World of Darkness

[gleaming wave]

imagining them as this lanky, tall monster of a vampire with a giant fucking sword

straight up dark souls boss type beat

[mighty zephyr]

https://tenor.com/view/artorias-knight-dark-souls-dark-souls-gif-8576514

[gleaming wave]

yeah

they're gonna be Nosferatu with Obfuscate, Celerity and Vigor

[mighty zephyr]

I had a similar vibe with an elder in my game

They were a Daeva from a bloodline of changeling predators

[gleaming wave]

thinking their bloodline automatically grants the giant merit

Celerity, Nightmare, Resilience, Vigor

[dusky ledge]

New blorbo!

Anatol Nowak, Ravnos neonate and Polish WW2 vet

[mighty zephyr]

Polish Ravnos fuck yeah

[dusky ledge]

I'm modeling his voice off Albrecht Entrati from Warframe because transfems are allowed to play deep-voiced characters actually

The short version of his story:

After the war, he moved to the States with a "roommate." They were happy for a good 35 years together. Then one night, he awoke by pure chance to a Kindred feeding on his beloved. Naturally, this meant he'd seen too much. He got lucky and was disappeared and Embraced instead of both he and his lover being murdered. But now? He's homeless, penniless, and his man died about ten years ago. He's not having a good time.

[gleaming wave]

one of my players touchstones is their best friend, and he is in love with her.

Issue (other than being a vampire, which is a pretty big issue): She is a lesbian

Other issue: She doesn't know this yet

she has also only recently found out she's a vampire and so far the idea is that she is going to confide in him and they're going to have the most complicated FwB relationship imaginable

[gleaming wave]

She is planning on getting another touchstone: girl who will have her realise she's a lesbian. I proposed the twist that girl she gets a crush on is straight, just to fulfill the cycle

[sacred viper]

What what do you mean she is a vampire?

Wait sorry thought this was the cyberpunk thread

[gleaming wave]

lmfao

[gleaming wave]

speaking of the person playing them is ALSO playing a character in a Cyberpunk RED campaign who believes they are a vampire (and they have the 'ware to prove it!)

[zinc robin]

Oh no, I've seen a build like that and uh hopefully yours is better than mine, but dear lord do I prefer saving the Vampire for Vampire because it was kinda awkward having to tell them that the Vampyres cyberware in RED only deal light melee weapon damage when they were trying them out in combat without having bought biotoxins for them (I'll take biting for damage in either Masquerade or Requiem any day, as far as combat viability goes)

[gleaming wave]

oh no they use a tire iron for combat

almost all the 'ware is fluff to complete the vampire vibe

they have vampyres and a death trance

[orchid void]

good news, i know how to make these flavors match https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/1250/night-s-edge

[grave gulch]

Imma have a super undead be the body guard of a wizard

What kind of look should i give the undead lad?

[orchid void]

What's the wizard's theme?

Theme it that way!

[grave gulch]

good idea

[velvet sparrow]

Is this an official one?

I know there was a Cyberpunk 2020/World of Darkness crossover in one of the White Wolf Magazines

[gleaming wave]

yeah

there's an official crossover called World of Future Darkness

https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/World_of_Future_Darkness

[orchid void]

yah, published by the heavy gear guys

[gleaming wave]

player is talking about trying to have their vampire still go to class (low blood potency, high humanity means that if they spend their vitae they can hang around in the sun for like 2 hours ish)

They have yet to consider that they might just fall into daysleep in the middle of class and just die

[mighty zephyr]

Night classes

They exist

[gleaming wave]

mmmm true

but even 6-7 pm is really early for a vampire

[grave gulch]

Depends where in the world tbf

6:30 pm is already dark here

Brazil btw

[gleaming wave]

yea it depends on season and time of day

but it has to be after the sun has set

april time in tha northern hemisphere

[radiant marsh]

Could also do Shadowrun

But, you know...

Shadowrun

(I am a fan of the game, that means I can bitch all I want about what a pain in the ass it is to actually run/play, thank you very much. :P)

[short quiver]

you have to love Shadowrun to understand how much it sucks ❤️

I've tried to convince people that they can learn a new RPG without it being a D&D-level commitment of effort and been told "I tried to learn Shadowrun and that was too hard"
and I'm like "Shadowrun is literally the opposite of what I'm talking about"

"Shadowrun is, and I say this with love and admiration, less a system and more four or five loosely related systems bolted together by jank"

[gleaming wave]

Funnily enough: player character also has a band they play in

They really understood the assignment of "You are people who are about to have their lives flipped upside down", and made a character who has many social obligations and of whom it would be most inconvenient to become a vampire

[rapid glacier]

The best way to play Shadowrun is using that Blades in the Dark hack running around

[gleaming wave]

The other PCs are awkward but their struggles generally consist of like "how do I tell my girlfriend, I need to keep my job"

[rapid glacier]

Or, alternatively, not playing Shadowrun and just talk about it around a table

[gleaming wave]

She needs to somehow figure out:
how to pass her classes (Difficult)
How to keep going to band practice. (Easy)
How to keep the parents she lives with from finding out (Very hard)
How to keep going to church (Very, Very Difficult)

[rapid glacier]

I’m guessing this player didn’t make a Thin blood either

It’ll basically impossible if they’re a Nos, even in V5 that’d be a tall order

[nimble gale]

Hey, going to church could be relatively easy, depending on the vampire and the era

I'm sure the Giovanni pretend to be good roman catholics all the time, and the Lasombra and Venture have always been in deep with the church. IIRC the Brujah have pretty good ties to a lot of protestant faiths too, but my brujah lore gets hazy

[rapid glacier]

Maybe they’ve got a folkloric or mythical block that keeps them off the premises

That’d be a hell of a flaw combo; to want to go to church and physically cannot, good recipe for a mental breakdown

[nimble gale]

Oh, agreed

and like, it's rare in the modern nights but you do gotta watch out for the random parish priest who actually has True Faith

also I just realized I was assuming masquerade clans and not requiem clans there too

uh, apologies for that if it's a cofd game

[gleaming wave]

Yeah it's VtR but they are a Ventrue

Main thing is that they'd need to go out during the day to go go church. And their parents are regularly attending. As is she.

So basically it creates many, many awkward questions.

[gleaming wave]

first thing she would need to do is move out and say to her parents "hey, I'm going to a different church because it's closer"

[gleaming wave]

The player has been cooking up a storm for their backstory

The promise of toxic polyarmory lured her in

[grave gulch]

for context: original message was about 40k, i clicked here by accident

[gleaming wave]

WoD forum

[gleaming wave]

Whoopsies

[grave gulch]

oh

shit sorry

both start with W and im still waking up

[gleaming wave]

Haha

Its all good

[clear delta]

Hm tremere kinda have blood powers with their magic
But I'd like a clan with the Quixote Hardblood arts from limbus company

[valid merlin]

I feel like Tzimisce could maybe do that?

[mighty zephyr]

I wanted to make an entire Choso/Hardblood Discipline

[clear delta]

Oh, cool

How much you made?

[runic timber]

we have achieved peak paranoia in my vampire game

the camarilla is crumbling, and I love it

it goes like this:

there's this Brujah ancient dude, whose childe was Prince
that ancient was trading love letters with the Sabbat, the party discovered this, and the Prince tried to cover for it by killing them (that knowledge would've de-legitimized him, but covering it also condemns him truly, even when he doesn't have ties with the Sabbat)

one of the party's own dudes did that treason, and years later came back and spilled the beans on what the prince had done

former prince is hunted down, traitor becomes the new prince

the new prince is a benevolent guy, so they adopt a few stray shovelheads instead of killing them, and are in somewhat good terms with the local anarchists (who are mostly ex-soviet soldiers)

and they adopt a traitor LaSombra, who protects them against a sabbat attack and ends up becoming chambelain

there's this one guy who is between the anarchists and camarilla, has good ties with both and wants to become Sheriff. He discovers that the Sheriff didn't kill the former prince, and that he's hiding in town, so he reveals it, the Sheriff flees, he becomes Sheriff

immediately after, his Gangrel buddy turns out to be a Sabbat spy, who tries to kill the prince and blames it on the guy

meanwhile, another LaSombra who wants to get revenge on the traitor tried to ally with the players (because they at first wanted to fuck the traitor and the camarilla, and then discovered some things and are now friends with them)

and they ignored him until he almost attacks another important Ventrue while he's live on TV, only stopped by one player using the Calling presence power

that player, so far, has:

• Become great buddies with the Chambelain (the LaSombra traitor)
• Advocated for one of the shovel-heads they sired (Tzimisce, she was the corpse cleaner, got bullied in the elysium too much, exploded and attacked the prince, and is alive only because this guy and the prince are on so good terms)
• Has help hide the other player (who came hidden into the city, which is illegal under camarilla laws, and who spend the last 10 years hiding with the Sabbat as they were trying to recruit him)
• Has talked with the other LaSombra who wants revenge (nobody knows this yet, but they will eventually)
• Has advocated to not kill the former prince (he's a chill guy, somewhat honorable and young, but he's under Big Suspicion of being a sabbat spy/member)
• Has defended the anarchist-camarilla guy after using assamite magic to know that he's truthful in that he knew nothing about his gangrel friend

and he's desperately trying to keep together the Camarilla as the Sabbat prepares for an attack, he has the prince's aid, he has some influence

but the important Ventrue was attacked by a LaSombra, knows only one LaSombra in town, and the one person advocating for every sabbat-suspicious person is said player, who is also telling everyone to trust each other and not fall to the sabbat's attempts to destabilize them

so now they're split between those who trust this guy and his allies

and those who don't

and those who don't trust him are gonna call up some higher ups

[digital siren]

wod mages be like:

[clear delta]

Seers of the Throne

[rapid glacier]

Gonna make a crab-themed mage tradition focused on crab bucketing other mages to keep them from Ascension

“Nu-uh, fucko, this wheel keeps turning”

[spice abyss]

Yep, that's the Seers of the Throne alright.

[short quiver]

I do love how nWoD manages to make antagonists like the Seers realistic without making them especially ambiguous

[patent talon]

It's why I love them as a villain faction, they suck so much in a believable way

[short quiver]

yeah
which, looking at that, I realize that describing the secret wizard conspiracy that rules the world in the service of the Demiurge as "realistic" was a silly choice of words, but
you all know what I mean, right? they're straightforward villains in an entirely human and believable sort of way

[mighty zephyr]

Word you're looking for is "banal" I think

[runic timber]

we've made our characters for a new vampire campaign

I'm a dirty uneducated gangrel who grew up on the streets and only respects strength
the other player is a haughty kyasid who is very polite and weak and only respects social status and etiquette

[radiant marsh]

Seers make sense while still being unambiguously wrong and villainous

Same with the Pure Tribes

Vampire...I can't really think of an equivalent

[high current]

Honestly the playable Covenants are enough fodder for potential antags imo

and in a fun ludo-narrative convergence, just joining one is a sin against humanity at the higher end, because joining any of them is acknowledging that you're no longer human

[clear delta]

What, you never had to deal with a mysterious group that hates you and are obsessed with a symbol, any attempt at reading their minds only showing that symbol?

[high current]

but like
Lancea et Sanctum's whole thing is 'a monster i am lest a monster i become'/'im the monster so that mortals have something to fear' iirc
Circle of the Crone is big on sacrifices and has the potential for some very scary things
Ordo Dracul does a little human experimentation, as a treat :)
Carthians are arguably the least evil but also they're just vampire politicians so they can easily be vampire fascists
Invictus likes control and power, nothing saying you can't have an Invictus elder who runs a cult of personality and is up to shady shit

[sour zephyr]

the carthians are vampire communists iirc
and the book says they get very authoritarian if they get in power

[mighty zephyr]

There's no least evil, just who's not in power at the moment

[gleaming wave]

played my first vtr session!!!

or well, ran it!

[rapid glacier]

Hell yeah, how’d it go?

[gleaming wave]

oh I completely forgot to follow up

we did a few scenes of them pre embrace, the Ventrue went home from church with their family and got smacked on the side of the head with a shovel in a quiet, sleepy mcdonalds after a nice talk with dad

The homeless nosferatu got shot in the neck after going to a food drive and talking with their social worker who's trying to keep them clean and in work

The daeva got off work at the bar they work at and was similarly assaulted with a shovel on the back of the head while waiting for a bus

And the gangrel was the only one to put up any sort of fight, though they turned and ran before getting shot in the back.

Then, they woke up in an abandoned church at 1 vitae, and no one to guide them. After the initial shock wore off and they got their bearings, they went down into the church basement to find a man, bound, gagged and blindfolded with small cuts bleeding. Immediately: frenzy roll. Two of them begin feeding, the other two are stunned before trying to get the other two off them. As they get closer, I call for another frenzy roll. They fail, and this guy is drained of his blood by a group of hungry fledgelings.

The idea is that a group of very upset acolytes from the circle want to create a bunch of aimless fledgelings to destabilise the Sanctum who is in control of San Francisco,

They escape by the daeva using parkour to climb up onto one of the tall church windows, breaking it, and helping everyone climb up. It's a big drop down that everyone succeeds at except for the ventrue, who takes a dramatic failure, breaks their nose and their glasses (8 bashing damage overflowing into dealing some lethal damage) and drops a bible they found. They never actually looked in the bible, and inside were their smartphones and the key to the church door. Everyone's phone except their own was smashed up from the fall.

They sit on a bench, drenched in blood, and take turns calling friends for rides home.

[radiant marsh]

I mean VII doesn't really have an understandable goal though. You can see how the Seers and the Pure arrived at their conclusion even if said conclusion is dead wrong and malignant.

VII is just "Kill all other Vampires because Mysterious Reasons"

[short quiver]

yeah
although I feel like Vampire has the more relatable villainous groups just be "the PC groups"

[orchid void]

yeah in vampire the local villian is like. the sheriff. a strix.

[clear delta]

I was joking

[orchid void]

Vampire is much more hyperlocal than the other splats

[grave gulch]

what happens if i shank a vampire

[spice abyss]

They get mad

[turbid ferry]

if you're really really really really really really good at it they might die

[patent talon]

Always thought the Cainite Heresy would be a cool antagonist for a Vampire chronicle, if the PCs won't be pissed off with their being no answer to "Who Is Cain?"

[spice abyss]

The Cainite Heresy is great

The 1e Belial's Brood book is also fun

[mighty zephyr]

The Cainite heresy being a real thing that actually existed is the funniest thing

[radiant marsh]

BB had some interesting stuff.

Not least of which being the whole thing in the book about "We really didn't want to write this, but it turns out it doesnt' make much sense for large numbers of people to just decide to be one-dimensional monstrous assholes without at least some form of explanation, so enjoy."

[runic timber]

first session done yesterday! I fumbled our presentation to the prince! :D

fucked up every attempt at etiquette, made a boombling bafoon of myself and my partner, got called Dog 17 times, fell head-first into the table of the prince's childe and his friends

[elder fulcrum]

oh my gods/

fourth session of hunter

garou.

[grave gulch]

Heheheh

I love when someone uses a werewolf

[high current]

where are we sending the flowers for your funeral

[clear delta]

You kill the werewolves, and they say
"You fools, we were holding them back"
Cue werewheep

[elder fulcrum]

WE LIVED.

[grave gulch]

Nice

[open roost]

answers definitely no but can werewolves die from food poisoning

[zinc robin]

Are you poisoning their food with silver

[open roost]

im just. im having trouble wrapping my head around how god damn sturdy they are

[velvet sparrow]

WoD werewolves are basically immune to anything that isn't silver, magic, or anti-tank weaponry

And the latter two they're still tough against

[orchid void]

They are semi-divine murder hulks

So throw them thru the woodchipper

[mighty zephyr]

In W5, they are explicitly immune to anything other than silver, fire, magic, or like

extreme obliteration

[marble sorrel]

iirc, things that expressly say they do Aggravated Damage can still affect them.

[mighty zephyr]

It depends

At least in 5th

because Lethal is gone, a gun does aggravated now

[rapid glacier]

yeah in W5 it specifically calls out fire, silver, or "bodily annihilation" as the only permanent ways to kill them

even if you sever body parts, they are capable of regrowing that shit, and even succumbing to Aggravated damage that doesn't obliterate them, if they had a method to gain rage, they could attempt to heal a box and still keep truckin

but if a Garou did take Agg from Fire or Silver, they expire when their health boxes fill with Aggravated damage like normal

[mighty zephyr]

In Book of Hungry Names this also includes decapitation

[rapid glacier]

yeah we just had a character discover this after ripping a BSD's head off; turns out, that wasn't enough to kill it and now its Big Angy about it

[elder fulcrum]

i'm like. genuinely still recovering as a player. there were Three Garou In Our Fucking Living Room That Shifted.

i managed to get us out of it cause my hunter was the only one barely able to withstand the Delirium, despite being a martial hunter she came from a long line of monster hunters so with some really lucky int/occ rolls was able to recall what the garou are and what they're actually up to

the good news was that we were able to talk them into realising they had the wrong targets !!!! and we all lived !!!!!

the bad news is i managed that by shouting information about garou and the delirium and the wyrm to the rest of our party. in front of three garou who had already been monitoring us. so they know who i am and they know what i know.

i have a 4-dot enemy on my sheet i think i'm dead next session lol.

(also my One touchstone who has become the party's favourite character had a near-death encounter with a tzimisce and barely got out of there)

[spice abyss]

In Forsaken the answer is No*

[runic timber]

I've just realized that my gangrel is not smart enough to differentiate between a setite turning into Snake Murder Machine and a gangrel falling into frenzy

[open roost]

incredible form, tbh

[open roost]

Thats the thing is that i know this. Ive read it a million times, ive written it, told people this and have been told by people that this is the case, but after like, what, 7 years of playing other rpgs where death is constantly something you dance with, the fact that you'll probably be fine if you get combine harvested is one that i will always basically forget. Probably only until i actually get to play werewolf

[clear delta]

Combine harvest?

[open roost]

Like a combine harvester

This thing

[grave gulch]

i wanna drive one

[nimble gale]

they're less fun to drive than you might think

[grave gulch]

Aw

[nimble gale]

Mind, it's a case of familiarity/contempt, I grew up on a farm

[velvet sparrow]

Actually does Fire still work in W5?

[clear delta]

Maleghast now has worm vampire clans

[mighty zephyr]

Yes

[runic timber]

my player has found a solution to this predicament

he's the main suspect of being a sabbat infiltrate after covering up for other suspect people
so he's gonna fake his death at sabbat's hands, cleaning him of suspicion, and infiltrate the sabbat pretending to be the dude who diablerized him

[clear delta]

Make it so his fake death is awful and no one wants to hear the details, thus it won't be examined closely

[runic timber]

he's gonna get "attacked" as he's traveling outside the city for some business, and alter the memories of his ghoul bodyguards, faking the death of most of them too

[clear delta]

"So anyway I drag him to my personal dungeon. You know, the one I tried to show a tzimisce and they fled in horror? Then I-"
"Okay I'm stopping you right there"

[open roost]

Good to know that jack is on tumblr

[runic timber]

this could also work as a defense against mind-reading bullshit

[high current]

@ werewolves

[runic timber]

I've just realized a fatal flaw in my sabbat city

they're ruled by an ancient Brujah, Asdrubal Barca, father of Hannibal Barca, whom recently learned high level abyss fuckery all by himself, with no master nor teacher, and defected to the sabbat soon after

one of their high ranking dudes is a malkavian called Maltés, formerly known as Malcolm, a very chill and laid back dude who changes names from time to time, always starting with Mal

Asdrubal thinks he's a young malkavian, but he's actually Malkav, just vibing right there

and if he got to know this, he'd tear him apart for what they did to Carthage

[supple quail]

oh?

[clear delta]

House hellminth

Parasitic worms enter a living or dead host and merge in the spine

The worms mutate the body and merge with the host mind over time

As this happens, they connect to the hivemind

[grave gulch]

Wax

[clear delta]

Nephilim are the leaders, each ruling a court and courts compete for territory and power

[clear delta]

Yes?

[grave gulch]

Hi

[clear delta]

Yo!

[velvet sparrow]

Good, tbh

Let them fight

[nimble gale]

If your Sabbat don't have like seven different layers of Stupid Leftist Infighting, are they really the Sabbat or are they just Edgy Anarchs?

[clear delta]

Cannibal leftists

[mighty zephyr]

I wouldn't call the Sabbat leftists

[nimble gale]

No but they have the same tier of in-group infighting

[royal river]

sabbat do have a comical degree of infighting but it's more fascist infighting

[grave gulch]

trying to get friend somewhat interested in wod

should i

uhh

send the hunter the parenting ep 1 to them? or that speaker D video about wod?

[rapid glacier]

the speaker D one is a good start for basics imo

do they have a flavor they're interested in? Just letting them look through the book might be enough*

*not valid for Mage

[grave gulch]

unsure if they have a flavor they prefer

but i'll say

i would run a vamp game with them

in case thats also a good way to do an introduction

[rapid glacier]

if they are a games-watcher type person, throw Bloodlines at them and see how they feel, that's basically the closest you get to WoD 101

or the various City by Night live plays, but not everyone is into that style of storytelling

[grave gulch]

right right

[runic timber]

idk how y'all usually roleplay hunters in vampire games, but my experience so far has been very goofy

they're so out of their league, and so stupid

there's gotta be some competent hunters out there, but a decent part of their information is fake, and one of the biggest hunter groups is heavily implied to be controlled by the Lasombra

[mighty zephyr]

The first group of hunters I almost always make as a freebie

It's when their bodies turn up because you think you're the baddest thing ever that you realize you're a parasite not a predator

[runic timber]

ime they get got by some hunters, immediately escape and turn the tables on them, and struggle as they try to speak with them or use them to their advantage

its like trying to babysit a drunkard

[mighty zephyr]

Stake em

Hunters shouldn't be going for captures

They're serial killer terrorists who believe you are an existential threat

[grave gulch]

hunters can be very bad people

[nimble gale]

Not every hunter is a serial killer terrorist, at least if we're talking about Imbued. And some non-imbued hunters are more in the 'we should study them' or similar. and they run a similar gamut in CofD to, though I haven't played/done anything CofD since it was called nWoD, so.

[gleaming wave]

I plan on running a pretty reasonable hunter who is on the case for a player in my VtR game

they have all just turned into vampires and do not have their sires, so they are going to naturally fuck around and find out without knowing how to not get caught

[grave gulch]

question

considering mages are human

lets put aside the fact that a mage armor could make a difference here for a sec

how much damage should a swarm of africanized killer bees do per turn?

im doing that to my mage players btw

[fair tapir]

The useless fandom wiki includes african "killer" bees on its "list of antagonists in WoD," so someone statted them at some point...but the wiki is terrible, so there's no statblock or citation for where they're from

[grave gulch]

dang

wait i just remembered something

i think demon book has an environmental tilt named "swarm" i could check that for what it says

like sure different games but its something

[high current]

anything from CofD is compatible with anything else from CofD, in theory

Deviant also has the Swarms tilt, but the clade companion's animal section doesn't include bees

[clear delta]

Only biologically human, and mentally to some extent

[grave gulch]

yes

[grave gulch]

i love that

[high current]

worth noting, bringing things from 1e to 2e isnt always so neat because of how some things changed across editions

but anything from Demon or the officially 2e books should work together fine

(Demon is eternally trapped in edition limbo )

[grave gulch]

did it no get a 2nd edition?

[high current]

technically 2e but written and released when they were still calling it just a 'rules update' so its kind of 1.5

like, it works as a 2e game, it just doesnt have a full core book, you have to use the DtD core book with a copy of the 1e nWoD or 2e CofD core book to have all the rules necessary to play(2e CofD core is better, but DtD core has an appendix at the back with the 'god-machine rules update' so you can play it with the 1e core book if you want)

[grave gulch]

a shame they dont let them write those games anymore

[clear delta]

Demon is so cool

[fallow venture]

posting it here rather than the main channel

I think the fae from changeling were the angels that sided with neither god nor satan in the war of heaven. This section in particular reminds me of stuff mentioned in the demon the fallen book, although it was mentioned that humans were ignorant to the beauties and wonders angels tried to show them.

again, the above sentences echo the age that followed the scouring of the earth at the hands of god in the aftermath of the war.

[gleaming wave]

thinking of a moment in my VtR game last night

where the nosferatu met a daeva who gave him the rundown of what it means to be a vampire, and he said something along the lines of "This shit's like a YA novel" to which she replied "I said the same thing!"

[runic timber]

peak

[gleaming wave]

https://tenor.com/view/me-atrapaste-es-cine-its-cinema-cinema-esto-es-cine-gif-17729711691959966457

[grave gulch]

[clear delta]

You know, maybe we should group up the chemical weapons, plague, drugs bloodlines into a single bloodline
They're too samey

[gleaming wave]

honestly???

yeah

[elder fulcrum]

hunter game going good

double-KO'd a tzimisce. almost died to do it. im only in a coma but that thing's been turned to ash. life is good

[elder fulcrum]

NEVERMIND THAT WASNT A TZIMISCE THAT WAS A FALLEN ANGEL.

[clear delta]

Like a bloodline about how things affect human health
Things that go into the bloodstream
Their discipline/devotion revolves around that, and has a lot of powers to fuck up a human but can also control the spread/progression of these things
Can't go giving vampires outright healing powers, but still wanna give some varied uses

[grave gulch]

lets say there is a nosferatu hiding in a room before my mage players arrive in said room

they have been using obfuscate for like 1 hour before they even showed up

does it trigger the peripheral mage sight?

[high current]

normally, no, peripheral pings active uses of magic

i think there's a merit though that lets you get pinged by ongoing stuff? cant remember for sure

[grave gulch]

ok ok

which sounds more interesting?

for context players are going into drug dealer's home to try and find info about their deals he is also a wizard

1st option, magical trap is set to mess with intruders, either a bunch of killer bees will come out of the plants and start trying to kill em or we will have some kind of gas being released that will knock them out, they will be getting sleepier and sleepier until bam knocked unconscious

2nd option is that a vamp who is angry at the drug dealer will be in hiding in the room trying to ambush him, and will attack them thinking they are involved

the vamp is a doll like nosferatu who's really good at punching stuff

i was also thinking i could just have ver follow one of them home and try to get info out of a player

[grave gulch]

i would try to have a more spooky encounter if i used the doll

[clear delta]

Love dolls, very wise

[grave gulch]

i need a voice for her

she's a nosferatu so it has to have like a creepy factor to it

[high current]

i recommend trying to do Gollum

like, Gollum-Gollum, not Smeagol-Gollum

[grave gulch]

i'll search for it

[grave gulch]

a lone horror in the chronicles of darkness books suggest that a its dread powers should have a pool of 7

but i think i'll reduce that a bit

otherwise she'll have 17 dice when hitting someone in the face when using said power

and i feel like thats too much to throw at someone....

[high current]

that's saying a dice pool of 7 period

not attribute+skill+7

assuming you mean the table on page 143

[grave gulch]

Oh right

All good then

[grave gulch]

ok uhhh dread powers probably wouldnt apply to vigor now that i thought about it

considering this vamps punching with no vigor would be like a 10(cause best pool is supposed to be 10 ) how much do you think should i give it as a bonus if i have vigor be used? it would be 10 - the players defense or is like 6 already too much? the player with the highest defence has like 4 of it

[high current]

if you're going to use the horror rules to represent a vamp, i would just go with the best pool of 10

cause that being their best pool assumes any supernatural buffs they have i think

granted, i think for a nos their best pool would probably be stealth

(could of course have both punching and sneaking around be their best things, and have both be a 10)

[gleaming wave]

Every vampire my V:tR PCs have met has been like

"Where's your sire at? You got a dad kid? Do I need to call them?"

[grave gulch]

thats fair i guess

aaa

i dont have a better choice either because i SUCK picking stats

i think i`ll just go with brief nightmares rules, better than having nothing

[high current]

Str 3|Cha 2|Int 2
Dex 3|Man 2|Wit 3
Sta 2|Com 2|Res 3
Academics 2, Investigation 3, Occult 2
Athletics 3, Brawl 2, Larceny 2, Stealth 3, Survival 1
Empathy 1, Intimidation 1, Streetwise 1, Subterfuge 1
Blood Potency 2
Nightmare 1, Obfuscate 3, Vigor 3

standard character creation, +16 xp spent on getting Obfuscate and Vigor to 3(from 1), and Strength to 3(from 2)

can shift dots around a bit in theory but that gives a pool of 8 for str+brawl+vigor, and a pool of 6 for stealth when not relying on Obfuscate

obv should probably have some specialties added in somewhere but i'm not familiar enough with your game or the situation they'd be used in to make those calls other than like 'brawl(punching)' or 'stealth(standing still)' and stuff like that

[grave gulch]

@high current i owe you a million hugs

[clear delta]

In vtm and vtr, what are the most familial groups?

[high current]

Giovanni/Hecata and Circle of the Crone, I'd think

Carthians might be a close second for VtR covenants though

kinda depends on your city and how you frame them

[rapid glacier]

Nos should be on that list in VtM, they tend to put clan above sect and go to bat for each other like a found family type deal

Even refer to other Nos as ‘cousin’

[patent talon]

I think of running some vanilla CoD for my DnD group, the plan being they're a group of psychics being hunted by a cabal to harvest their powers. Plan is to mandate at least one Supernatural merit for each, but the core book doesn't have enough for my tastes.

Are there any other sources, official or fan made, that have more supernatural merits that are specifically focused on other splats (like the wolfblooded and sleepwalker merits)?

[zinc robin]

I think most other splat books have supernatural merits that don't explicitly require you be from that splat but are related to it

[mighty zephyr]

https://codexofdarkness.com/wiki/Merits,_Universal_(2nd_Edition)

[patent talon]

Thanks both! I'll take a peruse

[high current]

there's a part of me that wants to say 'why not just use Deviant' but i feel like not adding a splat on top of the core mechanics is your entire point, so, carry on

also yeah, Hurt Locker is a blue book with a decent amount of supernatural merits

[patent talon]

Yeah, the idea is to get them used to WoD mechanics and I only own physically Mage and Werewolf which might be the two most complicated splats to introduce lmao

Honestly I was weighing up running this idea in Unknown Armies 3e instead, but that's got quite an involved character creation sequence

[high current]

[radiant marsh]

Second Sight for 1e

For like

Literal Psychic stuff

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/11872/world-of-darkness-second-sight

[patent talon]

Thanks!

[high current]

one of the Dark Eras books also provides some stuff for 2e i think? cause there was an 'age of spiritualism' era

Dark Eras Companion, Lifting the Veil
from a quick skim, no new merits, but it did have some mystery cults and other stuff thats less 'new merit' more 'specific usage for an existing merit'

[grave gulch]

so death mages can make zombies to fight for them

can life wizards make something like a homonculos or frankenstein to serve them?

[nimble gale]

I believe so, though I think you also want some Mind and Prime. ... I think Prime's still a thing in Awakening? Ascension ins my preference but i've dabbled

[mighty zephyr]

It is

And it's got way more juice to it too

[mighty zephyr]

Yes you can make bodies but like ID said you need an animating force, which is mind or spirit

[barren vortex]

all the arcanum are pretty cool

[mighty zephyr]

The spirit version is just making a body and then shoving a spirit into it

Mind is actually giving it sentience

Prime and Matter can also make Golems

[grave gulch]

considering the bad guy is a tremere and they like to learn about a bunch of the arcanums i feel like that could work

[mighty zephyr]

Is this awakening or ascension

[nimble gale]

Given Death was metnioned, I assume Awakening

since Entropy got split into Death and Fate in Awakening

but yeah, matter, life, death, spirit, mind, and prime are the spheres that, when combined, can make all sorts of fun little zombie-homunculus-golem-adams.

[mighty zephyr]

Ah right

Then yeah

Many such ways

Or just buy the familiar merit

[grave gulch]

awakening, sorry

thank you ID and Voy

also Voy i always stop recognizing you when you change your pfp

[mighty zephyr]

Good

[grave gulch]

[mighty zephyr]

You're literally wearing a disguise

Can't judge

[grave gulch]

dang it

[nimble gale]

lol

it's np, mage is my special interest when it comes to WoD games

[midnight grotto]

I just had a really good general-purpose WoD plothook idea

A tricky but potentially efficient way to destabilize or even destroy a party unit (coterie, pack, etc) would be to hook up with a member and then sow dissent by cheating on them with a different member, or that sort of thing. Incite band drama.

[high current]

im curious if anybody in here is watching Private Nightmares new-ish actual play from Alexander Ward, featuring Aabria Iyengaar, Gina DeVivo, Mayanna Beren, Xander Jeanneret, and Luis Carazo
and then to round out the former New York by Night s1 cast, Joey Rassool is the editor this show is legitimately them going 'we want to do our own game while we wait for things to line up so we can finally record NYbN s3'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMc9ZlkyUhI

also, minor spoiler for the first episode but a neat thing they're doing is ||the whole coterie is thin-blooded||
also they play on a stage with a bunch of couches and chairs in a semi-circle so there's a lot of them walking around and using stuff on the stage as props

[mighty zephyr]

that's really cool

[high current]

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/MSIie8tyUuQ

[rapid glacier]

Me and some of my VtM players watch it, it’s fun watching a high effort drama-type game compared to our “Burn Notice Meets The Muppets” feel our game has sometimes

[royal river]

about to set up a game in new york at the tail end of 1999, which is a lovely time to thrust ppl into a chronicle lol

what originally was an excuse for me to inject y2k aesthetics into a campaign became me realizing that 1999 is one of the most interesting times for Kindred to be "alive" in nyc

putting ppl into the middle of a gaping power vacuum and telling them to navigate it themselves is always a fun hook-

[mighty zephyr]

I also ran a 1999 new york game

Funnily enough

Though it was for Mage

[high current]

1999 means you can also put them through the Week of Nightmares at some point

[nimble gale]

God I love the Week of Nightmares

[runic timber]

what is the week of nightmares?

[rapid glacier]

That’s the uh Ravnos progenitor waking up right?

[nimble gale]

Yeah

"We have other ways to bring Sunlight to Bangladesh."

[rapid glacier]

They wake up hungry and an insane and it makes every Ravnos not in torpor nuts and gets most of them killed

[nimble gale]

one of the really big multi-splat events, though vampire focused

[rapid glacier]

You can take it as a lore sheet in V5 for basically being traumatized by the events that happen

It’s not even a Ravnos only one, anyone could just have been there and seen some shit

[nimble gale]

Yeah

[runic timber]

oh aight

in another order of things, my player's reaction to knowing that a very strong and important malkavian could be spying on them has been getting a flashbang

[rapid glacier]

A very strong Malkavian wants to know your location is a pretty dire threat

Especially if you’ve been playing fast and loose with the Masquerade

[runic timber]

its even worse! they're an Archon

and the kind of malkavian that has domination

her main trick is hiding 30+ combat ghouls around her at all times

and a pet brujah with a warhammer

[clear delta]

Super vampire wakes up, everyone on earth has nightmares
Super Asian vampires go fight it. Think other groups popped in too
A storm is created to block the sun
At the end, mages drop a magical nuke, killing everyone but the Antediluvian, the storm is gone
Mages finish him off using orbital mirrors a d lenses to focus sunlight on him

[runic timber]

crazy stuff

[nimble gale]

That nuke is also the root cause of the avatar storm/great storm/etc because a wraith uses the ghost of it to try to nuke the labyrinth iirc

[runic timber]

nukes have ghosts..??

[mighty zephyr]

Don't think too hard about it

[velvet sparrow]

Wasn't it complete coincidence that three spirit nukes all got detonated at the same time

[high current]

yeah kinda sounds like it from a skim of the unofficial wiki
the technocrats dropped their spirit nuke in india, xerxes jones(a void engineer) had a relic nuke in the labyrinth, and it sounds like the smiling lord(lord of the grim legion) detonated a nuke over enoch, which caused the relic nuke to go off early and kill xerxes

[valid merlin]

everything has a ghost in WoD and Chronicles

using ghosts of objects is also a fun trick Mages and Geists can do

[high current]

they have different explanations for it, though im not entirely sure if my understanding is correct on both fronts;
owod, everything ends up in the underworld as long as someone dies with a memory of it, because the underworld is made of memories given form more or less
cofd, you can have multiple ghosts of the same person, created when they go through a traumatic event or radical change in their life, because any sort of significant change causes a psychic echo to manifest in the underworld as a ghost

[high current]

fun thing about this show, there's some talkback things they did and Aabria mentions in the newest one that watching Xander play X on LA By Night got her interested enough to read the lore on Malkavians, and she's borrowing something from it for 'this scifi game im running soon'
Madness Network coming in the next Worlds Beyond Number campaign?

[rapid glacier]

X was a good Malk

[high current]

ye, that comment was made after Alex talked about how he didn't like Malks until Xander came in to play X, i guess because he'd been exposed to so many fishmalks/people otherwise playing the clan badly, and then Xander came out swinging

[royal river]

so. small rules question bc i'm getting back into the swing of VtM(5e) obviously, and there's a particular question that might have an easy answer but i'm tossing it in here

well, maybe two questions

one, is that one PC is basically taking the benefits of another NPC vampire's resources, i'm assuming that goes into their pool of resources, yes?

or rather, if an npc has all of these resources, and the pc is leeching off of them in a kind of "sugar baby" relationship, does that count towards the pc's resources or is that a separate thing

i'm guessing that this either falls into mawla rules or into just flavoring what resources you have on your character sheet, but idk

[high current]

if its a permanent thing, the PC would represent it with their own Resources, or Mawla/Mentor/a social merit if they get more out of it than just money, but that also assumes they have to ask the NPC in question to use their Resources

[royal river]

it's just a "you live here, and most of my stuff is your stuff so long as you aren't stupid" thing afaik

bumming in someone else's haven and taking advantage of their resources as if it were their own, which mechanically would just be your haven, your bg, etc. but the npc is implied to be at least a little more to do than the pc, so the question they originally came to me w is if they have to make a separate npc resources sheet and tracker for Their stuff which i don't really think is necessary, but if they're technically richer than the PC it's a fair question to ask i suppose

[high current]

if they're essentially just a trust-fund baby then yeah that's just Resources, and instead of having to go to Work at their Job, they just have to keep Vamp Daddy/Mommy happy

theoretically any of the backgrounds mentioned could work, there's just some slightly different flavor implications

[royal river]

nods nods

much appreciated, that was stumping me for a minute for some reason

[grave gulch]

wizards can be turned into vampires right? they end up losing magic in the process right?

[runic timber]

iirc yes

[grave gulch]

i imagine is the same in both wod and chronicles

[clear delta]

Not chronicles

[high current]

yeah iirc Mage is the one major splat that theoretically can be overwritten, though in CofD it might be worth a Contest of Wills to see how it goes, assuming the Mage is unwilling

i defer to wax

[clear delta]

As far as I know you can't change a major splat into another

Prometheans are the exception as they can become human, then get turned into another splat

[high current]

Mages are still technically human though iirc just, human+

[clear delta]

Both being a mage and a vampire are drastic changes to the soul and its container, and I don't think you can simply swap one into another
That's why I theorize major splats derive their powers from their soul or soul-equivalent

[runic timber]

in wod I think you kinda lose your soul when becoming a vampire, and lose your magic with it

[high current]

ye, see the Tremere for a prime example

[runic timber]

Tremere was a mage and he had to invent blood magic after his transformation because he lost his former power

[clear delta]

Eh the soul thing is wibly wobly
Since there are ghost vampires

[runic timber]

this makes me wonder, if a mage made vampire reaches golconda, does it get its magic back?

[grave gulch]

if we going with wax's take i guess i cant have the big boss vamp be a former seer then

could a sleepwalker be embraced in your view @clear delta ?

[runic timber]

I'm not sure if you need to be an actual mage to be a seer, but may be that he was in the faction, but couldn't use magic? only studying theory and using thaumaturgy and such

[grave gulch]

yeah! thats what i was thinking!

[high current]

sleepwalkers absolutely can, they're just mortals who can witness magic without causing paradox

[grave gulch]

maybe the relative of a seer mage that could not awaken

ended up turning to vampirism in order to attain some power

[high current]

(technically any splat, major or minor, except for Mage qualifies as a sleepwalker from a Mage pov)

...well, not necessarily Hunters, unless they have a supernatural merit or some sort of ability from a compact/conspiracy

[clear delta]

Sleepwalkers are humans with a little extra, a minor splat at best
They can be embraced

[grave gulch]

a sleepwalker seer also makes sense cause its easier to make the choice if what you want is power and you dont have magic anyway

[high current]

worth noting, its your game, do whatever you think makes things the most interesting but as a side note, VtR2e Thousand Years of Night has some info on crossovers and weirdly doesn't say anything about Embracing Mages, just talks about them potentially trying to steal power from Elders(which, granted, is the main focus of TYoN)

[clear delta]

Could easily be invictus or twist Lancea doctrine to seer belief

[grave gulch]

oh yeah! im making them an Invictus big figure

i like crossovers way too much

i know some folks hate them but come on, its cool to have em duke it out

[high current]

i like them, i just wish there was more solid info on how some things interact

[grave gulch]

also does vitae also quickly evaporate in Requiem?

[short quiver]

I don't think it necessarily evaporates, but it loses its "oomph," I think
Requiem made a bigger thing out of tapping the source, Masquerade was more permissive with stuff like blood bags

[grave gulch]

right

[mighty zephyr]

CofD mages can be embraced

Believe there's Canon examples of it

[clear delta]

Wait really???

[gleaming wave]

I have cooked I think

my party is going to be tasked with investigating a neonazi bar, and they will probably start a fight

if they do?

https://youtu.be/YKa5tyjLbi8?si=xhUMXV3b_JOzARDA

"you got plot?"
"We got hype moments and aura"

[grave gulch]

I kind of wanted to have my players beat up nazis before but always felt uncomfortable with actually writing nazis in the plot even if they are meant to have their asses kicked

[mighty zephyr]

Mages can also die and become ghosts

[sour zephyr]

i started reading clive barker's imajica today and it reminds me a lot of MtAw so far
they're both about a fallen world cut off from magic and the mages that try to fix that problem

[short quiver]

My Mage PC: "You don't need to worry about them, they're zombies, it's okay to kill them."
The Arrow He Hangs Out With: "They aren't zombies!"
My Mage PC: "Metaphorically. They're fascists. I don't respect them."

[radiant marsh]

I was thinking GiTs with Batou and the Yakuza bar

<Copious amounts of gunfire>

"Didn't you promise no shooting?"
Deadpan "I really tried, I swear."

[high current]

i recommend taking a note from Rowan Rook & Deckard's Eat the Reich
make it clear that they're nazis, but give them other more defining traits to play up--in EtD the first major enemy you deal with is a cyborg called the stahlsoldat(steel soldier), who you find in a pavilion full of atmospheric monitoring equipment. it can connect itself to the array by plugging a cable into the back of its neck, which essentially gives it heightened senses, letting it track targets through walls, fight while blind and deaf, and dodge incoming fire before the trigger is pulled
it is, without a doubt, some nazi bullshit, but there's plenty of other wild shit there to play up that doesnt require you to shout slurs or anything that would make you or your table uncomfortable

i'll translate another example from EtD to be more suitable to Mage
a movie star got some bad press because some of his co-stars were disappearing and/or being found dead, but before any evidence could tie him to the crime, a scelesti steps in and mind wipes anybody who could have spoken against him--the rumors persist, but there's nothing solid to tie him to his crimes.
meanwhile, in exchange for keeping him from getting caught, the scelesti replaces his heart with a gulmoth that, when he gets angry, floods his veins with abyssal ichor that forms solid masses on his forehead and fingers, and in his mouth, giving him horns, claws, and sharp teeth
(feel free to replace scelesti with seer or whatever you want, replace gulmoth with a maeljin or some other evil spirit or something, thats just what i went with )

[grave gulch]

Good ideas thank you Rats

[untold elm]

Poking in here in case I run mage...

[clear delta]

Yo

[untold elm]

I've got an Unknown Armies game brewing but I'm also like oh hm what if it was mage.

How does mage the awakening do with a "road trip" type of story? Is "here's a weird magic object" a valid like, type of thing that's around in wod?

[grave gulch]

i feel like it could work well

[untold elm]

📝

[heady kestrel]

which mage?

oh awakening

Yeah Awakening is good for that type of thing

the big thing is that mages always want to be looking into weird sshit

they solve mysteries for their own sake

[untold elm]

The current premise of the UA game is "you are a band who are in debt to this weird rich guy and he's having you go around collecting Magic Objects for him around the US while on tour"

and certainly its a vibe that matches mtaw, but will it work. obviously facts can be tweaked.

Definitely a hugely different vibe. you suck less in mage certainly

[high current]

it could work; main thing is that Mage has Orders which in theory vary in practice between cities, which might be an interesting problem to present to your players, but could also be a headache to figure out, assuming you play it that way(you could also just ignore that bit and say that, for the PCs purposes, the Silver Ladder in city A functions the same as in city B, just with a different face)

[untold elm]

"We have emails and SOPs"

Part of the goal of a road trip type game is to ryn in to a bunch of different weirdos imo

[patent talon]

Gah, my two favourite TTRPGs!
Interesting question, I do get the impression that Mage is written with the assumption that you're in a semi-fixed location, as others have mentioned with the idea of orders and caucuses and what not, while I think UA is more loose in that regard, it's more about the cabal and their goal.
Plus, at certain points RAW a Mage needs to seek tutoring to increase their arcana dots, while UA is based on just trying your Identities (magical and mundane) and failing

[untold elm]

It would be my first time running either, haha

[patent talon]

Ah right! Which edition of UA are you looking at? Theres quite a difference between 2nd and 3rd edition

[untold elm]

3e all the way baby

[high current]

i prefer 2e personally 3e made the character sheet more rigid/less flexible

not that i hate 3e or people who play it, just, i liked 2e's approach of letting you rename abilities directly and having kinda vague names for supernatural abilities so you had some wiggle room

[short quiver]

Most of the WoD/ChroD lines assume a mostly fixed gameplay by default, because Monster Gangsters interpersonal drama is easiest with a more bottled up cast of characters.
Vampire especially, Requiem especially especially, because Petty Mean Girls Of The Damned is the whole deal
But not universally even in ChroD, Promethian's whole thing obligates you to keep the road trip going before the neighbors start sharpening the pitchforks
And Mage definitely backed off on that with stuff like Order structure in 2nd (a relief if only for demographic reasons). There's plenty of crazy weirdness to look into on wandering road trips, it just sidelines most of the political part of the setting

[grave gulch]

i got over my stat picking block

i made 3 vamps for me players to fight tomorrow

obrimos, mastigos and a Thyrsus vs a mekhet, gangrel and Nosferatu

[clear delta]

What are ways masquerade and requiem vampires can fly?

[runic timber]

the gargoyle discipline, tho idk how other vampires can learn it
but

there's this supernatural merit of 5 points that my players found, idk where

[clear delta]

Diablerie, the meal that talks back

[mighty zephyr]

shape shifting into a bird

or bat or etc

[runic timber]

and the description is, and I translate literally: "this power works as the Goku lil cartoons. You fly slow at first, and then fast as fuck boiii"

[mighty zephyr]

It's mainly Protean

and then some old Thaumaturgy stuff because Thaumaturgy sucked and was broken

[clear delta]

The videogame makes you think it's just blood powers, but thaumaturgy has a lot of stuff

[runic timber]

the videogame really has THE blood magic
such as: casting "your blood boils and then you explode, fuck you and everything in the area of effect"

my fav fact about the Tremere is how much of their magic is stolen

[mighty zephyr]

That's the baseline Blood Sorcery yeah

[clear delta]

A discipline for shaping blood into objects would be appropriate

[velvet sparrow]

Masquerade Thaumaturgy has a telekinesis path, that at high enough levels lets you fly

[clear delta]

Requiem ventrue bloodline that gains protean. Could see themselves as rulers of the sky, and get some flight based Devitions

[rapid glacier]

If they’ve got the time, you can learn to fly in like a month, but you’d need to get creative about your times you take off for record keeping, so as nobody getting suspicious why you only ever flew at night for your pilot’s license || :v ||

But yeah it’s blood sorcery/thaumaturgy

You can do alchemy in v5 to get it also, but it’s gonna have some side effects for regular Kindred drinking it as opposed to a TB

[red flower]

I just had a VtM session last night where not a single dice roll was made.
Just pure roleplay.

Hell I don’t think anyone even looked at their character sheets.

[gleaming wave]

my players have struggled to get beats in VtR because they just yap at each other all session instead of rolling or doing their aspirations or resolving conditions

[red flower]

Fuuuck exactly the same here.
We have a goal we need to acomplish but we have made no progress in 3 sessions, which is a month and a half irl time.

[gleaming wave]

we love to yap tho

next session we're getting stuff done though

[royal river]

speaking of vtm- i've got a question or two about casting a Tzimisce as the overarching BBEG, circa 1999-2000

this hypothetical BBEG would be one of the few survivors of the Camarilla's purge of the Sabbat from New York. Or perhaps adjacent to someone that was, and steps in to right some things. however, i'm of the impression that the tzimisce kind of like to stick to their turf. having this guy be displaced or a more active player feels... well, i mean, i want the main villain to be an active presence, how do i square that?

or is that realistically not much of an issue?

[high current]

its less that they stick to their turf, more that they're required to sleep with their home soil, which, just get a zip-lock bag and keep some near your bed lmao

[royal river]

ah, gotcha. see, i knew about that stipulation, it's more about how personal ambition factors into it but that makes sense

this dude's motivation would be to get control back into the hands of the Sabbat, through fear and subterfuge. it wouldn't canonically be successful but he'll probably be a big threat to the player characters and do a vampire terrorism about it.

i might be looking into it too strictly, but is a tzimisce mobster stepping up to try and force the sabbat to lick their wounds too much of an altruistic action, even if it is for the purpose of "if we can't have this city, nobody should"?

[lethal idol]

IMO this sounds like an excellent villain. I wouldn’t worry too much about portraying them as “Tzimisce enough,” the clans have cultural trends but at the end of the day they are still individuals.

That being said! Tzimisce also tend to be covetous of their things, and I can see how this particular person would still see NYC as “my city,” and the Camarilla as lowlife squatters who need to be taught a lesson.

[rapid glacier]

Yeah following Tradition and Greed tend to be Tzimisce traits universally speaking, but there is a lot of ways to interpret these two traits; this one feeling like NYC is still theirs can definitely fit

[royal river]

I can see that! I've made this guy as basically a high-ranking goon of the de jure former Sabbat head of New York, Francisco Domingo de Polonia. He's someone who is... a bit disgusted at how leadership has proven impotent in the face of the Camarilla, but he'll bite his tongue for as long as it takes to get His city back into the hands of its proper owners

and the PCs only incur his wrath by managing to be in the wrong place at the wrong time

and for their sin of trying to live their lives in relative peace, they get the joys of having a 6'2" shovelhead with his own cadre of thugs and horrific flesh slaves deciding They Need To Go

in addition to the power vacuum of kindred society in y2k-era new york

[red flower]

I’ve got a question on how should a VTM game be paced.

Right now my GM is doing it as each session constitutes one night.

We have a deadline for a heist happening in 1 ingame week, which is 3.5 months IRL.

We are now three days (sessions) into that week.
With each session leading up to this big event be prep and adding more plot threads or new characters.

However i’m noticing that in these 3 sessions, we basically have more than 4 other plots introduced and happening at the same time, none of which appear to be related to the main ‘quest’.

Personally though this attempt at a slow burn thing isn’t really working.
I’ve told him this, especially with games only happening every two weeks.

Is this normal though?
Am I just being paranoid or is this actually too slow going?

[zinc robin]

I love how this is simultaneously incredibly fast paced in narrative time (that's a lot happening for an in-game week) and slow paced in real time (that's over 14:1 as a real time to game time ratio) and it's definitely a weird pacing because of it (though too slow is always relative to the individual or group)

[red flower]

Its ridiculously fast paced ingame.

We are only 7 sessions in. Session 0 was character introduction and being embraced.
We are fresh vampires.

Was a really weird decision by the GM. Our characters were really thrown into the deep end.

[zinc robin]

Oh neat, someone's sire's getting axed for failing to uphold the accounting almost immediately

[rapid glacier]

My second story for my VtM I’m ST for is moving at about that pace (faster tbh), but it’s not the coterie’s first time out as a group, so I’d say maybe a little more space to breathe a bit wouldn’t be bad but maybe your ST is cooking in something

You aren’t like shovel heads are you?

[zinc robin]

That's one of the only reasons I can personally see for that many kindred to be embraced in that short a timespan outside of "some Anarchs did summat dumbassery" because a whole group of vampires is effectively a mass embrace and those are rarely if ever good ideas (actually, how big a group is this?)

[red flower]

Heres the rundown of our sessions so far. Very condensed.

Session 0: Characters introductions and getting turned.

Session 1: Meeting important NPC’s. Get info on what our group will be doing. Goal is to find which clan is traitorous to the city Baron.

Session 2: Get a shared lair set up. Moving out of old houses and close off ties to any family. Characters go to a bar to destress.
My character gets into a fistfight with a incognito Hunter he spotted and shadowed out of the bar. Kill the hunter.
Hunter has ‘Cabal’ markings on clothing and a vial of vampire blood. Turned invisible more than once during the fight.

Session 3: Meetings with 3 suspected Traitorous Clan heads. Make up a story about us transporting a Mage in a weeks time to the Barons lair. The idea is that if a clan will try anything, or attack our convoy, that they are the traitors.

Session 4: I make up a plan for how to make the plan look legit, and how to potentially capture any would be attackers. Other players go off on their own thing. Events happen that cause two characters to frenzy. Result is a PC death.

Session 5: Two new PC replacements.
Dispose of dead body. Go after character who killed PC. Find a car crash matching that character, however we find no body.
Suspect he is still alive, or was disposed of by third party.
Go check a nearby cemetery, and find a fresh grave with a person inside. Person inside revives, but is not a vampire, nor seems to be a zombie. No bleeding, no thirst, no heartbeat. Take him back to lair.

Session 6: New player joins.
Go talk to baron about our plan, and inform him of the PC death and the new mystery NPC.

[rapid glacier]

Yeah without any other details this sounds like a game where the PCs don’t know they are shovelheads until it’s too late

[red flower]

We have 6 players.

[red flower]

Define shovel head?

[zinc robin]

"embraced, whacked over head with shovel, thrown in pit, left to dig self out if alive"

[rapid glacier]

A Sabbat aligned kindred who was mass embraced, left in a shallow grave and pointed basically at a city

Yeah that

Disposable vampire asset, essentially

[zinc robin]

I mean it sounds like an Anarch game where the local city is just mass embracing and not Shovelheads in the technical sense

[red flower]

As far as we are aware, we were all independently embraced, randomly, within the same city on the same night.

All of us were found by the cities Sabbat group shortly after we were embraced.

We all awoke about 2 days afterwards, in a basement with lots of blood bags.

However it does make some sense. We were given our task because we have zero ties to any of the clans beyond our blood.
So the sabbat loses nothing if we die or fail.
We don’t even know who our sires are.

[zinc robin]

Oh yeah no nevermind that's a Sabbat mass embrace and y'all haven't undergone the creation rites, you're shovelheads

[rapid glacier]

So you could be shovelheads, ahhh I see; if you don’t even know much of your respective sires and the Sabbat just happen to find you?

Not to potentially spoil your STs plans or speculate on another’s game or anything, but it could be intentional

The pacing I mean

[zinc robin]

Definitely feels intentional but also definitely feels weird lmao

[red flower]

It was implied that the sabbat had been keeping tabs on vampires who have been randomly embracing people, and then moving on.

The sabbat then comes in and scoops up the confused newbies. We are then used for dirty jobs.

We are just the latest in a ‘batch’. The previous groups have a track record of dying really early.

[red flower]

My GM likes plot twists.
So we may be double crossed, backstabbed, bamboozled.
Anything is possible.

[rapid glacier]

In that case yeah let em cook for a bit, but a standard game (well, ‘standard’ is kind of a strong word ) a chronicle might go days or even weeks or months between sessions, especially VtM where you’re machinations are on a really long time frame

[zinc robin]

But yeah the pacing of "each session is a single in-game night" is slightly cursed from a VtM timeframe

[rapid glacier]

Nah that part is fine, it’s the back to back nights that’s the weird part

[zinc robin]

Yeah that's admittedly what I meant

single consecutive in-game night's what gets weird

Especially if agg starts getting thrown around because then you're sorta dealing with agg for several consecutive sessions I guess?

[red flower]

Agg?

[zinc robin]

aggravated damage

[red flower]

OH RIGHT

I haven’t thought of that

[zinc robin]

Which heals at a rate of one single point per night at the fastest

[red flower]

Im currently the only character capable of dealing aggravated damage consistently with Claws (gangrel)
Actually thinking about it im the only combat rated character.
The rest are very social focused.

[zinc robin]

well technically at the fastest you can just have a Salubri heal it significantly faster

... if you can find one, they're basically functionally extinct

[rapid glacier]

I think Gangrel can also get into it, maybe? I know TB have a formula for a healing torpor

[zinc robin]

Yeah, I think there are other methods, but for the most part it's just "yeah this sucks to heal and you're stuck hurt for a while"

Actually "don't take agg if you an avoid it" is just fairly good chronicle agnostic advice

[red flower]

True

[zinc robin]

aggravated damage is kinda sorta really bad to take lmao

[red flower]

I’ve only done combat twice in VTM.

The group is still trying to figure it out.
How we ran it was with turns, with attacker acting first and defender acted in reaction.

I… don’t think thats how it is supposed to work? But it did work for us.

[zinc robin]

Which version of VtM is this?

[red flower]

2e

[zinc robin]

I don't quite recall how combat's actually supposed to work in that one

[red flower]

This one

[zinc robin]

I don't particularly think I've seen combat in 2e but then again most of my play experience is V5 or V20 or the MET LARP ruleset

or 2e Requiem

[red flower]

Ok so we have actually been playing it right.
Went digging.

[mighty zephyr]

Yeah the declaration rules are the most often ignored thing I've ever seen

[rapid glacier]

I skip over the combat rules entirely, I just do three-and-outs in my 5e games now and I feel like it’s better for it

[frank atlas]

https://polyhedralplanet.blogspot.com/2025/05/the-monster-mash.html

a blog post on something i've struggled with

"How many of these dang things are in a city"

[patent talon]

Good article, especially appreciate the worked example

[frank atlas]

I'm not the author

To be clear

But yes I'd agree lmao

[patent talon]

Been watching a lot of clips of the sopranos, also watched Casino recently and started mulling over a Mage the Awakening Chronicle where the Pentacle are the organised crime and the seers are the cops, how it would work thematically

[midnight grotto]

Honestly that's business as usual

[patent talon]

I suppose so, I guess I have a sort of rose tinted view of the pentacle by default, so this'd lean more into the shittier power dynamics then I usually think of when I think of mage, much more reflective of the seers as default

Hmm, maybe this would work better as a seer chronicle lmao

[high current]

iirc thats basically the political layout of a game the lead dev(DaveB) for 2e did a while back, that he posted about on the OP forums
game was called the Soul Cage and it was set in Vegas, with the Pentacle being set up as gangs and the Seers as the casinos and cops
i unfortunately never got very far in it tbh main thing i remember is that one of the PCs was a Guardian and the Guardians in that game ended their conversations with "Be Seeing You" which I only learned within the last few years is a reference to an old tv show, The Prisoner

[midnight grotto]

I've been planning a game where the lead Guardian is face-cast as James Gandalfini

Though granted Vampire is definitely easier to do crime stories with

But the thing is politics vary so much city to city that it's very easy to say "yeah this Pentacle is on the rough side"

[frank atlas]

It was broken Diamond IIRC

soul cage was set in the north east of england

https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/mage-the-awakening-the-man-comes-around.591295/

nah the vegas one is The Man Comes Around

[high current]

right, that one

[untold elm]

Anyone got a like... compressed guide on how to play mage the awakening? I have a really hard time actually reading the book itself and its making figuring out what the rules actually are difficult . like an instruction guide lol. or a secret srd

[high current]

do you know the basic mechanics of CofD, or are you looking specifically for an explanation on the magic system/other mage-specific stuff?

[untold elm]

1. No I do not
2. Yeah

The book is genuinely difficult to read and understand the information in it, in a way I have not experienced before.

I understand the basics of "d10 pool based on base skill + the thing youre doing"

[high current]

you get a success for every die that lands on an 8 or higher, and normally any that land on a 10 explode(referred to by the book as '10-again'; you can also get 9-again and 8-again, which cause 9-10 and 8-10 to explode, respectively. exploding, if you're not familiar, is just counting the success and rerolling or throwing out another die)
there's also Rote, which rerolls any die that doesnt succeed from the initial roll--this is different from the Mage-specific term of Rote, which is a spell you've 'learned' similar to a wizard in D&D, and can cast more effectively

tl;dr of the magic system is, every dot in an Arcanum gives you more control over that aspect of reality, with the different things you can do being based on messing with the subject of your spell as a symbol, as a reverse version of Plato's Cave. instead of reality casting shadows on the wall, you manipulate the shadows to change reality.

[high current]

each dot in an Arcanum gives 2-3 Practices which are essentially verbs in Mage's verb-noun magic system(the Arcana being the nouns)
1 gives Compelling(minor control, make the subject do something it may have done anyways), Knowing(learn things about the subject), and Unveiling(reveal a hidden subject; if the subject is specifically hidden supernaturally, this will likely provoke a Contest of Wills, but generally, it's more 'sense something that you normally couldnt, such as a heartbeat or a radio signal')
2 gives Ruling(major control, make the subject do something it's capable of but wouldn't normally do), Shielding(protect a subject from the arcanum or protect a subject that falls under the arcanum from other things), and Veiling(hide a subject that falls under the arcanum, or hide a subject from things that fall under the arcanum)
3 gives Fraying(damaging effects, using affecting something under the arcanum directly), Perfecting(healing/fixing things under the arcanum, making them better), and Weaving(changing aspectf of something that falls under the arcanum, but without changing its basic form; a man can be turned into a woman, or granted claws/fangs/etc, but not turned into a wolf)
4 gives Patterning(advanced healing, but also changing something's basic form), and Unraveling(advanced damaging effects, generally; agg damage)
5 gives Making(create something from nothing), and Unmaking(erase it from existence)

each dot in an arcanum will also give you 1-2 Attainments, which are special abilities that aren't technically supernal magic, even though they mimic spell effects
standard order of attainments is like
1 - counterspell(specifically within the arcanum in question)
2 - mage armor(either actual armor or a boost to Defense), lesser utility attainment(eg, Death lets you see Ghosts with Mage Sight)
3- targeted summoning for supernal entities
4 - greater utility attainment(Death lets you force a Clash of Wills with anything that attempts to affect your soul)
5 - Create Rote

honestly from there i'd recommend just reading the book because otherwise i'm just going to end up transcribing it into chat and that's probably not going to help you any more

[patent talon]

Aw yeah soul cage rules, though i suppose there's some amount of difference between Mages as Spies and Mages and Criminals/Cops? Might be a aesthetic difference though (replied to wrong post lol)

[high current]

like, i tried to write up a tl;dr of the spellcasting mechanics, and it was probably going to hit discord's character limit

at it's most basic, the way casting a spell works is you say 'i want to <Practice> that thing that falls under this Arcanum', you roll a dice pool of Gnosis+Arcanum(+Skill if it's a Rote), and if you succeed then the spell goes off; there's a lot of other factors that go into it though, quite literally because one of the mechanics is Spell Factors

[twin mural]

Oh, Mage talk? Great, because I have a question for Mage the Awakening 2nd ed. What would a spell need to fake the past of a place in a Lasting manner? Is that even possible? Mix some Time into a spell based on Alter Integrity, which can then be made lasting?

[orchid void]

Definitely some Time, maybe Space? Definitely some Spirit or Mind depending on how you would like the Vibe Shifted

[twin mural]

Oh Spirit is a good point. It's supposed to be a "clean up" spell that a mage can do when leaving a place and he wants to prevent other mages to just waltz in, postcognition and see all their work

[orchid void]

Hrmmmnn

I think you could get away with Veiling Time?

like, okay. Veiling Time, Veiling Space i think would be enough to do that

You could swap Spirit for Space if instead your Veiling took the form of bribing the spirit-of-the-place into forgetting

it would, stop the postcoginition but if you left it alone long enough it might deform into a Mystery which is just as fun :3

[twin mural]

The problem would be why that effect is Lasting and not a relinquished spell that still lingers. I guess using Spirit would touch it in a way that also works on a 'fundamental' level

It's why I was looking at Matter, because those spells have an easy way to make changes to the Fallen World permanent

[orchid void]

true! But you aren't hiding a Place

You're hiding an Event

And that would be Time and Fate and Space and Mind

You wanna probably get space in there for Fraying Space (Obliterate Sympathy)

[mighty zephyr]

It depends on how you do it

and what you want to do

[twin mural]

Oh yeah, Space is definitely needed to scrub the place of Sympathy. Matter would be an easy way to bump up the temporal sympathy though, since it could make easy changes to the place

[orchid void]

That's fair! Argue with ur ST. that is unfortunately a lot of the game of playing mage.

[mighty zephyr]

I think Time and Space is all you need, personally

[twin mural]

Well, Matter wouldn't prevent Postcognition, just make it harder, so it's not entirely what I need

[mighty zephyr]

The only problem with doing it with a spell is that you're doing a spell to cover up you're doing a spell

[twin mural]

That's why I was looking for Lasting effects that just make it so that it was like that

[mighty zephyr]

There's no real way to do that when manipulating the past

Lasting effects are generally "The stimuli does not require active involvement anymore"

a fire is Lasting because the fire your spell made by setting the grass on fire is different than the fire you made

Matter can be lasting because now that you made a Thing A Thing it's now just a Thing

[twin mural]

Yeah, that's why I was looking at it. I guess outside of arcana 4+ trickery it's not possible (turn the past of the place (time) into chair (matter))

[high current]

iirc the only fully official way to change something with Time and have it be Lasting is to return to the present without anybody counterspelling/dispelling the effect that sent you back first, but that'd be less 'hide that something happened' and more 'undo the thing'

[patent talon]

I'd say a Lasting effect would be scrubbing the temporal sympathies and postcognintion is following those sympathies backwards (though the spell isn't explicit about that lmao). It'd probably be obvious that the room is, let's say, missing 15 minutes of time 2 hours ago, but that wouldn't require upkeep IIRC

Also has the bonus effect of that period of time becoming forgotten or at least hard to remember

[twin mural]

Which spell destroys temporal sympathy in a Lasting way though (below time 5)? Or is that just a feature of destroying sympathy that I missed?

[patent talon]

Theres not any in the core book, as far as I can see, I'd say if Space can destroy a sympathic link and be lasting at 4 (Cut Threads), then Time should be able to do the same.

Though for me this raises the question of if Temporal sympathies can be repaired without magical intervention, like interacting with a place restores Sympathic links

[mighty zephyr]

We do know that it's POSSIBLE to do so

but it requires making something so alien to the past that it's unrecognizable

like when Pangea split or Atlantis fell

So really the best way to destroy temporal sympathy for a room is to just like

burn it down

[twin mural]

Huh, yeah Cut Threads is just 4. Neat, that's not as bad as I thought. The mage in question already has Life 4, so why not have a buddy that is Time 4

Wait, so you could not postcognition a room that has been destroyed?

Cuz that does kinda bring me back to my initial Matter Trickery. Just replace the whole room with a different room (matter makes it Lasting)

[patent talon]

Hmm, I don't know, on the one hand I'd say "why can't you just use space to project yourself (or stand in) the place where the room used to be and look backwards to when it was there" but then it's a issue of sympathy again, so maybe yeah if you burned down the building maybe that'd work, as long as the searcher couldn't find a piece of the room to use for sympathy

Ah, Postcognintion specifically mentions a subject, so yeah I guess if the room is no longer in a state to be the subject, it can't be viewed

I think the problem with replacing the room with matter is the matter used to be something else? So you'd follow it back to before it was whatever you made it

Guess the arson plan works best if the room was up high, no ground to postcognintion on

As long as your mage sleuth can't find a fragment of the room in the ashes...

Or a person who was there

[twin mural]

Mages trying to be normal people - but they have to burn down every house/room they used for extensive time so as to not leave traces

[patent talon]

Mage as spies just makes sense, wipe down the gun for fingerprints and then sever it's connections to you and the crime scene

[twin mural]

Man, I actually like that idea. The old house is just gone, burnt away and the Mage that left just Mattered a new house into existence (but it has no connection to the former house)

Postcognition in the room just shows you the meadow it was before

[patent talon]

This reminded me of the legacy I wrote a while back where one of the features is, from the Third attainment onwards, the Mage loses Temporal sympathy to their past self by one step.

[twin mural]

Thanks, this has been very helpful. Also sounds like a cool Legacy, some of my players would probably like that, they try to leave as few traces as possible. I'll be heading to bed now though, see you around

[patent talon]

No problem, happy to put in my two cents! Lemme know if you'd want me to send you the Google doc! Be warned, it's a trap legacy :P though I've thought about writing a non-trap version for a while

[mighty zephyr]

https://youtube.com/shorts/HD33rlVwXtU?si=oFIwDS4ntjrX9MOO

Average Uratha

[grave gulch]

fuck i wanna use this guy

but folks did tell me this would one shot most players even strong ones

like they could still deal with it if they were clever

but last time they fought a supernatural creature the life wizard grappled him

[mighty zephyr]

That's an 19 diceppool for combat yeah

[grave gulch]

speaking of such

how much dice would you say a velociraptor has for biting?

[clear delta]

Grimoires of grimoires has dinosaur like creatures I think

[grave gulch]

im running short on time sadly

[copper raft]

White Wolf Publishing is back yet again apparently

A shambling corpse of a brand identity that they refuse to let die lmao

Paradox fr holding out hope enough time has passed that it can be used for any little bit of useful marketability rather than "weren't those the guys who said vampires were responsible for the real life slaughter of gay people in Chechnya"

[mighty zephyr]

It's definitely weird

[clear delta]

Paradox can't let go

Vtmb2 is a mess of development

[rapid glacier]

Wonder why they’d bother tbh; are there that many people attached to the name that would make it worth it?

I saw the press release they put out on the WoD website, it seems like all of the other stuff currently running with Renegade is still gonna do their stuff so I mean, what’s the point? More video games?

[clear delta]

Isn't a higher up a vampire larper?

[rapid glacier]

I know one of the people is the ST for their official live plays from like four or five years ago now

[grave gulch]

i was wondering what yall were thinking of that

the whole "return to our roots" is a lil weird considering the problems with the old games

[rapid glacier]

I think, based on the last paragraph, they mean putting out books/games

And less about weirdly specific bigotry

After the problems that got made public with Renegade’s development of W5 I thought maybe they would have just taken everything in house again, but this seems to be not that

Or maybe it is? Who knows

[mighty zephyr]

Paradox developed W5's core

Not renegade

[rapid glacier]

oh shit, word?

for some reason I always thought it was Renegade doing the work

[mighty zephyr]

They do every other bookb

And W5 was done like 3 companies

[clear delta]

Honestly, might be better if the IP was just left collecting dust
And people made games inspired by it

[short quiver]

I mean, there probably are, yeah.
V:tM was the #2 name in ttrpgs for a hot minute, and closer to the #1 than I think anything is these days (vibes and impressions, to be clear)
enough name recognition that a good number of people know VtM who are far enough from the ttrpg scene that they weren't aware VtR happened at all

[mighty zephyr]

VtM5 sold gangbusters

Far as we are aware

[short quiver]

it's a Big Deal in as far as ttrpgs go

[nimble gale]

Back in the late 90s/early 2000s it was DnD, VtM, and like. hhhhero system maybe?

[rapid glacier]

Gurps or Shadowrun maybe

I just hope good stuff comes out of more WW/WoD, I wanna see what M5 looks like

I bet it’s still 600 pages long

[short quiver]

and VtM did get a good bit of crossover outside of the traditional D&D gamer group
(I kinda-joke that it branched out of the pocket protector spreadsheet wargamer nerds to focus on the theater kid frustrated novelist set, with deep love for both groups)
there was a whole, active, national LARP organization for years back in the day

[nimble gale]

video games, a tv series

[velvet sparrow]

A professional wrestler

[nimble gale]

I always forget about Gangrel

[orchid void]

I can never forget Gangrel ™️

[somber scarab]

For 90s top 5, would probably guess D&D, VTM, Shadowrun, GURPS, and Rolemaster

Okay no might be completely off with Rolemaster. WHFRP maybe, IDK

Oh wait or Call of Cthulhu

[marble sorrel]

Well, I got invited to a V20 Dark Ages game. Been ages since I used this system. Gunna have to relearn things/remember what's good for various characters beyond 'Dexterity is always what you want'. XD

[mighty zephyr]

I mean that's the combat system

Dexterity + Celerity if you want to Win The Game

[rapid glacier]

I like that about the 5th Ed stuff, you can use different stats for combat so you can be a murder machine differently from everyone else

Resolve + Firearms for a carefully aimed shot waiting for the perfect moment, Composure+Firearms if you want to land your one single shot on someone with a hostage as a shield, Dex+Brawl for a fighter with rapid strikes, or Wits+Blades to work a knife into a defensive opponents weakest defense, etc etc

It’s good stuff

Old system always felt like a race to have the most Strength or Dexterity

[marble sorrel]

Yeah. I'm putting together some character ideas and right now there is an amount of 'oh boy, here I go getting Celerity Again'. XD

[mighty zephyr]

It is objectively the best Discipline in Legacy

Like everything else is nice but Celerity does just determine "How useful you will be in scenes where people have Celerity"

[rapid glacier]

Doesn’t it just give you straight up extra turns

[mighty zephyr]

ya

[rapid glacier]

Like wired reflexes in Shadowrun and Cyberpunk

[marble sorrel]

I'll likely avoid too much of it because it's going to be a game with two people who won't optimize much but it was kinda a deciding factor for going 'I should broaden this character as focusing would make it less fun for other players'.

Right now my two character ideas are 'Assamite Sorcerer who's Kinda Bad At Her Job' and 'Toreador con artist who found out her mark could do a lot worse than kill her'.

[rapid glacier]

“Person Bad At Their Job” is my favorite WoD character

What happens when your Valedictorian with a masters degree in physics becomes an Ahroun? What about that new Ventrue who was using ChatGPT the whole time and now has to run a business or be eaten by their sire?

[marble sorrel]

Yep. In this case she's just got zero patience for research or planning or plotting. Even when she actively tries, she's just naturally kinda a Blunt Instrument of a person. She's been sent off to Poland of all places (Where the Dark Ages game is set) to try and get her to Calm The Hell Down for a couple of decades and to fulfil some owed debts her clan has without sending someone who Actually Matters.

Still debating what sort of Thaumaturgy to start her off with.

[rapid glacier]

Assamites are Quietus users aren’t they?

[marble sorrel]

Assimite Sorcerers can do thaumaturgy (And have a couple of unique paths to them like Hunter's Winds)

[marble sorrel]

Neptune's Might is very fun for letting you trap people in water and view the past through still water. Hunter's Winds gives you a very funny social infiltration tool.

And power of the elements lets you talk to Inanimate Objects, which is great for info gathering.

[rare swallow]

The White Wolf news are very unexpected and just weird

Like… why tho?

Like is this some kind of fan service to people who miss white wolf's problematic history or are they going to pretend there was never one to begin with or what

[clear delta]

Yeah shambling corpse of a brand

[grave gulch]

seeing how people see white wolf

that kind of makes me not really want to play these games no more

[nimble gale]

Death of the author applies, I feel like. Just maybe avoid the worst parts.

[high current]

the newer stuff is fine, and honestly for its time 90s-early 00s WW was pretty progressive(they made a point of having NPCs that were queer/POC/women at a time when most ttrpgs were full of 100% straight white men), its just one of those things of like, from a modern lens some of it is a little bit 'oof'

and then there's Martin Ericsson's brief time in charge of V5 and the Camarilla book which had the offending section removed and was why they 'killed' White Wolf off for a while

[radiant marsh]

A lot of the recent stuff has also been divisive, TBH

Regardless of your opinions on W5 compared to previous, the J.F. Sambrano stuff really didn't help.

[grave gulch]

Whats J.F Sambrano?

[mighty zephyr]

Writer who was mistreated by paradox

Google the article for the full context

It's pretty bad

[grave gulch]

I see

[high current]

right, i remembered there was something that happened regarding Karim and an indigenous writer on Werewolf, but i couldn't remember where it ended up going
still, technically, that was Paradox, not White Wolf

and iirc Fox is mostly playing with CofD which Paradox only really has final oversight/approval of, they don't actually write anything; it was developed by Onyx Path

which, ignore Beast and you're fine otherwise afaik

back on the note of reviving White Wolf and them actually mentioning Mage though, i swear to god if they bring Brucato back to write M5

[radiant marsh]

White Wolf is Paradox at this point

This is just a name change to save face. Still the same company.

[high current]

im aware, but i was earlier referring to 'white wolfs problematic history', and the suggestion that theyre reviving the white wolf name in relation to that, which, until V5 there wasn't one really--as i said, some of the older stuff is a little yikes in hindsight but at the time it was considered progressive

so you're citing stuff that happened within the last 5 years or so, when they werent going by white wolf, in response to a post about white wolf's history, which is why im clarifying that it was technically paradox

[mighty zephyr]

I mean the older stuff is still known for being bad

[velvet sparrow]

They did publish "World of Darkness: [Racial Slur]"

[rapid glacier]

A symptom of being 90s edgy, but I dunno I guess I’m still two minds of it

I never had the really bad splats, and my local groups and I usually filtered out or ignored the awful shit

And it sounds like that’s a fairly commonplace fix for the problematic shit for other groups I’ve heard of, so at least there’s that? Not sure if that’s worth anything in the long run, we’ll have to see what happens in the future

[high current]

im not aware of anything they released that was considered super horrible outside of like, Charnel Houses of Europe(which is less 'badly made' and more just a weird decision to make it in the first place) and Destiny's Price(which is one of those 'progressive for the time, badly handled in hindsight' things afaik)
and then obviously the various things that dip into NSFW territory and were published under the Black Dog imprint

ah, nevermind, i have found the book Tenar was referring to i'd managed to memory hole that one apparently

[marble sorrel]

...what in old world of darkness is tied to the wits stat? Trying to work out what being high wits would make a Vampire Dark Ages character good at. XD

[rapid glacier]

It makes them clever and observant, I would assume unless you’re talking specific rolls for certain actions

Unless wits means something different in Dark Ages

[marble sorrel]

Yeah, thinking more specific actions. As it calls out quite often when Dex or Int or Strength is used

but I can't find many rolls that default to wits

[rapid glacier]

Awareness is the classic Wits pairing

Sometimes Stealth or Subterfuge, depending on the circumstances

[marble sorrel]

Fair. So like witts + subterfuge for 'shit, I need an immediate off the top of my head lie'

[rapid glacier]

Or to detect someone trying to bullshit you, yeah

[marble sorrel]

Oh right, Empathy is likely tied to wits a lot in dark ages.

[rapid glacier]

Or watching someone trying to do some slight of hand, maybe? I think every skill has a pairing with Wits in some form or other

[marble sorrel]

As that's the 'get a vibe for people'

Setting up my Vompire for that Dark Age game, as the Assamite who's just kinda not great at her job. XD

All of 1 dot in stealth/legerdemain. 0 in intimidate or subterfuge.

'Can you do stereotypical assassin things?'
'No but I can talk theology'

[rapid glacier]

Probably want maybe two dots in something useful; you were embraced for a specific reason by someone who saw something in you that you bring to the table

[marble sorrel]

To be fair - She's very good at the religion thing.

[marble sorrel]

Oh yeah, she's still got Assasmite Sorcery 3.

She's just not what people are going to think of when they think 'Assamite'.

Ironically, the thing she's disgustingly good at is 'having people not think she's a vampire'.

Path 8 for road of heaven means she has Free Blush of Life, she's got Master of the Masquerade (So she never forgets to breathe or blink or do other mortal things) and Inoffensive to Animals.

Between that and the Assamite Sorcery that entirely masks your scent, the GM has said she could likely walk past a werewolf without them thinking she's a vampire unless they're actively Trying To Find Out.

As she can hide the smell of the wurm and she doesn't do Weird Vampire Things.

And 'not immediately triggering Time For Wolf Time' is kinda important when we're in Dark Age Poland.

[clear delta]

Road to Heaven?

[marble sorrel]

One of the morality paths in dark age. For people who are deeply religious.

[nimble gale]

yeah, vampires have more open morality options in The Dark Ages; instead of paths they're Roads, and most of them are widely accepted, some more than others; they're no longer 'only the sabbat do this' (since the sabbat doesn't exist yet!)

The Road of Heaven is for vampires who are centering their moral and ethical path through religion--usually but not always abrahamatic. There's of course the Road of Humanity, then the Road of Kings, the road of the beast, the road of metamorphosis, the road of lilith, the road of bones, many of which have variations--Paths, in dark ages terminology--that modify them slightly (The Via Reglis, for example, has the Path of Chivalry, which is more focused on service and protecting those weaker than one's Right to Rule, and also uses compassion instead of conviction)

[marble sorrel]

Well, my Vampire might have Problems. Mostly that a werewolf knows she exists.

She's very good at pretending to be a human (Roas of Heavens 8 + Deceptive Aura + Master of the Mascurade + Inoffensive to Animals) but he kinda got around it with a simple trick.

He's the one who gutted her when she was mortal.

And he's smart enough to put 1 + 1 = Wurm together.

[cold silo]

Ooh spicy lol

[marble sorrel]

Turns out he didn't forget the girl who shoved a silver holy symbol into his face when she was mortal because she thought he was some sort of demon.

In her defence, she thought he was mugging someone. Then he turned into a big furry thing and gutted her when she shoved her necklace down his throat trying to ward him off.

So she's got a Nemesis and a Problem. XD

Doubly so when this is Dark Ages so 'an M60 full of silver bullets' isn't an option, just swords and normal bows.

[rapid glacier]

the preorder for W5's Wyrmtide is up

[marble sorrel]

Note to self: Steal Werewolf Fetishes for own use. Cannot end badly.

[royal river]

my improv kinda fucked me a little bit and now i have to develop this side mage character for my vtm campaign based on a series of vague bullet points- i'm fine with making this dude an Orphan, but I'm curious which tradition would work best for a mage who:

• is fine loosely collaborating with vampires to influence the future
• has a habit of inexplicably showing up places he shouldn't be
• can see divine elements, most specifically old egyptian gods
• can force astral projection a la doctor strange
• seems to have an affinity for the moon as a symbol

i'm leaning hermetic, but i don't really know how well that fits. especially since there's the obvious beef with the Order and the Tremere
(none of my players are tremere, which would help things)

[mighty zephyr]

the new werewolf book is fun

[grave gulch]

What is it called?

[mighty zephyr]

Wyrmtide

antag book but has some player facing stuff

[high current]

the only things that really suggest anything about a tradition here are seeing egyptian gods and having an affinity for the moon, which both lean towards Verbena for me, but could also work for a Hermetic or possibly Dreamspeaker
everything else is just telling you what spheres to give them(time for influencing the future, correspondence for showing up wherever, spirit for seeing divine beings, spirit+mind for forcing astral projection)

[untold elm]

https://powerlisting.fandom.com/wiki/User_blog:Grand's_Story_Time/Everything_you_need_to_know_to_play/ST_Mage:_the_Awakening! Anyone able to tell at a glance if this is awakening 1e or 2e? hilarious that of all the places to find a plain primer for the game its an unrelated wikia

[high current]

considering that was written in 2015 and 2e came in 2016, it's definitely intended for 1e

[untold elm]

Rip

[high current]

doesn't mean it isn't useful, but, something to keep in mind

[untold elm]

How dramatic are the changes, besides the mana cost stuff

Which i know The Big One

[high current]

major differences are 1e gated stuff behind higher dot ratings for balance reasons(eg, healing yourself at 2 dots but other people at 3, whereas in 2e you just need 3 dots to heal anybody period), the removal of subtle/vulgar magic as a concept(2e just cares if a spell is obvious and has Sleeper witnesses, which apply dice tricks), and the addition of Reach

[untold elm]

📝

[high current]

basically 1e, Paradox just came from casting vulgar spells; in 2e, the basic effect of a spell is set, but you have a resource called Reach to customize it a bit, including changing the casting time from ritual to instant(the most common usage of Reach), swapping the Primary Spell Factor between Potency and Duration, or switching one of your spell factors to Advanced(Potency gives an effective +2 against being Dispelled, Duration goes from turns to scenes/hours, Scale goes from linear to exponential, Range goes from touch/self to sensory)

being able to cast a spell gives you 1 point of free Reach, any dots you have in the highest required Arcanum for the effect beyond what's required to cast the spell give an extra free point of Reach(eg, if you're casting a Mind 2 spell but have Mind 3, you get 2 free Reach; if you have Mind 5, you get 4 free Reach)

any Reach you want to spend beyond the 'free' points will provoke Paradox, adding dice to the Paradox pool based on your Gnosis score

[marble sorrel]

In V20, what's people's thoughts on Path of Spirit Manipulation (Rites of the Blood)? It looks fun and making werewolves really salty because non-werewolves get exalted artifacts fetishes sounds like something that will get me killed in a fun way.

[high current]

spells listed in the book have additional uses of Reach, and there's a sidebar with common uses on page 112 of the 2e core book

[marble sorrel]

Things just learned: The rookie dumbass vampire another player is playing has Generation 5. 100% due to 'my sire was low generation' reasons.

He's the least competent generation 5 vampire known to man

But hey, dominate doesn't help against him I guess?

He's a dying soldier who was embraced by the ex-prince before he got himself killed by mongols (We are in Dark Ages Poland). He has zero clue about vampires until now.

For most players I'd assume he was powergaming but I know this guy and he couldn't powergame his way out of a paper bag. XD

[zinc robin]

ooh free diablerie juice

[marble sorrel]

Look, I'm an Assamite but I'm not a stereotyp...

Okay, maybe I am.

[zinc robin]

Can learn Chiropteran Marauder
don't eat that one, you'll die of agg instantly

I- wait a minute there was a generation 4 sire capable of siring still for this guy???

[grave gulch]

if they arent powergaming as you say that could be interesting

Guy happens to be powerful yet is very incompetent basically?

[zinc robin]

Specifically in that clan???

[marble sorrel]

This is dark ages, before the old parts of the family got their shit kicked in.

[zinc robin]

No I mean "A generation 4 Tzimisce below Viscissitude 6 for Acid Blood rendering them incapable of embracing?"

[marble sorrel]

Oh, I have zero clue what the prince's paths were beyond 'not enough to avoid getting eaten by mongolian werewolves'.

[zinc robin]

Last I checked Acid Blood makes you incapable of embracing people because giving them your blood to do so kills them with aggravated damage outright

Course that may be core V20 and something Dark Ages changed when they overhauled elder Vicissitude though

[marble sorrel]

It doesn't mention acid blood in the dark ages version, no.

[zinc robin]

Ah. That'd explain how this guy didn't just, y'know, die horribly when choking down several agg worth of acid mid embrace

[marble sorrel]

The big thing with the Dark Ages version is giving you Flight.

Oh there is is

The replacement for acid blood is blood of the earth

[zinc robin]

Ah yup I see it in the Dark Ages section now (it literally got me to pull up the Dark Ages book to double check and sure enough, Acid Blood isn't there... and neither is Blood Form, replaced by Body Impolitic, so the elder Tzimisce combat horrors of turning into a pile of acidic blood and forming around someone isn't core book)

[marble sorrel]

Blood of the Earth is pretty close

[zinc robin]

It's interestingly enough something that seems a weaker version

[marble sorrel]

But notably only imolates on exposure to open air. So if you're careful you can still feed people blood.

[zinc robin]

Acid Blood just does the aggravated damage on contact because the blood is simply a highly potent acid that destroys things it comes in contact with, Blood of the Earth is "oh god that's one of the most terrifying known incendiaries of the time"

[marble sorrel]

He's also still Path of Humanity as a Tzimisce due to 'I was embraced like...3 weeks ago. Tops'.

[marble sorrel]

He's got very powerful blood but he's not insanely well trained and has zero clue what's going on in vampireland.

[zinc robin]

Diablere bait indeed

[grave gulch]

That could be a fun dynamic

[zinc robin]

That is very much a recipe for someone of higher generation wanting to quickly lower it

"Wait that's absurdly powerful blood but they're not yet actually more powerful than I am?"

[marble sorrel]

Yep. Luckily my Aasimite Sorcerer is well...Ethical. She'd not really do that unless he was An Asshole.

[mighty zephyr]

To be fair that's kinda a moot point since killing the person you're embracing is a part of the process.

[zinc robin]

Well, yes, but it's supposed to be via exsanguination, not via horrifically mutilating their insides and rendering them a dissolved corpse from the inside out

[marble sorrel]

...oh, that is likely it.

Considering the era, his sire was likely Old Clan Tzimisce.

Who don't cultivate Vicissitude

[zinc robin]

Would likely have reflected on his in-clans to leave out Vicissitude

Notably, Blood of the Earth doesn't have the same restriction on embracing that Acid Blood did

[marble sorrel]

I mean, it's really more a political distinction than a true bloodline difference.

[zinc robin]

Wait, Dark Ages doesn't actually have them their own distinct bloodline? V20 has them an entirely separate bloodline where they just get Dominate instead

[marble sorrel]

Nah, they're gamewise a different bloodline but it's like the Sons of Osirus.

Where the different powers are more of Focus and Training than 'your blood is linked to this specific power'

[zinc robin]

But yeah the V20 power forbids ghouling, giving blood to other kindred, embracing, all on merits of "your blood is actually really, really bad to come into contact with" and I was unaware the Dark Ages power just... doesn't do that

[marble sorrel]

Our group has a Tremere and a Tzimisce. So somehow the Assasmite is the Voice of Reason for the group.

[zinc robin]

Oh no

Not the usurpers

[nimble gale]

His sire was Old Clan but had developed a few dots in Vicissitude primarily because she was a dilletante interested in trying new things, which is why when the tremere/tzimisce war started up she wrote to a friend she had in Alamut (well, an assamite who owed her a favor--as close to a friend as a vampire that old gets) for a new court wizard, since her old one died of mortal things.

Also not fourth gen, five dots of generation is seventh, so his sire was sixth. Still quite powerful but not 'I knew Tzimisce Himself' powerful, y'know?

[marble sorrel]

Aininur, the Assimite, has a fantastic 'get along shirt' option.

'If you don't stop fighting, I'm summoning a spirit of sunlight'.

[nimble gale]

she was no fleshwarper specialist but she could do things like 'write her last will and testament on her new childe's back before succumbing to sunlight and letting her massive suit of guts-style armor hide him from it'

[velvet sparrow]

Even in V20, Acid Blood is not a necessary power. There's a different Vicissitude 6 power for if you do want to be able to make ghouls, or blood bonds, or childer

[mighty zephyr]

Could also just Not have Viss 6

[marble sorrel]

It's a lot of Viss

[velvet sparrow]

Yeah

(But why would you ever not have Viss 6?)

[marble sorrel]

I wish my paths went to 6 (Well, most of them do, just not my sorcery ones)

[marble sorrel]

Hmm...I should work out some good rituals to pick up for this Assimite.

[grave gulch]

@chilly vault @clear delta ya know what a preta is? My players will be meeting one today and possibly be pursued by it

I would like to ask for suggestions on music

[chilly vault]

I only know what a preta is in Buddhist cosmology/folklore

[clear delta]

Preta, failed tremere named after a creature from Buddhism

[chilly vault]

Not sure if WoD follows that

[clear delta]

There might be music in Buddhist inspired media

[grave gulch]

preta is a failed tremere yes

they are also hungry for souls and it seems like they cant really do magic anymore

[mighty zephyr]

??

[rapid glacier]

the loresheet for The Skinner, since I'm not sure Haight is canon anymore (or even was to begin with lol)

[mighty zephyr]

It's more like

I don't see how these relate

The Skinner just seems to be a stolen moon

[rapid glacier]

Wasn't that just what Haight was?

[mighty zephyr]

Skin Dancers got turned into an enemy type with Stolen Moons

[nimble gale]

Haight was... a lot of things

He crossed splats more than like, any other canon NPC.

[short quiver]

Haight was kind of wild
like, conceptually, "this guy didn't get the genetic lotto win that would have admitted him into the upper class of Garou society along with the PCs and get the respect of his parents, so instead he dedicated himelf to learning the combat prowess and magical powers to literally tear their special snowflake superpowers out of their smug fucking hides" goes hard as hell

making him the crossover powergamer nightmare ghoul wizard werewolf who'd hunted every kind of animal and whose house in his initial canon appearance was a D&D dungeon (traps and all) was... a misstep

[nimble gale]

Wasn't he a full on vampire, not just a ghoul by the end?

I seem to remember he went Abomination

[short quiver]

I don't think so?
not that I remember, anyway

but yeah it was a fundamentally cool concept but by the end even the developers were sick enough that they gave him one last crossover as a joke

[fair tapir]

oh! Ashtray guy

[short quiver]

yup!

the joke there is that Sam had already crossed over through Werewolf, Vampire, and Mage and Wraith was already the place where dead PCs from other gamelines could show up so "is he gonna wind up crossing over again" seemed like a reasonable assumption

and then they did, to make him as humiliatingly and permanently gone-gone as it was possible to get

[high current]

he showed up in a W20 adventure, so you can kill him again if you want

https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Skinner

[clear delta]

Should've kept him as a skin stealing guy

[marble sorrel]

SAS
Oh so he's Humanity 1.

[nimble gale]

Remember, the Tremere did everything wrong

bloodline curse might as well be 'whenever you make a decision, it is the wrong one'

[mighty zephyr]

Realized something

I could make all the Tribes from Forsaken into W5 loresheets

This Firstborn represents Wolf-as-Nightmare, the predator out of sight, the subtle shapes and sounds of the forest floor that convince man they are not alone in the woods, and the embodiment of humanity’s fear of their oldest foe and friend. 

The Forsaken of Night’s Humble Reminder are masters of fear, cackling wolf-witches and ravenous cryptids who ride the line of the veil like a mechanical bull. Strategic uses of Delirium and their own tall-tales turn them into urban legends and local myths, the beasts and horrors of backwoods and abandoned lots. These Garou see fear as a weapon to be utilized, not particular caring for the reputation that comes with making a (real or imagined) example of a few errant hikers once in a while. 

Selecting this loresheet gives you Infamy at ••, though this is to represent your individual legend rather than you as a person. 

•  Campfire Story: The foundation of fear is in the presentation, after all. You gain a permanent 1-die bonus to all Intimidation rolls as long as it relates to telling a story. Threatening a goon by relating to him the last person who didn’t give you what you want, or what happened to the last kids who went into that factory. Increase this bonus to +2 if the threatening story was violence you personally committed. 

•• Come Out Come Out, Wherever You Are: You are a stalker without compare. Don’t be too proud of that. Once per session, if you spend a full scene in active conversation with someone, you may roll Wits + Investigate with a difficulty equal to the victim’s Safe Place background. Success allows you to instantly deduce it’s rough location, down to a city block, and gives you a +2 bonus to the first roll used to break into it. 

•••: The Beast the Monsters Fear: You can’t go and have competition for the scariest thing in the dark, now can you? The first time in a scene you encounter a non-Werewolf, non-Spirit supernatural creature you may immediately choose to gain 1 Rage. If you do so, you cannot gain another until you’ve killed or driven off the offending monster. 

••••: Wolf at the Door: You are hype moments and Aura. Once per story, you can inflict Delirium as if in Crinos in any of your forms for the length of a scene. If you are alone with a non-Werewolf, non-Spirit being, they may be subject to Delerium even if they normally wouldn’t be, if they have sufficient cause to fear you. (Storyteller decides).  

•••••: Living Legend: Wherever you’ve decided to make your territory now reflects your story. The Umbra itself bows to the fear that you wear like a crown. Whenever a non-packmate rolls to resist a fear-inducing effect, mundane or supernatural, emanating from you, they suffer a penalty equal to your highest Renown.```

[high current]

Bone Shadows?

Or Hunters in Darkness

[mighty zephyr]

Latter!

[orchid void]

Loresheet for Missy yaaaay

[mighty zephyr]

She's quintessential!

[orchid void]

She's supposed to be a Hunters Hunter yeah

[mighty zephyr]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zBzJtRYHPRtzgDCh5Jj93DhQH6UA7vqQ4zqMcFWRLNI/edit?usp=sharing

Blood Talons next

[grave gulch]

I was thinking

And i bet Big D doesnt floss

I mean dental floss

Not the dance move

[marble sorrel]

Ended up going with Path of Spirit Manipulation for that Assamite Sorcerer of mine. Should be fun.

[radiant marsh]

Big D keeps his plaque in control through sheer intimidation

[marble sorrel]

Discussing how the Baali are going to be a major threat this campaign. The Baali are eternally funny in just how they take 'everyone is a monster' and just jump straight for 'I guess that means I need to twirl my moustache harder than everyone else!'

[orchid void]

making everyone look at my werewolf again actually

[marble sorrel]

And my GM has said I officially have enough rope to hang myself, which means I've got enough disadvantages on this vampire.

Merits
True Love

Flaws
Sleeping with the Enemy

[vast blaze]

Oh now that's juicy

[midnight grotto]

⬆️
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BYzYxOTlkYzctNGY2MC00MjNjLWIxOWMtY2QwYjcxZWIwMmEwXkEyXkFqcGc@._V1_FMjpg_UX1000_.jpg

[grave gulch]

[orchid void]

hey now,,,,,,

[midnight grotto]

what's Missy's nen type

[orchid void]

i didn’t read that far,,,

[clear delta]

I had a lot of thoughts on the categories but never wrote them down and forgot

[orchid void]

this is the world of darkness thread friend, if you really wanted to explain nen #av-club woulda been the spot

[clear delta]

okay

Anyway, you can check the explanation
Or the wiki