stand much better on its own, but also when i read it i kind of want to go read En Nominae again

short quiver
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so, hm
I get why coming out and having a gameline say "Biblical God is real" rubs people the wrong way but I also feel like not doing that in a game where you play Paradise Lost-style pop-Christianity demons from hell feels like it would, be, idk, half-assing the premise
Descent is a really cool alternate take on the "demon" concept but fundamentally you're doing something pretty different

heady kestrel
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may I change the subject?

timber talon
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Ive decided to wear a floral pattern dress as a werewolf in WoD interactive game

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And I’m being relentlessly mocked for my choice lmfao

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“So care to explain to me why you look like my grandma’s wallpaper?”

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Me: “It saves money.”

supple quail
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i’m now picturing a character who wears really totally dissonant outfits and will kill a bitch over it

timber talon
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Werewolf life hack: wear an old fashioned baggy dress. It doesn’t break when you transform into a war form

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Thereby saving money

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But now im imagining a werewolf war form tearing me apart in a grandma’s dress like its out of Red Riding Hood fairy tale

clear delta
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Geist characters would totally wear eccletic outfits

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They'd grab a bunch of mementos

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And customise so they match a bit

timber talon
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My character has spent the better part of an hour complaining about how even a librarian position in this town requires a degree

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Over educated people

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Where’s a wolf supposed to get hers

clear delta
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Okay,. Wod and cofd. Which splats have the weirdest fits?

nimble gale
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Nwod demon, either mage, either changeling, both for different reasons

acoustic plaza
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Hey how much shit do I need to set up a Vampire chronicle

short notch
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i mean fundamentally, a rulebook, an idea for a chronicle, and a group interested in participating

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and some d10s of two distinct colors

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that's about it, was there something you were wondering about specifically?

acoustic plaza
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No like

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Plot ways

short notch
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oic

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i mean, for my part, i like to set up a city, decide who the major players are and what they want and what their turf is

acoustic plaza
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That is what I am doing

short notch
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and then like... hopefully at some point during that process you find a way for your players to get tangled up in it

acoustic plaza
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Problem is I’m figuring out the important freaks in charge of clans as well as the main plot line

short notch
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i mean if you have enough plot hooks laid out for a session or two i'd say that's enough

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figure out the rest as you play

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but it depends, i guess. if you're confident in improvising then just saying "idk there's a guy here i guess" is fine and you can answer the question of who they are in play as it comes up, or if you have a brainwave later down the line

acoustic plaza
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Okay

short notch
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if you'd rather have more established stuff to fall back on then it's worth putting in the prep for that

acoustic plaza
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My current hook for the players is that

  • they are an anarch coterie
  • they have found a briefcase chock full of spiked blood belonging to the Giovanni
  • they are being hunted by Giovanni inforcers
short notch
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that's a tasty hook 😁

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i think that's plenty to provoke your players into action, see what they do with that

acoustic plaza
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Gotcha

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I’ll just write down a list of locations people and plots

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It shouldn’t be as awful as I think it is

short notch
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generally my advice for prepping sessions is: hold your plans loosely, and don't expect them to survive contact with your players

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my forever-GM friend and i were fond of saying "prep situations, not stories"

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i.e. prepare a situation for your players to stumble into, and be prepared for it to respond to them doing things, but don't make a plan that depends on them taking particular actions

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fill their enclosure with enrichment and see what happens

acoustic plaza
orchid void
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also, its vampire

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make some real freaks and make them unpleasant but necessary to deal with

acoustic plaza
acoustic plaza
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Does anyone know where I can find rules for high level NPCs in V5?

rapid glacier
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The core books for each product line usually have a smattering of rules for low, mid, and high power individuals

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Otherwise I’d just make them as characters with some XP extra

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What kind specifically you looking for?

acoustic plaza
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8-9 Gen vamps

mighty zephyr
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Oh then yeah you'll be fine with core rulebook

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I thought you meant like

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6+

rapid glacier
# acoustic plaza 8-9 Gen vamps

Yeah there are diablerie rules, just make a judgement call and if they’re too strong just move a dot around here and there

orchid void
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man

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i should find a use for Julka and Joanna but when the fuck am i gonna write more vampire in warsaw

acoustic plaza
mighty zephyr
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Give them higher stats and higher disciplines and you'll be fine

fallow venture
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oh, we do have one of these!

clear delta
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Psy has breached in

acoustic plaza
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So I don’t understand

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Is Psy doing this to like

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Roast wod or out of genuine fascination with wod

fallow venture
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I'm just commenting on it as I go.

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reading it out of genuine fascination.

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ribbing it when I feel its deserved.

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But generally I'm just trying to learn WoD in its totality so I can tick it off my bucket list.

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Right now vampire 20th anni is one of my all time favourites, werewolf felt like it needed another draft and mage is...not done yet, but I'm struggling with its sheer size.

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I've already come to the conclusion it's one of the best settings in the ttrpg space for multiple reasons, although it comes with more caviats than any other 😅

acoustic plaza
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Ah okay

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I hope you enjoy mage

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There’s definitely the icky elements that you’ve pointed out at the spasms of techno/magibabble but I think the latter adds to its charm

clear delta
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Wonder if paradox will make a mage the ascension video game

acoustic plaza
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Their name is paradox

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Ring any bells?

clear delta
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Ascension feels like the aesthetics could clash so much in a video game

fallow venture
acoustic plaza
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I mean

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The flowery vagueness is the point?

patent stirrupBOT
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We don't think white wolf of that era had editors. but also we are used to seeing a lot of "(see pg. xx)" in every white wolf book

acoustic plaza
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That’s like reading house of leaves and saying “why is the text laid out like that”

acoustic plaza
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20th Ed is very much a rushed job

patent stirrupBOT
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Thar being said i can see why some one would want there RPG book to be more RPG and less novle then a lot of older White Wolf books are

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20th ed is not even one we have looked at. we are more thingkign W:tA 2e or Mage 1st Revised

acoustic plaza
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Ah gotcha

clear delta
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Psy you ran into rule contradictions by now?

fallow venture
# acoustic plaza The flowery vagueness is the point?

Yes, but, this still needs to be a rulebook that informs you about how to both play the game and understand the narrative context with which it takes place in. Failing to adequately inform, thus causing confusion, or in my case, a headache trying to dissect meaning from poetry, does count as a failing in my book.

If this were more of an artsy fartsy game (see any jenna game), I'd be more inclined to agree, because there's some artistic weight behind the cryptics. But with WoD? I'm not inclined to be so generous. Especially when I do think you could definitely still keep the flowery language and still actually inform a reader, given what mage 20th anni is actually being vague about doesn't really get enhanced by it.
Like, I don't particularly care for the history section of the book, because it's a lot of half answers that amount to 'its up to the GM to decide what goes in this blorbo shaped hole we left in'.

fallow venture
acoustic plaza
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It fires up the imagination, no?

fallow venture
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Not for me 😅
I interpret it as 'I now need to fill this gap as part of my GM prep, and make sure it makes sense."

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I don't mind a few gaps here and there, which gives me enough wiggle room to make my own iteration of a concept, but when it's some fairly fundamental stuff, then thats annoying to me.
Granted, one of the biggest aspects of mage is the subjective and flexible nature of reality, but....

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at that point I may as well say what the book says, which is much of nothing, and let the players speculate on my behalf but never confirm anything.

dusky ledge
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One XP short of my next Blood Sorcery dot screee

marble sorrel
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Eat another player character

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That will get you the exp

dusky ledge
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I've also been presented with a 3 dot mawla so I'm gonna have to save FAST

radiant marsh
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Goddamnit of Tremere

short quiver
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I mean that tracks

short notch
#

I feel like at some point it was "a goddammit of Toreador" which also tracks

#

Can't remember if that was some previous draft of this or what

clear delta
#

How to make Toreador interesting?

short notch
#

what would you define as "interesting"

#

like generally, for a character or for a VtM PC/NPC?

fair tapir
#

alternatively, what makes toreador boring?

clear delta
#

Only manage to think up art connoisseur or socialite but somehow distinct from ventrue

short notch
#

so Toreador tend to be defined by their obsession with 'beauty' or 'aesthetic' which lends itself to the interpretations that you mentioned, but it doesn't have to be limited to that

#

you could have a Toreador whose sense of aesthetic somehow falls out of step with social norms, good taste, or even morality

#

like i think it was Outstar who once floated an idea of an extremely twisted Toreador character who finds 'beauty' in the act of murder, as an extreme example

fair tapir
#

you could also tackle it from their sire: what sort of behavior or aesthetic got them noticed? how do they feel about now having to define themselves by this aesthetic?

short notch
#

you also have stuff like Kiem from NY By Night, whose sense of aesthetic took the form of a mildly creepy fascination with the forms of people's body parts

#

like she'd get wrapped up in gazing at the shape of somebody's hands or ears

fair tapir
#

spooky! makes me think a toreador surgeon could be interesting

nimble gale
#

This was back during Revised, so unsure if it would hold up in V20 or V5 (it should in V20?) but I had a PC toreador who was an arts student in the '60s who got embraced by her sire due to her skill at painting and poetry... but was also extremely politically motivated, marching for civil rights and against the war in vietnam, and the character herself viewed art both then and at the time of the game (~2012) as both means and end, which was something her Sire never got. Most people thought she was a Brujah and she didn't really disabuse them of any of those notions, admittedly.

clear delta
fair tapir
#

self-help guru toreador who will make you your best self

clear delta
#

Ah yes, people as gems to be polished

radiant marsh
high current
#

(Muse from Marvel, a serial killer artist who paints using blood from the people he kills)

grave gulch
#

that's scary looking

high current
#

he's confirmed to be showing up in the new tv series, Daredevil: Born Again rooSmile

vast blaze
#

Odd question: Do non-human Hunters exist?

#

Like, vampires and werekin and maybe even demons?

grave gulch
#

Probably

#

They are still individuals and at least vampires and werewolves even have human touchstones

#

That could motivate them to fight the super natural

vast blaze
#

True

#

Guess the issue is just actually playing one in any game

#

I can't imagine a regular human Hunter could keep up with a vampire or a garou

#

Or god forbid, a Mage

grave gulch
#

probably not, still hunting is more than just fighting

#

you gotta figure out your quarry, that requires loads of investigation vicksySip a garou could be good at that but they could also not be the greatest at it

#

meanwhile their human allies could have a lot of useful skills that help figure that out

heady kestrel
#

like if they are the type of hunters with direct goverment funding or a 3000 year old magical technique

vast blaze
#

Guess that's why you don't hear much about vampiric Hunters

#

Or garou Hunters

#

Gotta have MAD resources just to keep up with a lower level vampire

mighty zephyr
#

I mean yes but they wouldn't be hunters

short quiver
velvet sparrow
#

There absolutely are, they just... aren't really Hunters in they way World/Chronicles uses the word

#

Hunters are the normal people who learned about monsters and decided to devote their lives to protecting people from them (or other reasons I guess)

A vampire who kills vampires is just... a vampire doing normal vampire things, really

short quiver
#

although Hunters the oWoD gameline do have supernatural powers
but that was a divisive decision from day one

heady kestrel
#

also a lot of splats have a dedicated spot for "guy in the splat who hunts people of their own splat/other splats

#

Like Banishers with the homophobia metaphor witch hunter vibe

short quiver
#

yeah, true
VII, the Pure...

short quiver
#

nWoD Hunter does also have some Conspiracies that have some supernatural powers or edges
there's kind of a fuzzy line

somber scarab
#

IIRC, oWoD is kinda Buffy-style powers, while nWoD is a lot of gadgets and empowerment by external forces

marble sorrel
#

oWoD is Buffy/Knights of the Cross, yeah.

#

Where you've got some active supernatural help.

clear delta
#

Also owod hunters have this website moderated by angels right? That a ghost spammed and got banned from

marble sorrel
#

Well, likely not actual angels as we know from oWoD demon that angels are MIA.

#

But something is out there, giving them a hand

rapid glacier
#

Yeah I don’t think the oWoD inbued ever got more info on ‘the Messengers’

clear delta
#

Do demons say anything about the messengers?

marble sorrel
#

Not in particular though Demons are also notably very new to earth, having been stuck in torment for ages

#

So their knowledge of groups, even supernatural groups, is a lot weaker than their knowledge of 'actual metaphysics stuff'

candid shadow
#

How common is vamps using melee weapons?

#

Like an axe or sword or something?

marble sorrel
#

Melee weapons are pretty solid in WoD and can deal with like half the splats having 'I am bullet resistant'

candid shadow
#

Bullet resistance is like, specifically against bullets?

#

I always kinda assumed that meant, general resistance to weapons

marble sorrel
#

A good number of splats actively downgrade bullets to bashing instead of lethal.

candid shadow
#

Oh neat

marble sorrel
#

Vampires for example don't care too much about them because most of their organs don't mean much

candid shadow
#

So if they get shot, unless it’s somewhere actually important they’re probably fine?

#

Compared to say a sword, which could damage potentially a far larger area?

marble sorrel
#

A vampire with a bullet in his lung is 'vaguely annoyed'

#

A vampire with a sword through him is a lot more inhibited.

#

That said: not all splats are bullet resistant.

#

If you catch a mage without a spell up, he's Just A Dude

candid shadow
#

Yah

#

As it’s known, wizards are nerds who are easily punched

grave gulch
#

foxes are immune to wizardry, i'll handle them for you

clear delta
#

Point a bullet at a vampire's heart? That works better?
Or are only headshots more significant?

marble sorrel
#

I had a lot of fun ages ago putting together a disgustingly bullet resistant Geist. The Water (iirc) Caul lets you use your defence against bullets. There's a two handed weapon martial art that lets you parry and counter whenever you could apply your defence against the attack. So this angry fireman geist could bring his best Jedi Impression to the table and deflect your bullets back at you with a fire axe. XD

candid shadow
#

That’s fucking rad

marble sorrel
#

He also had the very easy justification for 'why do you have a big axe'? 'I am a fireman, I keep it in my car with other emergency gear'.

candid shadow
candid shadow
marble sorrel
#

Not really a 'better vs vampires' thing unless you've got Dragon Breath Shells.

candid shadow
#

Ah ok

#

It really is just 5 dudes with shotguns is the most powerful thing in WOD

grave gulch
#

get hollow point bullets vicksySip those have stopping power too

#

unsure if that will make much difference against a vamp outside of being able to push them pack better

clear delta
#

Caliban gaming, shoot enemies away

velvet sparrow
#

Heart works, but good luck hitting the heart of a moving target

tough pebble
#

IRL shotguns are terrifyingly effective

There's a reason why they're often used for hunting animals

#

But I assume there's a few other reasons for melee in WoD, all of which are just real world logic

Firearms are:

  • Really, really loud
  • Can be illegal, hard to get, or requires a license depending on where your character is
  • Are kind of hard to (mundanely) pass off as anything but a firearm
heady kestrel
#

... god this reminded me of that Mastigos Adamntine Arrow Legacy I made for Sniper Mages

short quiver
mighty zephyr
#

No they aren't.

#

The Messengers have some of the least amount of ink of any setting element

#

There is genuinely no definite answer.

short quiver
#

There's some crossover linked between Demon: the Fallen and Hunter: the Reckoning, including one where Lucifer looks at a high-Conviction Hunter and immediately recognizes this as divine power.

short quiver
mighty zephyr
#

Can you show the quote?

marble sorrel
#

...wait how would Lucifer look at one? Lucifer's another MIA character. Hence the fallen having no specific leadership.

velvet sparrow
#

He shows up in the Gehenna book

mighty zephyr
#

Yeah

short quiver
mighty zephyr
#

I swear to god no matter how much I fucking read about this setting there will always be a book out of nowhere that just plainly states shit in the least uncertain terms and it Always Sucks

#

And somehow after 20 years everyone apparently just memory holes it exists

marble sorrel
#

...well that's kinda shit. Kinda entirely defeats the point of the Luciferians to have Lucifer back.

velvet sparrow
#

Well, he doesn't really like the Fallen

mighty zephyr
#

for the record Insomniac I am not upset with you about this

clear delta
#

Demons realizing angels are subtly poking around could be interesting
Trying to contact them but getting avoided

velvet sparrow
#

In a like, "look at them they're trying their best" kind of way

marble sorrel
#

God I hate that fluff.

#

Just entirely fucks two of the primary Fallen factions at once.

velvet sparrow
#

I think that's the point, actually

#

It is literally the end of the world

marble sorrel
#

Both the Luciferians and the Reconcilers get fucked, anyone playing as one of them has gone from 'Complex argument with no clear answer' to 'Those guys are just idiots'

#

Better hope you were a Faustian I guess

short quiver
#

All of the oWoD lines were in a sort of superposition of "separate games with their own themes and cosmologies" and "interconnected crossover setting" but Hunter and Demon were the most "looking at each other's papers during the test" out of them
I think we established "an Imbued can switch his 'patronage' from the Messengers to an Earthbound" before we learned what an Earthbound was

#

but I'd need to check release dates

velvet sparrow
sour zephyr
marble sorrel
sour zephyr
#

while chronicles has some problem with vagueness, especially in 1e, i think i prefer the ability to make your own answer to the questions it poses

marble sorrel
#

I'll take no answer over bad answers, yeah

velvet sparrow
#

Things change, it's a scenario book detailing the end of the setting

marble sorrel
#

I think I will just ignore this book as it actively makes Demon less interesting to exist. XD

short quiver
# marble sorrel How? The fluff expressly says God has abandoned the world. Can't reconcile with ...

Lucifer is having an argument with a Reconciler who's trying to tell him "you've been trying to take control of things for literally all of linear time and it's literally never worked out for you. Just let it go, man."
he respons with, more or less, "you say, wearing a human soul like a puppet."
& the Reconciler goes "...yeah, you're right. I'd been enjoying this, but... yeah. Peace." And then, as far as Lucifer can tell, the Reconciler is gone and they're left with a very confused human woman in the room.

mighty zephyr
#

I think it makes Hunterr worse too

#

since it just does the whole "The Abrahamic Faith is the only true one Christianity numba 1 let's go" shit again

marble sorrel
#

...that's not how reconcilers are supposed to work

#

They don't HAVE a way out

#

They're looking for a way to reconcile but it's not a matter of getting weirdly zen

short quiver
#

Yeah, that's fair.
This is from the End Times book, where "resolution" is kind of the whole Thing.

sour zephyr
clear delta
#

Yeah demons can only deal with their pain by being inside humans

mighty zephyr
marble sorrel
#

I'm going to ignore that book and pretend it doesn't exist as it's actively a negative on the entire premise and hurts the game. XD

short quiver
#

(also, Lucifer's canonical whereabouts are established in the Los Angeles supplement, before the ToJ book)

clear delta
#

Hell screen is an interesting inspiration for a mastigos
A painter asked to paint hell with the freedom of his daughter as a reward. So he enacts torments on servants for inspiration, and goes mad entering trances as if he's possessed and witnessing hell
Dark ending ||For the final inspiration, the painter asks for a lady in a burning carriage, and the lord, spurned by the daughter and even having attempted to force himself on her, burn the daughter in front of him. The painter finishes the work and kills himself||
All this narrated by a servant who keeps trying to portray his lord positively

tough pebble
clear delta
clear delta
short quiver
clear delta
#

Police procedural with Lucifer while wod weirdness happens in the background

tough pebble
#

You can't even run some game lines together without having to do some canon welding

Getting a bit homebrew with established lore is also probably the only way you'll ever get to surprise the players who have actually read up on every single canon event

marble sorrel
clear delta
tough pebble
mighty zephyr
#

OH 100%

#

people just straight up lie about shit with WoD

#

all the time

#

having to do so much research has made me realize like 80% of lore discussion is completely unfounded by canon

tough pebble
#

And people will give you shit for getting it wrong in HtP!

Even though I think the "this is our own canon" disclaimer has gradually been getting more elaborate like a monty python bit

mighty zephyr
tough pebble
#

Well, wrong or "wrong"

short quiver
#

& yeah, there is a balance of mystery and explanation that the WoD lines needed to walk and, sometimes, messed up pretty badly (reconciliation vs. rebellion is a very different kind of game as slices of life in a seemingly empty cosmos vs one where Lucifer raises a doom fortress in LA while the Earthbound marshal to war)
but I do also feel like, when the Imbued are granted power to kill monsters by a mysterious disembodied voice or feeling that also grants them the ability to read a mysterious language that's clearly Angelic script and also they're called "Messengers" (like the thing that "angel" means) there's a pretty clear intent there whether or not they make it canon

turbid ferry
tough pebble
#

Is something terrible about to happen to me

heady kestrel
# turbid ferry i would like to know more

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kuY3Qa68hDWSNHhk4oQnymGUzBpcG70XRxJ1HPZeFLM/edit?usp=sharing

I was gonna make a bunch of legacies for my mage game so that the players could take them but they are all weird/specalized, I only ever finished up two, will probably get back to working on them at some point

Google Docs
Local Pentacle Legacies

Local Pentacle Legacies Parentage: Background: Appearance: Prerequisites: Initiation: Organizations: Theory: Ruling Arcanum: Yantras: Oblations: First Attainment: Prerequisites: Second Attainment: Prerequisites: Third Attainment: Prerequisites: Fourth Attainment: Prerequisites: Fifth Att...

#

Gamer Exorcist Free Council Acanthus Legacy
And "Perception Is Violence" Sniper Adamntine Arrow Mastigos Legacy

#

Sovereign Order Of The Cog are gonna be some Artificer types
Silent Witnesses have the derogatory name "Angel Slavers", to give you a picture of them
And Chronovores were gonna be weird, borderline left handed mfs

tough pebble
#

"oh, they might be angels, this implies so much!" leaves most of the details to your imagination of how exactly that works

often times the real details of how it works are disappointing in comparison

turbid ferry
tough pebble
#

Though not giving a direct answer is a technique that has to be applied carefully, usually that's when not ever giving an answer makes the story a tangled mess

#

Anyways I'm going to go be paranoid about what crime of hypocrisy and/or hubris I have committed

clear delta
tough pebble
#

Unrelated topic

Why is everything canon I can find about kitsune (werefoxes) just blatant weeb favoritism

  • Only appear in Asia, there is no non-Court version (????)
  • The newest fera
  • Straight up missed both fera wars
  • Magically inclined, good with gifts
  • Don't cause delirium, not even reduced, as they never participated in the impergium
  • Just get to choose their auspice equivalent when they gain rank
  • The result of two kitsune having a kid has zero deformities or other flaws, has a special name, is even more rare because there's a good chance the kid is instead kinfolk, and has a chance to cause a parent to die for built in angst backstory
    I want to show whoever wrote this a map of every fox species's ranges
velvet sparrow
#

Cause it was the year of Orientalism

#

Oh, you're forgetting that if a vampire tries to turn them they blow the vampire up

clear delta
#

The cofd version is way darker
Lemme get em

short quiver
#

I feel like there's no way to answer this without getting into the level of background weeb radiation in nerd culture of the 1990s.

clear delta
#

https://forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/main-category/main-forum/the-new-world-of-darkness/werewolf-the-forsaken/1415558-2e-update-siten-uzu-the-fox-chosen
Chronicles were foxes
Here's a nice bit of horror and strangeness of the foxes
Tw: mention of gore and rotting corpses, s**cide

||Sometimes they form snarled little conspiracies of competing tricksters that cause havoc until one red dawn when something massive moves through the dreaming minds of the local human population and then the Siten Uzu in the area are all gone—all of them, not just these greater ones—but for a few slimy loops of intestinal viscera and a lingering sense of something beautiful and wondrous. Sometimes they gather troupes of lesser Siten Uzu and raise up little cults, coaxing fox spirits into pacts with wide-eyed humans, until they have enough to seek out the levers of local human power and live in decadent luxury. Sometimes they bury themselves together, beneath the fields, in a suicide pact, and as their rotting flesh turns to dirt, bounteous yet unsettling crops grow from that earth; rice grains that glisten and sometimes twitch like maggots, or apples fat and juicy yet almost coppery in taste. In time, one fox spirit forms in the soul of a human who has eaten of that strange bounty, possessing the combined might of all the spirits who merged with the earth.||

Onyx Path Forums

Hey folks! Today I have something of a a 2e update for the Siten Uzu of Skinchangers - bizarre pseudo-Claimed formed from a fusion of fox spirit and human. This update does not provide XP costs etc as per the 1e one. That's intentional - I'm not interested in trying to legislate the XP costs of someone playing one of these in an attempt at bala...

short quiver
#

Like, in an American-made game about modern day vampires that deliberately eschewed tables and numbers for colored-in dots and game mechanics math that you can do with your fingers and grouped most weapons in categories like "big pistol" and "small pistol" they still made "katana" a different and better stat block than just "sword"

clear delta
#

The kuei jin are special Asian vampires made after a made-up nonsense word

tough pebble
velvet sparrow
#

It was a whole Thing. Like, every game line got a special "Asia" book

#

Asia has it's own special underworld seperate from everyone elses;

clear delta
#

The era of the lotus or something right?

velvet sparrow
#

Year of the lotus, yeah

tough pebble
#

It makes me extra mad because corax, the only avian fera:

  • Only have three forms
  • Have no auspice equivalent or dedicated tribes, all wereravens just crib most of their gifts from ragabash and shadow lords and have a handful of fully shared dedicated gifts
  • Can only be created through a rite, deliberately, which realistically cuts down your options for first change backstory when one of your parents is a corax and knows you are
  • Realistically are not meant for combat

All of which adds up in my mind to "this is a ST option, don't pick this as an actual player", as you have less player options, can't share in the standard first change angst, even if you do play one, your role as a corax is probably going to be "Storyteller's teacher's pet" as your standard gift options are mostly tailored towards your gimmick of info gathering

Like what, no love for the birds? Cheapskates.

clear delta
#

Wu keng are one of the worst orientalist shit white wolf created

tough pebble
short quiver
velvet sparrow
short quiver
clear delta
#

Transphobic and racist

#

The whole group is amab but made into women

velvet sparrow
#

Wow

tough pebble
clear delta
#

They practiced old shamanistic ways of the peasants but got the help of demons to survive some trouble, leading to their current state

#

M20, instead of making non-canon, just said they died off

short quiver
#

Yeah, although I feel like that's usually what White Wolf did when they decided they were done with whatever part of the lore they didn't want anymore
(the Get of Fenris killed their Nazi Lodge, Ravnos and the True Black Hand's ghost-city got nuked, etc)

clear delta
tough pebble
#

Mmm, mangled symbolism

#

Like regular symbolism, but created by dart board and makes no sense

#

Though maybe calling it that is too much of a stretch, since they might not have even known the lotus has actual symbolism…

clear delta
#

Well, now I'm annoyed thinking of white wolfery

#

Like it's funny, but also gross

#

Oh also werewolf apocalypse took the term Kami from shintoism

tough pebble
#

Speaking of that

Don't fox-like spirits in other asian mythologies have some pretty different demeanors, powers, and reputations from the purely Japanese kitsune that WtA blatantly draws from?

Thus also incurring the sin of mixing asian cultures together as if they're all just reskins of each other

mighty zephyr
#

It's also nonsensical as foxes exist fucking everywhere

short quiver
#

yeah but stories about foxes who turn into people to fuck with you don't
which, yeah, is no reason to say that were-foxes aren't everywhere that foxes are, which is at least as reasonable as werewolves being in places that wolves mostly aren't
kind of a whole thing where we are at once pretending this is based on centuries of folklore and legend from around the world but really this is based on a Universal Studios film from 1941

grave gulch
clear delta
tough pebble
#

Like they very well could have cooked up nonsense of worldwide trickster fox legends all "really" being kitsune and that would have been 100% usual nonsense as far as white wolf goes but no, Asia exclusive

short quiver
#

("Reynardines?")
yeah, although part of that would be that they didn't invent the werefoxes until they were doing the Asian part of the gamelime, which was (IIRC) after they'd broadly outlined the where-whatsits
& I guess I see where, if you were doing "Asian were-critters," you'd figure foxes were the natural choice

#

...and also, I think D&D did "were-foxes based (loosely) on Asian fox spirit folklore" first. By Monstrous Manual at least.\

tough pebble
#

Tell me a werefox wouldn't delight in telling a garou they miscounted the number of fera pretty majorly for ages

"What do you mean you were already everywhere in the world, this entire time"

"Not my fault, you didn't even try to look."

clear delta
#

Skyrim sneak

tough pebble
#

There's probably a third party book for this somewhere

clear delta
#

Hm what powers do you think paintings of hell/human grief could have?
Empathy, seeing the dead, having bad memories come up or maybe even manifest
Okay bonus to understanding others, visualization of memories, seeing the dead

heady kestrel
#

what are they if you don't mind me asking?
like are they a ghost thing? a spirit? a unique splat your making?

clear delta
#

Paintings by a mage

heady kestrel
#

got it

#

could give them Influences over grief/hell

radiant marsh
#

VtR 2e in 10 seconds

runic timber
#

my vampire game continues to get better

#

I continue to make wild teaser foreshadowing in the moment to fill in later, and it continues to work

clear delta
#

In mage, you could run a campaign sailing the astral hunting ideas you oppose
With harpoons

#

@grave gulch

grave gulch
#

i dont have a sailor fox emote wixelsSad

clear delta
#

Foks has been defeated

copper raft
#

White Wolf once confirmed out-of-character that it's the same beings which kave the Kuei Jin their powers

#

It was in one book that they went "okay so the definitive answer, out of universe, is that Hunters get their power from the same patrons that benefit the Kuei Jin- if you want to take a different direction for your chronicle that's alright, but that'll diverge from the metaplot"

grave gulch
#

@clear delta what is a banisher in mage?

clear delta
#

Okay they are mages who destroy magic and mages, there are three types

  • Harrowed. Their awakenings went wrong, mage sight causes pain and fear
  • Ideological
  • Hungry. They gain something from destroying magic
grave gulch
#

Right! Thank you vicksyAww

copper raft
#

@shrewd pine re: V5 having some questionable moments and lore

#

The Hunter book (not the Hunter the Reckoning reboot, but the stuff for hunters where it concerns vamps)

#

That one has:

  • Anti-Catholicism but in a 1920's way (i.e. "every single ambulance and hospital is a papist conspiracy to kill you")
  • Brazilian copaganda
shrewd pine
#

-# good lord there are a lot of channels for my blind ass to navigate

copper raft
#

It also tacitly places the blame of Israel's actions against Palestinians on hunter groups (saying that Israel learned its techniques from its affiliation with hunter organizations)

shrewd pine
#

hunter book?

#

like a novel?

#

or like the equivilant of the dm's guide

#

im not saying i dont believe you or anything im just trying to get clarity

copper raft
#

Nah not a novel

#

A sourcebook

#

The funny thing

shrewd pine
#

hold up i think i have that saved in a folder somewhere

copper raft
#

This came after all the IP was taken away from the original White Wolf writers

#

So this is an entirely different crop of people who decided "yeah, we're gonna introduce 1920s-style anti-Catholicism and copaganda to the world of VtM"

shrewd pine
#

nvm the files someone gave me were infact not including that

#

oh ~lovely~

#

not a fan of that

copper raft
#

tl;dr: World of Darkness is fucked from top to bottom, start to finish, etc. etc.; you're never gonna find a OWoD game that doesn't have deeply questionable lore (Wraith comes closest, but there's a sourcebook or two that's Not Great)

shrewd pine
#

cus thats

#

not pleasant

copper raft
shrewd pine
#

eeeeewwwwwww

#

everything iv read/been exposed to just wholely missed that

copper raft
#

Anyway yeah this book came out in like 2022

shrewd pine
#

THATS EVENM WORSE

#

WHAT DO YOU MEAN

#

at least i never gave them any money i guess

quiet trellis
#

I mean. Hunters are supposed to be really fucked up a lot of the time tbf

#

I like to play my base human Hunters, and the only way to deal with a vampire lower than 12th Gen is usually going to involve a lot of collateral

shrewd pine
#

leveling a city block is morally dubious, that however is distinctly written to be awful

quiet trellis
#

If shooting them a bunch in a back alley won't do anything, I'm burning their apartment building down in the middle of the day.

shrewd pine
#

thats the opposite of row row fight the power

quiet trellis
#

Hunters aren't entirely fight the power

copper raft
quiet trellis
#

A lot of the time we are the power, fighting the significantly magically stronger power

quiet trellis
shrewd pine
#

i dunno a big part of hunter is explictly made to be written as "youre somehow the underdog of underdogs and while there are these big orgs, theyre generally not you"

quiet trellis
#

Though I will always laugh at the fact that they had to write in the Second Inquisition developing chemical weapons because they did a battle Royale and used red fog to close the arena

quiet trellis
shrewd pine
#

-# i actually thought the battle royal was kinda fun

sly geyser
#

It was imo

quiet trellis
#

Yeah but the lore implications were funny as fuck

shrewd pine
#

and i dont really find battle royals enjoyable

mighty zephyr
quiet trellis
#

Because of that game, the Second Inquisition completely purged London of vampires through the use of chemical weapons

mighty zephyr
#

Like I'm fine with Brazillians being fervant vampire killers, because they just had the Sabbat run roughshod over every South American government for decades in books

quiet trellis
#

Oh yeah apparently the Sabbat rule Canada

#

For indeterminate reasons

shrewd pine
quiet trellis
#

We all know no other cities exist

shrewd pine
quiet trellis
#

if you say Winnipeg I'll poke you

shrewd pine
#

im stuck in alberta against my will please help me leave

quiet trellis
#

Oh God I'm so sorry

sly geyser
#

I grew up in the worst part of Canada: Michigan

quiet trellis
#

Are you city Alberta at least? Or are you out in blue land

shrewd pine
#

im ine one of the few orange rurral parts of alberta

quiet trellis
#

Oh nice!

shrewd pine
#

so all the hicks and farmers arnt terrible

copper raft
quiet trellis
#

enjoy being red soon

copper raft
#

A couple of my Brazilian friends have read the book and were just utterly baffled at the random shoutout/pr job

shrewd pine
#

something something remember your history LesbianBrick

quiet trellis
#

Absolutely

sly geyser
#

When I played vtm with me and all my friends we ignored all the subterfuge and most of the politics and made ourselves all very good at killing other vampires. Turns out the game is not well balanced for dealing with a player group of purpose built vampires who’s entire character sheet is designed to kill other vampires

quiet trellis
#

But also I heard apparently the blueboys are at their lowest vote share just, in the history of the PCs?

#

Which is fucking insane

shrewd pine
#

i mean VtM is the social game

#

werewolf is the fighty game

quiet trellis
#

As is Hunter the awakening and hunters hunted

shrewd pine
#

and hunter is the oh god oh please oh god somehow i 1shot the vampire and turned them into soup but im horrified

quiet trellis
#

There's also the imbued iirc

#

Oh and demons

copper raft
#

VtM combat is also kind of the most painful combat experience imaginable I think lmao

quiet trellis
#

Yeah kinda. It's not the smoothest

copper raft
#

"Yeah a single attack might take as many as five rolls to resolve and at minimum it takes 3 if it hits"

shrewd pine
#

look when one of the WoD game demands one other player have a crop whip and my character is intended to die at the end of their arc

quiet trellis
#

Honestly imo a lot of white wolf gets a lot better when you just kinda freeform it

shrewd pine
#

WoD dosent have all the best stuff

#

its a lot of weird scuff ment to appeal to a specific set of people

copper raft
#

I've done way too much VtM combat for my own good and as such loathe it deeply

shrewd pine
#

im sad to know that it got sold off to a uhhhhhhhhhh

quiet trellis
#

Take most of the lore (or at least the bits you like) and just freeform it tbh.

shrewd pine
#

unpleasant company

quiet trellis
tough pebble
copper raft
#

Oh it was always in the hands of an unpleasant company

quiet trellis
#

What have the map people done wrong

shrewd pine
#

yes paradox interactive publisher of crusader kings

copper raft
#

White Wolf publishing, the original guys, were bought by Paradox and then they got gutted after the whole "yeah we're blaming real life attrocities against gay people in Chechnya on vampires"

#

(Which was a part of V5's lore so also fairly recent)

quiet trellis
shrewd pine
#

th what

copper raft
#

Oh yeah it was a whole controversy

quiet trellis
#

I played ck2, was very fun iirc

sly geyser
tough pebble
copper raft
#

So basically: VtM has literally never been in good hands (besides when Onyx Path got to do V20 Dark Ages material, that shit actually slapped for the most part)

sly geyser
mighty zephyr
#

they aren't really meant to be based

tough pebble
#

my general reading of WoD controversy at this point is "every like two years this game line stays in production, something fucked up gets published"

mighty zephyr
#

They're part of a government killsquad that works underr the cover of anti-terrorism to extra-judicially murder people

#

All of the orgs in the SI are pretty morally dubious at best

quiet trellis
#

Ok but the Society of Leopold was absolutely based as fuck and definitely not controlled by the Lasombra so. Uh. Shush heretic

copper raft
quiet trellis
#

We definitely didn't do torture or kill random innocent people and if they did god would've forgiven them for dulling our blades so it isn't an issue

mighty zephyr
#

That's not really what they're doing though

#

They don't say the murders of poor people aren't happening

#

Just that sometimes they do it because vampires and then say "We were just murdering because they had drugs or something, who cares"

shrewd pine
#

-# i mean putting that subsect of cops in any sort of good light is kinda copiganda

quiet trellis
#

You're always going to have these sorts of issues pop up

shrewd pine
#

theres better ways of handling that

mighty zephyr
#

Again, the cops are the "good guys" in that they're killing vampires

#

they aren't actually good people

#

nor are they portrayed as such

quiet trellis
#

Also it isn't the cops really, it's the secret service more than anything else

shrewd pine
#

you could put in a line that they fuck up and kill tons of innocent people constantly and that instantly takes them out of the "actually good guys" spotlight

mighty zephyr
#

the SI is an overbearing surveillance state apparatus

#

They do do that

quiet trellis
#

That line is included

mighty zephyr
#

the SI also are on board with the Masquerade to keep the public from knowing vampires exist

shrewd pine
#

apologies im blind and missed that bit

mighty zephyr
#

to consolidate power, and because they can't trust the other orgs are free from infiltration

quiet trellis
#

But it is included in literally every single faction's description except for the Salubri. So it doesn't really get paid attention to in the slightest.

#

If all the factions (except the like 3 Egyptian doctor vampires) are killing boat loads of innocents, I don't really care that the SI is doing it too because they're doing it to get rid of the other ones. Which is the issue that comes with making them do things in a setting that is the real world: it's a very insensitive thing to have.

copper raft
#

To phrase it another way: using a real life police unit that's been involved in real life killings has a distinctly rancid vibe. Regardless of intention, the fact that it's going "well actually some of the poor people this real life unit of cops kill are vampires and they cover it up by saying it's drug raids" is in poor taste at the absolute best

mighty zephyr
#

I mean at the same time they're doing the exact same thing with American and English special forces that both also just go around shooting innocent people

#

I don't think BOPE is alone in this regard

copper raft
#

Oh they aren't alone in that regard, see my earlier comment about how it tries shifting blame from Israel where it concerns Palestinians

#

My whole point was the the book as a whole has a distinct stench to it and that V5 keeps falling into the same pitfalls of old WoD lore regardless of who's actually writing it

mighty zephyr
#

I kinda disagree due to how utterly absurd the previous pitfalls are

#

"These bad guys in real life are also bad guys in your game" is different from "Romani have special powers that make them want to do crime"

copper raft
#

tbf V5 had the aforementioned "these real life attrocities against gay people are actually being caused by vampires" which is distinctly rancid in the oWoD fashion

mighty zephyr
#

Due to being written by WW yeah

clear delta
grave gulch
runic timber
#

being able to kill another vampire on sight is also a form of diplomacy

grave gulch
#

ok so for now i'm just brainstorming stuff but i would like to hear what yall think of this idea for an arc:
wizard tagged as banisher(thinking if they should actually be a banisher or not, but half of the idea is that they have been framed), arrow member recruits players to help hunt them down, supposed banisher is being protected by a different super natural evidenced by the corpse of a previous mage sent to hunt this lad down (thinking i would only have this other supernatural if the person is not actually a banisher, if they are a banisher i dont want them to be super functional), target/protector are reasonable so players have a chance to hear em out before actually having a fight.... and thats all i got for now
.w. also the supernatural thing i just really wanted an excuse to use something like a werewolf(cause i think they are cool) but i know i probably dont need to use em there...might even be best if i dont

runic timber
#

we're slowly reaching the endgame of a vampire campaign I'm GMing, and one of my players has his fingers in 2/3rds of the big guys that hold the Elyseum together

clear delta
#

Nice!

grave gulch
#

i need a shadow name for a scelesti who's preying upon folks who try and fail to recover from substance abuse, the reason to that is that they are using them as hosts for an abyssal entity known as the Maw of long sorrows, it needs people such as these who have basically abused their bodies in some way as hosts

#

it will then destroy something or someone for their summoner if they get to keep their host forever, they then after completing the deal disappear into the abyss with their host

#

i'm thinking of a lot of stuff vicksyThink

#

the maw of long sorrows is from the summoners book!

mighty zephyr
#

"Piper" as in Pied Piper

grave gulch
#

Sounds good! Thanks Voy

frank atlas
#

i keep finding new Foundry Systems

olive idol
#

Blegh

#

Was just reminded of an observation I made about Changeling: the Dreaming.

#

"Changeling: the Dreaming is about a bunch of adults deliberately stunting themselves to the emotional maturity level of children. In Changeling: the Lost, that is a behavior most closely associated with True Fae"

orchid void
#

Nnnnnn that feels kind of fuckin cruel as a read of dreaming sure

short quiver
#

if we're talking about the "the nWoD villains are the oWoD protagonists" that's gotta be W:tF

marble sorrel
#

I liked Changeling: The Dreaming. Lost is a great game and it's not like demon where I vastly preferred the original but Dreaming I feel had it's own unique vibe and was a refreshingly non-cynical take on fey in a genre that is 90% just retreading the same 'Faries are scary monsters' ground.

#

Though it really benefitted from its expansions broadening what wonder could include.

#

Where they went 'no, enjoying things other people think are boring is entirely legit'. With an Accountant Fey who just fucking loves his job. XD

#

Making it more clearly 'no, it's about the death of imagination and how reality grinds dreams down' not just 'Adult things are bad'.

clear delta
#

Ah cool. Was worried science was stuck being boring

nimble gale
#

I was in a CtD game once where my PC (a nocker) ended up leading a rebellion against the local sidhe becuase they tried to make him shut his racetrack down, 'cause he was the part owner of a local motorway/the head mechanic for it.

#

we ended up winning by strapping allt he Sidhe into the passengers seat and showing them how mcuh fun MAXIMUM POWER was :D

#

... then they started asking if they could joust in them

marble sorrel
mighty zephyr
#

I feel like CtD's cynicism is just it's approach to banality

#

like the idea that Banality WILL win and that so much IS banal

#

it's deeply cynical, imo

nimble gale
#

... it's like the least cynical owod line, the whole point is that banality isn't garunteed to win and that even in this modern, 'sterile' age there's so many sources of wonder and beauty if you just look and see

#

cynical is wraith, or werewolf maybe

marble sorrel
#

"I remember those nights, planning technologies that didn't exist yet, outsider science, futurist dreaming, half-magical."

To grab a quote from a book I like. Changeling: The Dreaming's relationship with science is 'If it's inspirational and you love it, it's not remotely banal'.

#

Bill Ney the Science Fey

#

Changeling: The Lost has fantastic vibes and is itself a great game but with how much urban fantasy goes with 'Here are fey, they horrible scary monsters that put on the illusion of wonder', it's nice that Dreaming had just such a lack of irony about its fey.

#

Also I think I'm just generally my own biased self and I tend to like more Sidhe-inspired interpretations over later Tam Lin inspired Fey 😛

tough pebble
#

Though now I'm here thinking if that makes banality a strained and stretched metaphor for adulthood depression

marble sorrel
#

I think it's more a metaphor for how the dreams of youth often die out in the face of 'You have to do this to keep going'

#

Living vs Existing

tough pebble
#

Yeah, I was just entertaining an alternative bad reading comprehension

short quiver
#

there was a bit of a throughline of "science is evil and bad and lies" through the WoD but they did ease up on it as they went

nimble gale
#

"We have another way to bring sunlight to Bangaladesh."

tough pebble
#

Unsurprisingly, considering current political problems, pulling back on anti-science might be wise.

nimble gale
#

I'm a huge technocracy fan tbh; m20 does such a good job with them.

marble sorrel
#

Mage I feel had the advantage that it had science nutters in the anti-technocracy faction

#

So it was less 'science bad' and more 'a sterile, controlled version of the world isn't much fun'

nimble gale
#

yeah

#

and there was even a faction of teh technocracy going 'guys? guys this isn't the future we fought for, why is everything so grey and depressing'

#

'we should maybe do a miracle about it'

tough pebble
#

I know this is skipping over every nuance the technocracy might have, but listen, if some secret NWO's objective empowers the common world to eliminate deadly diseases with mass production vaccines then hand me the sunglasses and dark suits

nimble gale
#

yeah that's part of the point, lol

marble sorrel
#

The Technocracy's world has a lot of good bits but they clamp down hard on personal autonomy and wonder. The world without the technocracy would be a fantastical wonderland where those with power are untouchable to those without and the average person is nothing but a background character in the story of Mages.

#

oWoD mage isn't really a 'There is an objective good side' as both sides are 'Wizards: No Sense of Right and Wrong' but with different philosophies.

nimble gale
#

both sides are heroes. Both sides are villians. Though not the most villianous, and the Technocracy get off a little worse there by virtue of (metaplot spoilers) ||the nephandi taking over their leadership||

marble sorrel
#

That said: The Technocracy are The Man and are Industrial Evil, so the game does tend to assume you're generally against them. XD

olive idol
mighty zephyr
#

The Technocracy are objectively bad though

#

Like even when "grayed up" the game cannot refute the fact that they are, structurally, a great evil that should be destroyed at all costs

nimble gale
#

they're objectively bad from the perspective of the Traditions. Subjectively they are the reason teh setting has things like 'required public education' and 'vaccines'. Their negatives are strong becuase tehy are an antagonistic faction, and the tragedy is that despite that they also want what (they see as) is best for mankind.

The other tragedy is my aforementioned spoiler,b ut it's not like the Traditions are free from that influence, either.

mighty zephyr
#

Well like, here's the thing with that, right

#
  1. No, the technocracy did make Vaccines able to exist in reality. Mages can't do that anywhere, mechanically, and Consensus doesn't work that way. Vaccines being accepted as working just means that, paradigm-wise, a Mage can now work through vaccines.
  2. Even if that is how that works, they made it so vaccines are the only cure to diseases, and then purposefully withhold those vaccines from the global south where they just destroyed the ability for folk remedies to fix those same problems.
#

The technocracy was fine for public education, for whites, but would have logically been against it for anyone else. Because they were The Man.

#

The Technocracy is a group of mages whose vision for reality cannot exist outside of a capitalistic, imperialist viewpoint

#

they cannot imagine a world without it

#

They require, for them to exist, for marginalized peoples to exist and to be oppressed

#

They do everything the Nephandi do, just not personally. They just enable it to happen and fight to the death to stop it from being stopped.

nimble gale
#

Well, there's no way to argue against what you're saying without coming off as supporting white imperialism, so I guess you win the arguement here. Sorry.

marble sorrel
#

(Mind you, the Traditions were not exactly any better in that area. The Sons of Ether come right out of the golden age of colonialism and none of the Traditions are anti-colonial, they just want to be the ones at the top of the pile.)

mighty zephyr
#

The Dreamspeakers aren't anti-colonial?

#

Also the Sons of Ether come right out of the Technocracy

nimble gale
#

The dreamspeakers exist because the eurocentrism of the rest of the traditions was racist against allt he mages not from europe

mighty zephyr
#

It was specifically the Choiristers and the Hermetics

#

And yes, I also think the Hermetics suck

#

I think the idea that the Traditions continue to abide them is almost plot-hole levels of forgiveness

#

But the Dreamspeakers, Akashics, Verbana, Cultists, and Euthanatoi are all explicitly anti-colonialist

marble sorrel
#

I mean, the Dreamspeakers are kinda seen a racist group yeah. To the point where some mages left because they were getting lumped into 'Dreamspeakers' when they have no links to each other beyond 'Well, you're not white', like the Ngoma.

nimble gale
#

the verbena explicitly gained power from european colonialism, though. They were also one fo the two traditions most closely associated with nazi germany, along with the hermetics.

mighty zephyr
#

Yeah because their powerbase was Western Europe

#

But the Verbena don't have a centralized authority really

#

(Also likewise, Control itself, the central authority of the TU, threw it's weight behind the Axis)

nimble gale
#

Voy, out of curiousity, what is your opinion on the get of fenris no longer being playable in W5?

mighty zephyr
#

Makes sense, gives a fun new antagonist, and not much was lost.

nimble gale
#

I do not believe we can reasonably reach a compromise with our paradigms for the wod setting at this juncture

mighty zephyr
#

🤷‍♂️

waxen onyx
#

Like the reality is that this is a dumb over the top setting written by people inspired by The Invisibles and there's like no concept of systemic racism and stuff in the original text and even then how is this a reasonable response to someone starting a conversation about something they really like with no real world harm

#

I'd really rather we not do this stuff for anything outside like supporting Jk Rowling

#

With that I'm going back to bed zzz

grave gulch
#

Here's the idea: A Free Council member turned Scelesti is targeting people who suffer from substance abuse with promises to help them overcome addiction and regain control of their lives. And, well, he really does help some of these people. However, the ones who are truly empty and feel like nothing without the substance that brought them to their current situation... these people are used as hosts for an Abyssal creature known as the Maw of Long Sorrows (it's from the Summoners book). Usually, people who have abused their bodies in some way are very compatible hosts for this evil. If summoned, it will destroy something material or conceptual for its summoner....I'm still trying to figure out what that something could be, though. A basic idea I had was that they could be a more radical member of the Free Council who is trying to start a large-scale war with the Seers and create an incident they could pin on them.

i'm open to suggestions!

timber talon
#

Do you think there are old vampires who still take astrology seriously because it used to work back in their days

grave gulch
#

i think so vicksySip

#

there's people who take it seriously today, so why not a vampire that used it when it was more prominent?

copper raft
# nimble gale cynical is wraith, or werewolf maybe

Weirdly, I'd disagree that Wraith is a cynical game- or at least, the core conceit isn't cynical. At its heart it's about making peace with your death, setting your affairs in order, and finally and willingly moving on. There's a lot of Extremely Bad Shit ™️ going on in the world of the dead for sure, but the books put a bit of emphasis on the little things that help keep you sane as you try and navigate your way towards a truer, final repose (e.g. mentioning how one wraith has a hobby of "amassing the biggest sock collection in existence"; one book focusing heavily on what romance looks like after death; the end of its metaplot has a guy take a leap of faith, his shadow even wishing him the best of luck).

It's a very bleak game for sure, but I don't think its outlook is meant to be fundamentally cynical

nimble gale
#

fair!

clear delta
#

Wraith is just heavy on your emotions

#

And the shadow system risked table conflict and triggers

open roost
tough pebble
#

"could a Mage roll more successes than what's inside an Ushabti omnigun" is an interesting crossover question.

#

I feel like making it really difficult to defend against without equally reality-warping spheres in hand would have been a better option though. the fantasy of the omnigun works in Lancer because essentially nothing else in the game is on its level of "hole in reality".

#

if you're a powerful enough mage, that assumption could start breaking down the second it crosses over into MtA.

spice abyss
#

This doesn’t count as an attack, hits automatically, ignores cover, bypasses Immunity, and its damage can’t be reduced or ignored in any way. No rule in this book or any other supersedes this.

tough pebble
#

Yes, that's the rules for it as written in Lancer. That is meant to build the fantasy that you're carrying around a break in reality on the back of your mech. Even other paracausal tech in lancer doesn't cross the line into "this just breaks you apart at the fundamental level, below things like armor and barriers".

If you decide to transplant it into a universe with much higher power average, it should be rescaled to match. It should also be re-ruled to match the expectations of the RPG you're currently playing. Transferring things rule for rule it into other RPGs without thinking about how to properly translate it is a bad play.

barren vortex
#

i think you would just take 1 damage, and no rule supersedes this

#

if you cannot hold "1 kinetic damage" in that system, it just goes on the sheet somewhere

tough pebble
#

just because it works like that in lancer does not mean it should work like that in a completely different RPG.

barren vortex
#

i think its funny if it were completely unchanged

tough pebble
#

it's funny like, once, as a brief joke

once you actually start to damage the party with rules-breaking homebrew I'm no longer on board

clear delta
#

Mages need to to get hit with strange otherworldly stuff. It's enrichment

barren vortex
#

well, the solution is to make an ushabti-like object. or that 1 kinetic damage does not actually map to damage as it is in mage, so it just sits on the sheet somewhere

tough pebble
#

that would be fine.

clear delta
#

Maybe upon taking a certain amount of kinetic, it suddenly manifests as a sudden burst of damage
So you gotta avoid taking too much, and find a way to clear the damage

tough pebble
#

less fine.

the player's comments suggest the GM is implying this won't be a one-time thing.

#

if they're gonna be transplanting Lancer mechs in the long term, they should rebuild them to make sense in the MtA rules.

mighty zephyr
#

I mean it's not a broken thing by MtAs standards

#

It's completely fine

tough pebble
#

yeah, probably, I'm just wary about any kind of RPG rule crossovers

#

tend to not go well in the long term

mighty zephyr
#

It's not like it's inventing a new mechanic

#

"You take 1 damage, deal with it"

nimble gale
#

Being fair 1 damage in wod is a lot more than 1 damage in lancer in most cases

velvet sparrow
#

(That was a joke)

#

I think as a one-off bit it's funny, if it starts being a recurring thing then... problem

#

1 damage in Lancer is like, a poke

grave gulch
#

Ophelia vicksyWave hiiiiiiiiiiiiii

velvet sparrow
#

1 damage in wod is a significant injury

heady kestrel
#

my take on the omnigun bit is that "deterministic 1 damage every turn" is both too core to its identity to remove and also a suitable challenge for mages to deal with

Mages deal with crazier shit all the time, especially if its a lower depths or abyssal monstrosity

velvet sparrow
heady kestrel
#

like
they could take it unnerfed

#

at the very least they could break LoS and run for it

velvet sparrow
#

There's also the fact that Mages probably should be able to defend against it?

#

I feel like that's the kind of thing that a Mage would be capable of doing

#

Thematically and mechanically

clear delta
#

The humble lich mage tanking or escaping the pegasus

#

Actually, what do immortal Ascension mages have for surviving combat?

heady kestrel
#

Like mages who are ascended or mages from mage the ascension

clear delta
#

From ascension

heady kestrel
#

oh I have no idea in that case

velvet sparrow
#

Well, it depends on the Mage I guess

#

Kinda whatever?

#

Spheres/Arcanum are fairly 1-1, with the exception that Death and Fate are combined in Ascension

clear delta
#

In awakening, tremere probably escape into twilight

grave gulch
#

i wanna use a tremere

heady kestrel
clear delta
#

Archons can just leave to their equivalent otherworld

#

And reform from being killed anyway

nimble gale
#

like in general fo rsurviving combat, life to just make yourself tougher is an option, as well as for self-healing, you can use matter to turn your clothes into super dense armor, mind ot just make people miss you, prime to mess around with magical effects, spirit could be used to have spirit bodyguards (which you could make bodyguards with life, or matter, plus mind and prime), entropy works to just be too lucky to be hit...

#

in general, of course. Against an ushabti if the GM allowed it I'd say a combination of prime and entropy should do it.

#

(I personally would let you defend against the omnigun, but instead of health damage you'd take paradox.)

velvet sparrow
#

Ooooh that's good

copper raft
barren vortex
#

the solution to the omnigun is to break line of sight. so complete darkness, a wall, or punting yourself intangible would do it

heady kestrel
#

yeah

#

well darkness might not work, it is a mech so it might have like... heat sensors or something
but that is even more up to interpreation

mighty zephyr
#

The only way to not get hit by it is to not get targeted by it

#

You can't make yourself immune so you gotta make it hit something

clear delta
#

Hm making centipede shifters deviants affected by centipede venom could be one way to do it

chilly vault
#

I think if you can stop the Omnigun in any way other than not being targeted, it’s not really the omnigun

sacred viper
#

just tank it bro its 1 dmg you have Life 5

runic timber
#

I have arrived at a comically awkward spot in my Vampire the Masquerade campaign

the former prince Salas did some capital T Treason upon the players for the wrong reasons, a player's ally revealed his shit and got him hunted down, and became the new prince

Gunther is the current Sheriff, and was also when all that happened, he hunted down the player's group, then hunted down the former prince when his bad business was revealed, but couldn't kill him because they are both good people (as good as people get in VtM)

so there's this rat bastard, Severin, who did some conspiring and scheming to get Gunther down, and then revealed that the former prince is still alive and in the city

so now Severin IS the Sheriff, and he has a small army of ex-military ghouls but he's not that strong actually

and the former prince, Salas, is chilling and vibing in the ruined factories, has became friends with an ancient good-hearted Brujah who swore to never hold a sword again but can punch real hard, and is not in bad terms with the anarchists residing there

the one dude who could beat the former prince is one of the players, whose social standing is literally in the mud and the only reason he's not being hunted down like a dog is because he's pals with the current prince
and he doesn't want to kill the former prince (he's on a forgiveness arc)

red flower
#

Well.
On our fifth session of VtM2e, we had two frenzies, PVP, and a character getting one shot by another, and finally a diablerie.

Also one very upset player who thought the whole ordeal was their fault and that they ruined everything.
Took the combined efforts of me and the GM to calm that player .

So… quite a session.

sacred viper
clear delta
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Caine would redeem himself is he worked on a train

runic timber
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Caine would love mortal kombat so much

clear delta
clear delta
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Butler/special agent legacy. Matter, mind
1- Awareness of dirt and damage, watch intentions
2- Dropped or thrown objects can be directed. Perfect recall
3- Repair or damage objects. Control how you're seen
4- Animate golems. Summon goetia into them
5- Instakill spell. Erase memory
Also considered an attainment that allows you to travel through a buildings structure. Basically swim/propel yourself
Could use this idea on third attainment
Instead of instant kill, wonder if "creation of substance noxious to a target" would be better. Eliminate germs, dirt, or people
Throw knives/needles dripping with ultra poison/acid
Or make blades whose metal is noxious to people

runic timber
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I love vampire politics
the chambelain of the city is a LaSombra, chill girl who betrayed big time the Sabbat because she dislikes their methods
another LaSombra wants vengeance upon her for killing him and his friends when she switched sides, so he plans on attacking Smith, another important vampire, with shadow magic to pin it on her

#

Smith and her have a bit of beef, but not enough to justify an attack. And she won't even be near when it happens, she has a perfect aliby and all, his plan is stupid

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but it will still work

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because Smith is a bitch, and will play victim just so he can pressure the chambelain and gain prestige points and favors

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and everyone knows and acknowledges this, but she may become so annoyed by it that things escalate

clear delta
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The guys is a ghost? You said he died

runic timber
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he's Jared, he died three times

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first when he was turned into a vampire, second when his sire entrusted him to the crazy sword-saint Toreador who deemed him useless and decapitated him, and third when Lyudmilla betrayed the Sabbat and made a tunnel collapse upon his party

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he's half Abyss by weight and can turn into a swarm of flies and vermin to escape harm

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Lyudmilla, the traitor LaSombra, basically wants to chill and play
her way of thinking is "I've seen the Abyss, I've witnessed true horror, and it fucking sucks. The Sabbat is full of liars and petty monsters, the Camarilla is the same but at least they're having fun"
She sees all younger vampires as little more than naive children who haven't opened their eyes to the dark truths of this world, and she wants to keep it that way, keep the music going and let them play and have fun until the inevitable end arrives

clear delta
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Oh my god they killed Jared! You bastards!

red flower
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A question, how do health levels work in VtM2e?

Do all character basically have 7HP?

short quiver
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yes
Stamina and Fortitude make you less likely to take damage but when you do take it it's applied to those same 7 levels

elder fulcrum
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started a Hunter game this week and it's been super duper fun

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unfortunately: bagged by Aurum International after 2 sessions. we're in a Fucking Issue rn.

clear delta
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Aurum International?

elder fulcrum
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prevalent rival org in the Hunter the Reckoning books

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We're Deep In Shit

vast blaze
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Got to try Vampire 5e today

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Super fun, I wanna play a proper campaign in it

grave gulch
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Werewolf one shot has been completed!

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I think they all had a good time for the most part

patent talon
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Nice! Glad to hear it!

rapid glacier
zinc robin
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Honestly tbh this is fairly natural as a state of being in most possible World of Darkness splats, but them poor hunters absolutely

rapid glacier
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Pretty much

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All my WoD games feel like every group of misfits playing are two steps away from being either outed or annihilated at any given moment

spice abyss
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Except for Mages, of course.

somber scarab
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How about Mummy?

gleaming wave
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I'm assuming this is cofd friendly

clear delta
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Very much

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Cofd gets talked about a lot here

grave gulch
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they got me into cofd

gleaming wave
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yeeee

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working on getting ready for a VtR game I'm running after my traveller campaign

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prepping for a campaign before the current campaign is over is unwise but I have basically everything prepped already

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Set in San Francisco, which from what the CRB gestures to, is ran by a borderline-heretical sect of the Sanctum

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and that's what I'm running with

clear delta
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Oh what does the sect believe in?

gleaming wave
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It's very vague and I'm still working out the kinks in it, but they are noted as being met with suspicion and fear from other domains in California

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the Invictus of SF go hard on infosec and internet control

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The Mission (as it's called) was founded by a kindred cardinal who came alongside the first settlers with the intention of converting the locals, and got very upset when he found native american kindred, and went completely dark for twenty years and stopped reporting to the Lancea et Sanctum

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and for the next 50 years their religious practices were made incredibly secretive

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Now- I have no idea what this looks like

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I know nothing about the natives of california, so I'll need to do some research

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it later describes it as "animistic demon worship" which is yknow, on brand yikes for WoD

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but I do like the idea of satanist catholics deep in the heart of the church, so I might scrap the whole "native-catholic syncretism" idea, potentially

clear delta
gleaming wave
clear delta
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You'd think they'd have learned by now

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But then I remember morality system in 1e

grave gulch
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Also i have a question

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How should i make a sheet for a vampire npc in my mage game?

gleaming wave
grave gulch
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Like....should i take the power: - finesse: resistance: approach?

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Or make an actual vtr vamp?

gleaming wave
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same way u might make a vampire NPC for a vampire game

grave gulch
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I see

gleaming wave
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I say yea

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make it like an actual vtr vamp: unless u cant

grave gulch
gleaming wave
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my problem with VtR is it gives me nothing on making NPCs

sour zephyr
clear delta
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World of darkness
World of darkness never changes

gleaming wave
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it is incredibly vague, and traditions do change over hundreds of years

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what might have started as a genuine syncretism has been warped by the hundreds of years of far heavier catholic theological influence

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(and also "local" religion meaning Kindred religion, which gets pretty weird generally)

clear delta
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Doesn't change that someone published a text where a syncretism favoring native beliefs is/became demon worship
So I think people would be uncomfortable even in this case

gleaming wave
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oh yeah I mean

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they weren't thinking about any of that

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but yeah- unsure how much I want to lean into that

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have been given a really good idea for an NPC concept I had: Prince's pet creeper nosferatu

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blood bonded nosferatu with low humanity and high blood potency who has served every cardinal since the first

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maybe a native convert

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though that goes into very strange, kind of yikesy territory perhaps

grave gulch
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what's a cool melee weapon for my vamp lady?

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she's going to be mostly mental social stuff but also good with melee weapons vicksyKnife also speedy when need be

gleaming wave
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depends on the vibe

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a knife never goes wrong

clear delta
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Long knife

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Cane

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Collapsible batton

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Nail bat

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Staff

grave gulch
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she's clan daeva vicksyBork a manipulator, does mostly political stuff, i suppose a knife would match the vibe

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the whole thing of politicians throughout history getting stabbed and whatnot wixelsBlank

clear delta
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Collapsible baton is a good carriable weapon
Cane with hidden weapon is a good mix of class and violence

#

Dunno how shock weapons are against vampires

grave gulch
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fair vicksyThink

clear delta
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Against humans, poison coated blades are effective and fit the theme

grave gulch
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mages ARE still human so it would make sense too vicksyBork

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like she's not looking to fight mages cause yeah the whole reality bending is pretty scary, but i do want her to at least be able to harm them vicksySip like...gotta make the player wizard bleed vicksySmug

clear delta
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Physically human

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Mages are not human in terms of soul

gleaming wave
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My soon to be party is going to be consisting of all fledgelings

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Have 3/4 characters made so far despite the game being a ways away

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Ventrue college girl: devout catholic, in a band, incredibly timid and shy

Gangrel underground boxer: incredibly close lesbian relationship, on the outside very "I do it to pay rent and survive and I look out for myself", inside she absolutely loves proving that she's the best

Daeva bartender: works at a gay bar, flamboyant dude who loves to go clubbing, really just trying to take care of his chronically ill sister

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Then the fourth, secret option

spice abyss
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I tried to talk one of my groups into Forsaken

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Ended up having to settle for a VASCU game

grave gulch
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what's VASCU?

spice abyss
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Vanguard Serial Crimes Unit of the FBI

grave gulch
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oh vicksyAww i didnt know that game!

spice abyss
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I blame not being able to do Werewolf on one of the players being familiar more with Apocalypse

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And saying "Isn't Werewolf bad?"

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Yet again contributing to my hate of Apocalypse

spice abyss
grave gulch
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ooh right vicksyHappy

gleaming wave
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No TF:V but they're cool

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Whoops ping

spice abyss
mighty zephyr
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Sully You Aren't Going To Believe This Ass Unit

grave gulch
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🍑 vicksyInspect

clear delta
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Granted, forsaken 1e also had issues

mighty zephyr
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W5 is good I will say.

clear delta
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I heard that, and that's rather fortunate

gleaming wave
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my plan in my VtR campaign is to give all these absent sire brand new fledgelings

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mentor figures from outside their clan

grave gulch
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i ran a w5 one shot it was fun

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also going with it was a good idea cause since it shares some rules with H5 it made things easier

gleaming wave
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realising VtR merits are suuuuuper cheap

mighty zephyr
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Yeah merits are the main progression in cofd

gleaming wave
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Ye

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They just seem super cheap

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Merit-per-session

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Ish

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Though that does neglect all the other fun stuff

gleaming wave
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been cooking up the idea of a bloodline for this NPC concept: especially now that I have a nosferatu