World of Darkness

[marble sorrel]

...unironically, you could do some very funny things with a guy who's a vampire for a wrestling promotion.

And just openly tells people on-screen he's a vampire.

And lets people think he's just keeping Kayfabe.

[clear delta]

Insane, yeah
Manipulates women with the "sister in need" card, "shows her true colors", "confused and deluded predator"

[rapid glacier]

My V5 game I ran had a subplot of something in north Boston called ‘Wrestlefest’ which is basically an excuse for swole Vampires and local Garou to throw hands at each other in an area where they won’t instantly murder each other; it was established as a way for people of both societies to kind of hash out problems and help a maintain a shaky truce (the truce was broken when the resident Salubri psychopath burned their caern down)

Wrassle vampires is barely tapped potential

Wrassle werewolves are harder unless they’re really good at maintaining their composure, or a particular flavor of Galliard being a referee to keep them from getting frenzied

[hybrid dock]

Wow actually yeah you’re right

[clear delta]

If you want evil trans woman, there's the demon core in promethean's night horror book

[mighty zephyr]

I think this is the evil trans woman in promethean

[clear delta]

No, the demon core is a zeka wanted by the fbi that tempts people into becoming their worst selves

For fun

[heady kestrel]

Thought: hosts make for a great weird splat to make friends with as a beast, because it will make werewolves so mad at you if you help and encourage a host

[graceful saffron]

Its wild. The fact it even mentions in passing it/its pronouns in an earlier section the way it does only makes it worse...

And yet she is the most popular recurring npc in my Promethean games, which are almost always exclusively trans playgroups.

They wrote The Pilgrim so badly as a villain I feel like she comes out the other side as... just a semi-dangerous person.

"She is good and reasonable until she is starving or really mad" Yeah, sounds like... checks notes every CoD splat, protagonist, and NPC in the game mechanics.

[clear delta]

Pandorans are really sympathetic

[hybrid dock]

LMAO

YEAH

“Wow thag sounds like a vampire. Or beast.”

[clear delta]

Helping pandorans seems like a good party goal

[graceful saffron]

Yeah, or... like me? Like, a human? I'm not my best when I am starving and hungry?

[clear delta]

Humans do be animals

[nimble gale]

"Sorry when my blood sugar gets below 70 I start failing Frenzy rolls really badly"

Diabetic: the Glucosening

[mighty zephyr]

https://tenor.com/view/snickers-cranky-hungry-gif-14636082

[clear delta]

Yeah. She is someone who wants to be better, chases a hope, but falls to a worse nature due to her condition
Like every regular promethean

[graceful saffron]

Yeah. The book even has a paragraph explaining, earlier, that it might be correct a Pandoran can become a Promethean...

but not apparently for The Pilgrim.

So naturally my table loves her and platonically // romantically dates her every game she shows up.

[hybrid dock]

YEAHHHHHH

WOOOOOO

[heady kestrel]

The chronicles books generally have a habit being very cruel to antagonist splats in narration

Even members of antagonist splats that are like
Being normal

Bringing up heroes in beast feels like cheating so like

Changeling fetches?
They are so mean to fetches sometimes

[clear delta]

You know, I get promethean's humanistic themes and like its hopeful and definitive end
But I also like the idea where The Great Work doesn't turn you fully normal, you still have some weird traits. You just can more easily live in society and fit in, while still having a different experience.

[graceful saffron]

Och, yeah.

[graceful saffron]

YES

[clear delta]

1e had autumn court do a whole holiday to hunt and slaughter fetches

[heady kestrel]

Autumn!?! Not summer???

[clear delta]

Also mage about liches was very harsh

[clear delta]

The sheer contempt for any lich no matter how they avoided hurting others was weird

[hybrid dock]

It was summer iirc

[heady kestrel]

Mages about liches is very harsh but it’s also kinda hilarious so I’ll let it slide

“What? Too much of a little bitch to ascend to the supernal realms? Little shit, I’ll fucking kill you”

[hybrid dock]

I had a changeling oc who was crashing with her fetch

[graceful saffron]

I fully wrote off Promethean until enthusiasts pointed out you actually don't become human, you become something new.

It was so antithetical to my personal journey of mental health and identity on my first understanding.

[hybrid dock]

Who was a cis version of her

[heady kestrel]

“Your going in the same jar as the Banishers and Scelesti I don’t fucking care”

[hybrid dock]

It’s sorta awkward between those two

But somehow he did rescue her from her durance

He had his own personal journey about it

It’s complicated

[sacred viper]

Based

I am the nr 1# fetch hater

[graceful saffron]

The harshness towards the Abyssal who just wants to go home is also wild.

"Piece of the Abyss is cold and alone and frightened and wants to leave as fast as possible" is... the enemy?

[hybrid dock]

Why…;-;

[clear delta]

I'm pretty sure it was autumn, but my pc is having connection issues

[hybrid dock]

I remember the book saying summer

But

That’s also cus it’s the war court

[heady kestrel]

Changeling is the only game that lets you fuck yourself heterosexually and I think that’s beautiful-

[hybrid dock]

SO TRUE

[graceful saffron]

But like... help that Abyssal! Its trying to do the thing!

[hybrid dock]

Gotta love abyssals

[clear delta]

Getting a good relationship with your fetch may let you fuse and recover the piece it was made from
So it's good for you!

[clear delta]

Fetch in a bratty tone: I didn't ask to be made!

[heady kestrel]

I really like the brutally uncomfortable abyssals that are just full ass people

That aren’t supposed to exist

[mighty zephyr]

"And I didn't ask to get UNMADE, now give me my wife back"

[heady kestrel]

And are caustic to all of reality

[clear delta]

Hunt of fallen leaves

[hybrid dock]

Huh

Maybe summer was 2e

[heady kestrel]

Its possible autumn just also had a hating holiday

[sacred viper]

Sometimes you just gotta be a hater

[mighty zephyr]

I think it's fine to see the person living your life that was stolen from you and wanting to kill them with a rock

[hybrid dock]

True

But also

They are a full ass person themselves

That was just sorta…made to take your place without any responsibility in the matter

[mighty zephyr]

You're gonna kill a lot of people anyway, might as well start with you.

[hybrid dock]

Which makes it thornier

Tbf changelings have a pretty mild feeding method

[clear delta]

Plus, they are an useful stand in for you while you do fae shit

[heady kestrel]

they didn’t steal shit

They weren’t even aware they weren’t you until like… you escaped

At which point they suddenly get hit with the infinite dysphoria beam

[graceful saffron]

One of my favorite Abyssal solutions a player came up with in game was...

polaroid cameras.

[clear delta]

Plus you can absorb them if you can deal with them

[heady kestrel]

I don’t wanna absorb them though! That’s weird!

[clear delta]

They were made from shit taken from your soul! Get your stuff back!
Plus, you can get stronger!

[nimble gale]

I was in a changeling the lost game once where my changeling ended up taking care of his fetch while the latter was in a nursing home (he got taken during the Vietnam war and came back in the modern day). It was... an emotional journey.

[graceful saffron]

There is an Abyssal type who seems* to be about collecting and bringing things into the Abyss...

and my player was like "Oh, is it the thing itself, or the idea of the thing?"

I read the book, answer was unclear...

Player teaches Abyssals about polaroid cameras and taking photos.

I point out this means they will probably come back for more pictures one day, or occasionally steal more, and the player breezily responds

"Yeah, tourists often do."

[clear delta]

I like getting stronger and keeping my stuff safe with me!

[hybrid dock]

OMG

[heady kestrel]

Yeah but that’s like a whole ass guy!

[hybrid dock]

that’s adorable

[mighty zephyr]

It's a whole ass guy made of toilet paper and my old pet goldfish!

Get his ass!!!

[hybrid dock]

Yea and???

Aren’t we all, deep inside

[graceful saffron]

Right? How am I supposed to argue with that.

[hybrid dock]

Made of toilet paper and some guys goldfish

[sacred viper]

No

[hybrid dock]

Oh

[graceful saffron]

We are all truly Voy's old goldfish.

[mighty zephyr]

This also assumes that like the Fetch is "just you" right

[hybrid dock]

Hold on I gotta check something

Hey so bad news

[mighty zephyr]

Fetches often are Wrong in a very tangible way

[clear delta]

A fetch is like a bit of you wrapped in extra materials and traits

[graceful saffron]

So are Changelings though...

[mighty zephyr]

and I do think the one thing I would love to hit people with is "The Fetch is you but a better person"

Okay litmus test here

Is Kris right to hate the SOUL in Deltarune

[hybrid dock]

See that’s complicated

[graceful saffron]

Never played it.

[heady kestrel]

I find the fact they have messy deviations from your original self is part of the reason I am hesitant about killing them.

[hybrid dock]

Considering it might even be their fault that it’s there

Give the character creation cutscene

[mighty zephyr]

Well it is your fault

[hybrid dock]

So really Kris needs to sit the fuck down and stop being a coward if this is the bit they committed to

Nah

We had our own vessel

[mighty zephyr]

Because you are playing the game and instigating the events

[hybrid dock]

It was discarded

Someone else discarded it. We can’t be blamed for that

[clear delta]

Rather than make a trans person's fetch cis, I'd make them apathetic to gender or very closeted
I'd make them a shard or twisted reflection
A version of you born from abuse just like the changeling you were molded and self molded into
And confronting and understanding the fetch helps you heal

[graceful saffron]

Good fetch!

[hybrid dock]

Fetches are whole ass people

[clear delta]

No. And they do not hate the soul

[hybrid dock]

Which imo means killing them is murder

With the implications that brings

[hybrid dock]

It’s unclear actually

[mighty zephyr]

They very clearly dislike the soul and being possessed

[clear delta]

They have a goal involving the soul, and use it for that

[hybrid dock]

Sometimes you do kill people and that’s like, a thing you gotta do

[graceful saffron]

Deltarune is the one connected to Undertale, yes? I am told I did not understand Undertale.

[clear delta]

Okay. I don't wanna discuss this here

[sacred viper]

No, but that's because they are a fraud

[hybrid dock]

Just, I feel like the personhood needs to be acknowledged

[graceful saffron]

Thats supposed to be the tension, I thought.

[hybrid dock]

If you’re gonna kill someone at least understand that you are killing someone y’know

[mighty zephyr]

Yeah totally

But I also think making a fetch just a lil guy undercuts the horror of seeing your face living your life

but it's not you

[hybrid dock]

Oh it is still horrific

And a terrible awful thing

Just…hard to blame the fetch for it, to me

[worthy sundial]

see i think making them a person makes it more horrifying

[nimble gale]

I think that's up to interpretation, whether or not the fetch is you. The changeling is you, probably. The fetch has part of you. Does it only having a small part of you make it a less you than the changeling you?

'what even is me' is a big part of the changeling question to me

(Ctl specifically, dreaming is a whole other can of worms etc)

[graceful saffron]

I thought it was meant to be horrible, aye, but a fetch as a person also means its another person being abused by the Fae and how they operate.

[heady kestrel]

Basically, to make this a more general statement about villan splats and move away from fetch discourse

A lot of villain splats have… about as merit in existing as most player splats, they are often cruel and wicked and strange but your ass is also often cruel and wicked and strange. And the books often are really mean to them, even when it isn’t really… deserved?
See the pilgrim above

[clear delta]

I think making a fetch a part/reflection of you fits the themes well. Since it's about abuse recovery and dealing with how you and your life were affected through the fetch as metaphor seems better than just having an imposter living your life

[hybrid dock]

Well

The imposter living your life

Is good horror

Objectively I love that

[mighty zephyr]

And I think people should legally be allowed to kill their dopplegangers with a rock

[hybrid dock]

Especially since said imposter is a person

[mighty zephyr]

It HAS to be a rock

[graceful saffron]

Exactly. For a game all about themes...

Sometimes the antagonists are failing the themes of the book.

[hybrid dock]

I suppose here is where our paths diverge
Alas

[nimble gale]

Abel was Cain's doppleganger?

[mighty zephyr]

They don't HAVE to do it

Yeah

[hybrid dock]

I need to kill you with a particle cannon

[nimble gale]

🤔

[hybrid dock]

Holy shit the deep lore

[mighty zephyr]

What's a younger brother but a doppleganger

think about it

[heady kestrel]

I do also think exiles in demon are cute though so maybe I’m just brain rotted

[hybrid dock]

I’m the younger brother…oh no

[graceful saffron]

||God does have a lot of names||

[nimble gale]

younger sibligns are outside context problems for me i'm an only chld

[hybrid dock]

Well at least I became a sister instead

[mighty zephyr]

Abel should've transitioned, would've been immune to the rock

[hybrid dock]

True????

True!!!!

[graceful saffron]

I mean, same, but when a game is about how monsters in x situation are people too...

CoD does a lot of "Oh, but not this monster in this situation!"

[velvet sparrow]

:(

[mighty zephyr]

(I'm also a younger brother is the joke)

[hybrid dock]

Lmao

[sacred viper]

https://tenor.com/view/ena-joel-g-coral-glasses-true-true-morgan-freeman-dream-bbq-gif-15950200863353233030

[hybrid dock]

Younger sibling crew

[hybrid dock]

https://tenor.com/view/deltarune-roaring-knight-deltarune-knight-true-truth-nuke-gif-18290682922439833523

This one’s my favorite

[sacred viper]

(I'm an older sibling here and here to indirectly diss my sis)

[hybrid dock]

LMAO

[mighty zephyr]

But yeah I probably wouldn't make a Changeling outright murder their fetch but they probably would really want to

Like on an instinctual level

[hybrid dock]

Yea

And that’s honestly the cool part

[graceful saffron]

Morgana, utterly unrelated, but I love how your name changes

It inspired me years ago to start changing what I call an enby irl, using various ancient words.

[heady kestrel]

I feel like the funniest thing to with fetches is “you want to kill your fetch but their a genuine rival not just a normal guy”

[hybrid dock]

Really hating your fetch is more interesting when the fetch is a whole person

It makes wanting to kill them or replace them more complicated and interesting

It makes the anger more interesting

[heady kestrel]

Your a summer court type of person so your fetch also locked the fuck in the moment yo showed up

[hybrid dock]

It makes everything more interesting

[mighty zephyr]

My Beast Connie would totally eat someone's fetch if they asked him, thinking about it.

[hybrid dock]

Connie would eat anyone if asked to

[mighty zephyr]

Correct

[hybrid dock]

Is what I’m understanding

Munch munch

[mighty zephyr]

"Are you eating that"

"That's my nemesis"

"Did I sound like I was asking what it was?"

[heady kestrel]

Summer court guy and his fetch who keeping getting into sword fights, but one of them always runs before the other can actually kill them

[hybrid dock]

“You gon finish that?”
“What?”
“I didn’t eat breakfast this morning.”

[sacred viper]

Your fetch is part of a Hunter compound when you come back wdyd

[hybrid dock]

LMAO

[heady kestrel]

“Why does my Fetch have 5 FUCKING MELEE”

[hybrid dock]

“En garde”

[nimble gale]

Toxic Yaoi Fetch RElationship:S ummer Court Edition

[mighty zephyr]

"Do you think my Fetch found grandpa's Browning gun from the war"

"His wh-"

god

Really fantastic post on Tumblr I gotta find hold on

[hybrid dock]

God machine angel who grinds up fetches to steal people’s names and shadows

For industrial applications

The fetch blender

Flender

[mighty zephyr]

If a Mage casts on a Changeling's true name

[heady kestrel]

Fetches also have superpowers once they get eye contact with you

And some of those powers are pretty funny

[mighty zephyr]

who gets hit

the changeling or the fetch

[hybrid dock]

Oooo

Good question

I think the fetch no?

Cus it’s basically the owner of the name

[heady kestrel]

My favorite being “fetches can develop funny mirror powers”

Though the most versatile one is that they can copy your contracts

[mighty zephyr]

https://i.imgur.com/Ctby9dQ.png

i found the post

[heady kestrel]

Lmao

[nimble gale]

hell yeah

[hybrid dock]

YEA

[mighty zephyr]

Also found this during looking for it

[hybrid dock]

😔

Nobody wants to kiss their clone

[sacred viper]

What if it just enjoyed being you more than you do

like you like being yourself before yeah, but the fetch is absolutely over the top in absolute joy over it

[heady kestrel]

Hunter compound but it turns out all the members are “splat that looks like and identifies as human but is actually a supernatural”

A Hero, a fetch…. I swear there were more of these

[sacred viper]

thats a funny variant of the Utility Monster

[mighty zephyr]

Proximi

Ghoul

Wolfblood

Just a Cancer Cell of weirdos

https://i.imgur.com/fxdZxmK.png

[hybrid dock]

Lmao

[mighty zephyr]

I also think a big point of my comparison to Kris to the Fetch is the idea of like

[hybrid dock]

Like that one balloon from phineas and fern

[mighty zephyr]

One day your behavior suddenly, completely changes

No one notices or seems to care

[sacred viper]

Would you rater your fetch be a shipper or a powerscaler

[hybrid dock]

Shipper

[graceful saffron]

Oh fuck. I need to run a game where every fetch is this.

[heady kestrel]

Shipper feels healthier but powerscaler could have aura

[graceful saffron]

Like, characters and NPCs fetches.

[sacred viper]

Himedanshi or Fujoshi

[mighty zephyr]

Powerscaler because then he'd be convinced his speed was superior to mine making him overconfident and easier to hit with a table

[nimble gale]

Himedanshi

[hybrid dock]

The same kind of shipper as me

Which is whatevers funniest

[heady kestrel]

Like if I wanted to do a character who wants to kill their fetch

Personally I would want that Fetch to be on some Wild Shit Himself

[sacred viper]

Goku glazer or Megumi slanderer

[heady kestrel]

Because then it’s a funny rival dynamic

[mighty zephyr]

Is the assumption that I'm letting him live or killing him

[sacred viper]

up to you but he'll live your life like that until you get back

[mighty zephyr]

Hmmmmm

Goku Glazer because I think people would assume I'm doing it ironically until I got back

[hybrid dock]

Lmao

[mighty zephyr]

Alternatively I think if I randomly started slandering Megumi, everyone would know I've been taken by a doppleganger and would kill me

[heady kestrel]

There is also the option of a Fetch that wants to kill you

Because they think it will make everything normal for them again

Because again, the moment you show up, the dysphoria beam

[mighty zephyr]

Y'know

[graceful saffron]

... Talk of Goku has made me realize how to explain Deviant to people.

[mighty zephyr]

I think the human reaction to a doppleganger

does make animals reactions to failing the mirror test make a lot more sense

[hybrid dock]

LMAO YEA

[graceful saffron]

Holy hells.

[mighty zephyr]

https://tenor.com/view/mirror-mirror-bear-on-the-wall-reflection-self-esteem-gif-26199859

me when I see that mf

[hybrid dock]

Voy would fail the mirror test is what I’m getting from this

[graceful saffron]

Is it a fail if I romance my fetch?

Yeah.

It is.

[mighty zephyr]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=er4zU20y8kg

[heady kestrel]

Random thing but

Tethered are probably the closest doppelgängers to fetches in pop culture, but the roles there are reversed

[graceful saffron]

I bet the Bound find the idea of killing your Fetch horrifying.

"Oh its like you have a Geis- Oh gods no!"

[sacred viper]

elaborate

[graceful saffron]

"Some of you will end up being Gokus, some of you will be Piccolos. What we want to avoid is any of you being Yamchas."

[hybrid dock]

lmao

holy shit

[mighty zephyr]

My pitch of Deviant is "You are the grungiest superhero line up in the history of mankind"

[hybrid dock]

my favorite pitch from fluffy is "william afton is a valid deviant antagonist"

honestly

I should check out deviant at some point

would you recommend?

[mighty zephyr]

??

Afton is more a Slasher I think

[hybrid dock]

@heady kestrel

[mighty zephyr]

Also yes

[hybrid dock]

justify yourself boy

[mighty zephyr]

Deviant kicks absolute ass

[hybrid dock]

nodnod

ill make sure to give it a shot

maybe after requiem

because requiem's next on my list

[mighty zephyr]

my Cyborg was named Nicholas Tzar

[hybrid dock]

OMG

werent they experimented on by the god machine?

[mighty zephyr]

Ye!

[hybrid dock]

YES
glad i remember

[mighty zephyr]

Had a bit of Infrastruture shoved into his nervous system

[hybrid dock]

i adore it

[graceful saffron]

Incredible character, Voy.

[hybrid dock]

thats such a good backstory

HONESTLY

honestly

[heady kestrel]

Ok I’m talking about like

Sister location Afton
With the funtimes

Mad scientist designs child capturing robots that end up inhabited by those children’s souls Afton

[hybrid dock]

deviant

[mighty zephyr]

It's slowly growing and taking over his body and the only way he can halt the growth is by acting against it's prime directive and making it focus on rebuilding his body first

[hybrid dock]

might give me the potential to write some of my CLASSIC ocs

AOOOOOO

I LIKE THAT

[hybrid dock]

the collection of remnant, im given to understand, is very deviant

[mighty zephyr]

He was made largely by combining Deku with my impending various mental health crisises

[hybrid dock]

well

youve succeeded in synthesizing a very cute and fun boy

[heady kestrel]

Like Afton in the first 3 games is a slasher

But there is the mad scientist shit he gets on later

[graceful saffron]

I love him.

[hybrid dock]

like, this? this is such good character design

this is unbelievably good

[mighty zephyr]

He would blue screen when the cybernetics took over his brain

[hybrid dock]

god i hope that boy bluescreens when he gets flustered that would be absolutely adorable

listen

i see a cute boy and i have to imagine him being flustered its just who i am

[graceful saffron]

Chokes on coffee

[mighty zephyr]

Fun fact is that his intro scene was the most like

[hybrid dock]

HAH

[mighty zephyr]

Senin/Shonen shit ever by sheer happenstance

Where my ST had a woman being harassed by a couple of guys, and Nick trying and failing horribly to lie to get her out of it.

Which escalated it to a fight and me just going "Really, the lie was for your benefit" and then me rolling 7 successes on a punch

[hybrid dock]

holy shit thats so cool

shonen boyyyyy

i like a shonen b oy

[mighty zephyr]

The other guy threw his hands up, at which point I stole the unconcious guy's wallet, mugged the other guy, and asked the woman if she could spare bus fair

Because Nick is very homeless

[hybrid dock]

nick...

omg

adorable boy

[mighty zephyr]

Nick was so fun

[hybrid dock]

his hair is so ruffleable

[graceful saffron]

Nick's creator being the God Machine is so mean.

[hybrid dock]

psychopomp angel "im boutta be hilarious"

[mighty zephyr]

It wasn't specifically the God-Machine

it was a PMC based on Monolith that followed an Angel algorithm called the Heavenly Code.

[graceful saffron]

Oh, okay. Thats way nicer.

[mighty zephyr]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Atm0GwWs6lw

[hybrid dock]

oh yeah

[mighty zephyr]

This was the vibe of the PMC (warning actual combat footage)

[hybrid dock]

i remember this!

[graceful saffron]

Playing a Deviant whose "creator" was the God Machine would be fun though.

[hybrid dock]

technically still the case if you trace the path all the way up the chain

[graceful saffron]

Just an entity you cannot actually ever throw hands with.

[heady kestrel]

Useful if your doing a demon crossover

[graceful saffron]

Or Contagion.

[mighty zephyr]

Nick was originally going to be a Lost Boy

but I remixed him

[hybrid dock]

remixed into a cyborg...

[graceful saffron]

Like... from the hit movie Lost Boys?

[hybrid dock]

i presume changeling

the lost

[graceful saffron]

Awwww.

[mighty zephyr]

No, it's a half-splat from Hurt Locker

[graceful saffron]

Oh right!

[hybrid dock]

oh okay

[mighty zephyr]

Cybernetic Super-soldiers who were part of a failed program and who now need regular drug intakes or their cybernetics reject them and they die

[hybrid dock]

ahhhhh

i see

[mighty zephyr]

He was also gonna be in the Mage game I was in and have a weird effect where Magic wouldn't work on him at all

The LA one

[hybrid dock]

ooo

[mighty zephyr]

Also I am looking through his playlist

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6KFfYdNPh8

God this shit rules for the God-Machine

[hybrid dock]

holy FUCK

thats awesome

yeah

i do kinda really like the god machine

it doesnt come anywhere close to scratching my itch for divinity or angels or demons

but it DOES scratch my itch for creepy ass agi

i love creepy ass agi

[mighty zephyr]

I mean the current push for AGI is just the same human need for the return of God

[hybrid dock]

i have no idea if thats true or not but it sounds cool

point is

the god machine doesnt scratch the same itch that demon the fallen did

its spooky AI shit rather than like

spooky divine shit

i like both but theyre two different things in my soul

[heady kestrel]

Mr Shivers is a really funny rational agent

Type of guy who shows up in a bizzare philosohy question

[mighty zephyr]

You also reminded me

of my partner's Demon

https://64.media.tumblr.com/183147742660c771ca04677b8a127cf8/tumblr_peauedIdG81vodt5eo1_1280.png

[hybrid dock]

GODDDDDDDD

thats so fucking awesome

i love demons in demon the descent a lot

occult robots IS a good vibe for them that i Adore

god i wanna play chronicles again

there's so many cool things in it

[heady kestrel]

Mr Shivers is a rational being. His goal is to make people feel unsafe around the holidays by stabbing people at bus stops. Potentially, but not always, killing them.

He also makes snow men, that’s emergent

Surely there is something more important about what he is doing, because the god machine has been using him for multiple years

[hybrid dock]

clearly its very useful at making sure people stay safe during the holidays :))

currently my main demon oc is mrs wire, an integrator destroyer whos main goal is trying to reprogram the god machine
...her thing is being a living anti-tank weapon that destroys heavy military emplacements and also other powerful supernatural beings

she is not married

but her name sure is Mrs wire

[sacred viper]

Amazing

[high current]

when my blood sugar gets below 70 i tend to just ramble about whatever my current hyperfixation is
Autism 🤝 Diabetes

[olive laurel]

Hmm, I didn't think it was an AGI thing originally. More like a statement on the horrors of mass-human systems like capitalism or bureaucracies

[hybrid dock]

i mean that too

its also that

but also it is a giant evil ai

[olive laurel]

I think it's a fine interpretation. Just not the authors' intent (though the author is dead etc.)

[mighty zephyr]

Weirdly enough I think the God Machine does God better with its metaphorical approach than against the actual Abrahamic God

[hybrid dock]

...i mean i feel like its certainly part of the author's intent?

like

the god machine

[mighty zephyr]

Since you are rebelling against systems of oppression and authority

[hybrid dock]

is a machine

the machine is not just mechanical systems

but there are mechanical systems

yeah

the god machine is not god

its more machine

machine in the sense of giant interconnected systems of beaurocracy and misery and rube goldberg machines of sufferinb

but also gears, pistons, circuits, the code of the universe, and incomprehensible goals and intellect

it evidently is intended to give the aesthetic of evil AI
since an explicit inspiration is the Matrix

not as one single evil personality but as a thing of intelligence that you cant actually touch

[spice abyss]

The God Machine is the systems we broke along the way. ❤️

[sacred viper]

Yeah 100%

Or like

it does this

and its cool as fuck for it

[hybrid dock]

honestly i do feel like playing the god machine as a standin for the abrahamic god just runs into problems and pitfalls
it doesnt really
...work?

cus it isnt the abrahamic god

its a giant machine

[olive laurel]

It's a god (terrible)

[sacred viper]

It isnt the God in the Bible, it is the Catholic Church

[hybrid dock]

...thats a solid way of putting it, i suppose

its a system of authority

an interconnected mess of wires and suffering

[clear delta]

It's Authority and Faith in it

[hybrid dock]

not exactly a person or thing worth believing in

[clear delta]

It's the Weight of Control and Historical Power/Values hitting you like a hammer putting a nail in place

[olive laurel]

Well. It is willing to provide tangible benefits to some of its worshippers/agents

Which makes it pretty different than a lot of modern faiths

[hybrid dock]

well

thats cus its the system of authority

not the god itself

its the system of authority, hierarchy, and control

its not jesus christ the redeemer or whatever

which feels like a somewhat important distinction to make as a religious person

and how i interact with demon the descent

[clear delta]

... Now I wanna make a Silent Girl angel
"She can't be that stron-" Nail gets put through a combat demon and hammered, the victim shatters into pieces
"... Yeah we better learn the mechanics of this fight"

[sacred viper]

It's doctrine and abuse, it's missionaries and colonialism, it's putting money behind the campaigns of horrible politicians, it's the thing that feeds on the extracted labor of women and children, it is the thing that makes sure your cool local priest will never have a chance to enact true change, it is the horrible horrible little thing at the back of your head that tells you are nothing more than a tool for its goals, that you are worthless otherwise, that is so interested in getting you back

[clear delta]

Morgana changed name, I see

I like it

[hybrid dock]

yea

[mighty zephyr]

Well neither is DTF's god either is the problem

I personally bristle against DtF since it does flat out say the New Testement is a lie despite that being the Bible still and it being a huge refutation of everything that it tries to work with. Like the God of DtF isnt the god of the Bible but the God from Paradise Lost and William Blake.

I agree with Morgana in that i think rebelling against the hands that oppress you is more compelling than rebelling against an absentee overlord

[hybrid dock]

dtf's god was still more of an actual god

also did DtF flat out say the new testament is a lie?

[sacred viper]

I havent read DtF but I think you don't really rebel against God after you make it back to Earth and actually start playing.

[hybrid dock]

DtF, when i read it, kinda avoided telling you flat out if any religions are a lie or not

[hybrid dock]

its complicated

the luciferans certainly claim to

their whole thing is "I AINT HEAR NO BELL"

[sacred viper]

the difference would be that in Fallen God is the god you see in pop media. in Descent God is the God whose rituals are enacted through corporate takeovers and mercenary groups in west Africa.

[hybrid dock]

my point is more that the DtF god was like

an actual god/divine being

the "god" of DtD is more just a giant machine/mechanism

[clear delta]

A magical machine

[sacred viper]

I mean we get here back into the problem fo what actually constitutes a "god"

[hybrid dock]

one of them is at the very least an actual god and its not demon the descent's
you don't worship the god machine, you don't have faith in it, you dont have religion about it

it may pretend to, it may manipulate religious beliefs or play on them or prey on them, but it isnt a religious creature

i mean sure yeah

the definition of a god is sure complicated

but its hard to have a faith based relationship with the god-machine

it can pretend to be a god of faith but it isnt one

[clear delta]

But people pray to it. It has cults
Also I include believing in the system as faith too

[hybrid dock]

it has cults

[sacred viper]

I mean not a lot of gods are interacted with through "faith based relationships"

[hybrid dock]

but those are things its set up as part of manipulation

the cults are instrumental purposes to create minions

the god machine is more machine than god is my point

its portrayed as a giant uncaring mechanical system because thats what it is

[clear delta]

I disagree, but I think we just see it differently

[hybrid dock]

idk

maybe

i guess i just have a weird relationship to the book as someone who is religious

and i feel like calling it more like the church is accurate

rather than the god

[clear delta]

I am interested in religion

[clear delta]

Oh, I'm not calling it actual God
But I think faith, in government, in religion, in tradition, are part of the God Machine
As the demiurge
A twisted mystical ruler

[hybrid dock]

yes sure yeah whatever

faith is another piece of the world it uses to manipulate people

much like every other thing in the world it uses

[clear delta]

Think I frustrating you, so I'll drop it

[mighty zephyr]

Yeah it says it was written by Lucifer iirc

[hybrid dock]

i dont remember that in the main book at least

lucifer's all missing in that one

[high current]

[neuron activation] the song/music video for Brainrot by Grandson works as Descent inspo
https://youtu.be/xKH3Hj4lqLs
(call ms pink room happy girl a Messenger Angel ig)

[mighty zephyr]

I cannot pull the quote up at work

I'll try to find it later

[hybrid dock]

nah i believe you cus the wiki said lucifer got up to a lot of shit

[high current]

also iirc didnt DtF kinda borrow from DC's Sandman/Lucifer comics and have Lucifer be a bartender in LA or something

[hybrid dock]

and the DtF book did play dangerously close to the line with religion

[high current]

i need to get around to reading all of the DtF lore at some point, i read the core book back when i got into a game and i think i started looking into Days of Fire before i realized that it was similar to the Book of Nod, being a real-world representation of what's meant to be an in-universe artifact, so i put it down to avoid spoiling myself at the time

[hybrid dock]

i really loved the corebook

it was good vibes for me

[high current]

i'll give anything written by Greg Stolze a chance

[mighty zephyr]

Wait what hold on what

[hybrid dock]

i heard he was last seen in LA

but

i dont know the specifics

[mighty zephyr]

Oh the last lore bit is that he reveals his apocalypse form in LA

In broad day light

And causes a mass wave of conversions and breaks the belief in the mundane world

[hybrid dock]

huh

wild

[olive laurel]

That topic was dropped. Sorry

[mighty zephyr]

The reason im mad is because in my LA mage game the ST had lucifer as a bartender in LA

[hybrid dock]

oh lmao

was

was this the

[mighty zephyr]

Which the fact he stole that is

[hybrid dock]

the cursedone

[mighty zephyr]

Ye

[hybrid dock]

o h

m y

god

that game somehow keeps getting worse

inherently its not a bad idea to riff off

but

wow it really just keeps going huh

[mighty zephyr]

I mean the STNPC was also lucifers grandson

It really does

[hybrid dock]

...oh

my god

it KEEPS GOING

WHAT

[mighty zephyr]

This game was so bad I am still kinda working off the trauma of it

And im not being hyperbolic

[hybrid dock]

im SO sorry voy

genuinely awful

big hugs

jeeeez

nightmare game

[mighty zephyr]

Nightmare game

I found the quote btw

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/727099244011454555/1328617987300790304/Screenshot_2025-01-13_235318.png?ex=689a3c2c&is=6898eaac&hm=574374e863f80fbc729a837d36822792133c61d440dc040adc4efd4697d5dd39&

[tough pebble]

So it's pop culture "old testament" God

Where it still fails to acknowledge that fallen angels and hell really are not a thing in those scriptures last time I checked

[mighty zephyr]

Its a mish mash of things

[tough pebble]

Which would defeat the entire point of DtF if there aren't fallen angels but, you know

[mighty zephyr]

Also I believe its the same book that outlines how other religions are just Earthbound manipulating people

[tough pebble]

What exactly is Christian canon vs fanon and where all of it came from is a nightmare mess and is the exact reason why trying to play it seriously is impossible because most of what people associate with christian mythology is written by two guys centuries after it splintered from judaism

[tough pebble]

I hate this exact trope

I also hate writers kneecapping their faiths, deities, and mythology so they all fit into a convenient Universal Faith Structure

[hybrid dock]

wack

yeah no thats one of the bits i dont particularly like about it

i enjoy fallen angel game and fallen angels

but yeah

this kinda shit sucks

as an execution of the earthbound

[mighty zephyr]

I apologize if im ragging on the thing you like

[hybrid dock]

nah its cool its cool

its complicated for me

i like demon the fallen is the thing

[mighty zephyr]

Likewise

[hybrid dock]

i just also...yeah

[mighty zephyr]

My particular relationship with Being Raised Catholic makes it weird for me

[hybrid dock]

for sure

[high current]

reminder that Lucifer originally was the Roman god that heralded dawn, representing Venus, and the bible never actually refers to anybody being named Satan; satan is a hebrew word meaning 'accuser', it's used like throughout the bible to refer to different things and at some point someone decided they were all one singular bastard(there's also ha-satan, "the accuser", which refers to a subordinate of god who prosecutes the nation of Judah and tests the big G's followers)

[tough pebble]

It is certainly a choice to write a game in which God Themself is the enemy but then also respond to "so are all the other religions better?" with "lmao no they're fake"

[high current]

i am somewhat jokingly known in one of the other servers i'm in as 'the foremost demon expert', because i make a habit of explaining this kind of shit

[hybrid dock]

the relationship with God in demon the fallen is complicated

which, I do actually like

the redemptionist faction is one of my favorites

all the factions are quite interesting

[tough pebble]

From what I remember the big "the accuser" that gets remembered from the scripture was just an angel that God is having a pitched argument with (ironically, "playing the devil's advocate")

And it is presented as more of a title than strictly that angel

[hybrid dock]

one of the parts of demon that i really enjoyed was the uh
the layers thing

i forget what its called

but that before and during all that big shit, the world was so many more layers of reality

and those are sorta gone now

facets thats the term yeah

and those facets sorta make multiple things be true at once

in the time of facets being real, the world was created in 7 days but also took billions of years but also adam and eve were there but also adam and eve were living metaphors and also there were thousands of humans

and then one faction had an artifact that was a singular facet of michael's sword

[high current]

yeah im a fan of that, and its unfortunate how many people ignore that its how Demon allows the lore of other games to still work if you assume they're all canon

[hybrid dock]

and it took the form of an algorithm haunting a bullet

and michael's sword was like, a thousand facets deep

so just one of them was a fuckin haunted algorithm bullet

its so cool

i love facets genuinely so much

how angels were both winged figures and also the dancing patterns upon electron spins and also music wobbling in the air

that shits AWESOME to me

[olive laurel]

I suspect a lot of the weirdness with D:tF view of faith is related to how much more (specifically Christian) religious the US was then, and how... resistance(?) to this was a bit ham-fisted (which I don't think is entirely unreasonable) combined with people generally being more ignorant and less sensitive about other cultures

[tough pebble]

How the hell was this part of DtF and they still felt the need to have a direct grievance with every other religion

This is literally the perfect "all religions are true simultaneously, no you can't boil it down to a specific truth, deal with it" and yet

[hybrid dock]

i mean this was corebook

what i believe voy posted was from another book
at least i think

so

thats probably how that happened

but yeah facets were cool

i like facets

[mighty zephyr]

Demon got weirder with the other books

The politics also became Suddenly Vampire

[tough pebble]

Ah, author wars

[hybrid dock]

mm

[olive laurel]

... D:tF was the oWoD one right?

[mighty zephyr]

Mine is from I believe the book on Earthbound

Also yes

[olive laurel]

onyx path should have reversed title and subtitle to make it harder to confuse the two lines

[mighty zephyr]

Sin Eater the Geist

Created Prometheans

[olive laurel]

I think "The Created: Prometheans" or "The Requiem: Vampires" somewhat works. Though still off I'll give you

[tough pebble]

Forsaken the Werewolf sounds pretty metal

[mighty zephyr]

Sin Geist the Eater

[hybrid dock]

descent the demon

(this is an order)

[olive laurel]

But I do get annoyed at how similar the names are. Mage is the worst at this because they are kind of similar words too lol

[mighty zephyr]

Awaken the Mage

[hybrid dock]

AWAKEN
THAT
MAGE

(new gameshow)

[tough pebble]

Lost the Changeling

[hybrid dock]

well

go find it

[tough pebble]

This, too, is fae posting

(Disclaimer: I have never read anything of CtL)

[clear delta]

Fave promethean lineages?

[marble sorrel]

...I was gunna make a joke, then I realized I made it last time that was asked. XD

[olive laurel]

I did have a giggle for the "Changeling the Lost Second Edition" Kickstarter because the way they wrote it made it sound like they had just rediscovered the manuscript

[clear delta]

I forgor

[marble sorrel]

Actual Mummy, Looking At An Osiran: "...well, that's just offensive."

Settites, Osirans, Werecats and Mummies getting together to argue about 'Who the fuck was Osiris?'

Osiran: "He's a metaphor for our nature as incomplet..."
Settie: "HE'S AN ASSHOLE."

[hybrid dock]

LMAO

[clear delta]

In mummy the curse azar was a cool guy

Sutekh was the martyr and savior

[clear delta]

Anpu is cool too, but he is overruled by the asshole judges

[spice abyss]

Alrighty, my VASCU squad has realized there's something A) faking being the revenant of an accidental murder, and B). There's some generational fuckery going on with this town.

Little do they know they've stumbled upon the hunting ground of a Beast.

[rapid glacier]

Ruh roh

[spice abyss]

Who just creates a serial killer persona every couple of decades, whips the town into a frenzy, and then slinks away to keep the stories circulating.

While also maintaining a cult to keep these stories going.

[dawn wigeon]

i have never seen someone parry a changeling contract until tonight

[graceful saffron]

Hah!

[clear delta]

Vascu game in which shit hits the fan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpCMBvIlUjQ

[dusky ledge]

Friend made a reference sheet of my character and I'm in love

[clear delta]

Cool!

[grave gulch]

could someone help me with puzzle ideas?

i didnt plan anything and the game is tonight

i usually do time and perception fuckery for my puzzles

[clear delta]

Electric monster you gotta plug to drain

[grave gulch]

elaborate

[clear delta]

Big charged problem you need to trap in place and connect plugs from a machine to drain its power

[grave gulch]

how do we make that magey?

[heady kestrel]

Cryptids exist

Either in the demon way or in the mage way
Organism that was near a heavenly verge could have just… turned into that

[high current]

my usual approach to puzzles is to look at the PCs and what they tend to do to solve problems, and decide if those work and why/why not
eg, if i have an Obrimos who's fond of using Matter 3 to erode physical barriers, either the material is especially durable or there's a secondary and likely more magical form of protection like a ward, which, then you get to figure out how they can bypass the ward

this is assuming the puzzle is essentially a vault/safe with a macguffin inside or something along those lines though

but in my experience it avoids the 'puzzles for kindergarteners' problem where you have 1 definite solution and just wait for the group to figure it out--instead, figure out what doesnt work for sure, and let them feel clever when they try something else

[rapid glacier]

I don't know if you have time for it, but look through the game GUMSHOE for ideas on puzzles and investigation type stuff, that way you can have people still 'solve' the puzzle and keep things moving, even if they fail or whatever; its a great tactic for puzzles on the fly because they won't spend time picking apart the holes in the puzzle you forgot about

[grave gulch]

will do

[clear delta]

Anyone ever used temporis?

[marble sorrel]

Which version of the game?

Temporis is vastly different in different versions of the game

[clear delta]

Oh really? Didn't know
Any version, then

[marble sorrel]

oWoD: Absolutely Bullshit. Celerity is already the best combat path and this is a better Celerity.
v20: Pretty solid, gets moreso with the bloodline book that lets you get True Celerity from it. More a support tool than a direct combat tool

Jackhammer Punch is also very funny if you wanna be a Punchy True Brujah

[worthy sundial]

so i kinda wanna try & adapt this mechanic for a v5 campaign & was curious if yall had ideas on how to go abt it

my first thought was using hunger

[fair tapir]

That feels like it'd work with hunger, it's basically just a procedure for deciding what to do if someone has a hard time feeding themselves

You could add another currency (favors, probably), but it might feel redundant with hunger

[worthy sundial]

hunger kinda just feels like the big survival mechanic yea

i think the thing im split on is whether to do rouse checks or just straight 'gain hunger'

[graceful saffron]

I'd actually leave Hunger as is in game, and focus on making this how players gain social merits, equipment, and haven merits.

[worthy sundial]

how so

[graceful saffron]

Well, vampires are, in lore, sometimes struggling for access to money, safety, and access to human and vampire social structures.

So you could take a look at the rules for how V5 does its lifestyle, access to equipment, and how havens work as a merit, and basically have this system somewhat replace them, or add to them.

Let me grab some examples from the book if I have it on hand...

Nope, I don't have my copy of V5 on hand.

Basically it'd be interesting if you doubled down on how Hunger is something of a mechanical, chaotic tempo for Vampire 5e, by adding a second maintenance system like this for the beginning of each session.

Force your players to have to be constantly thinking about maintaining things other than their Hunger, which is resonant with the fiction of V5, but in play, once you have certain merits, you tend to be pretty insulated.

I'd say the categories that would work well for this are the... Contacts, Allies, Havens, and Hunting Grounds(???) merits?

I think they were called Hunting Grounds or Herd.

[worthy sundial]

hunting grounds sounds right

my main concern is just that making it abt gaining merits or equipment might have ripple effects on how the rest of the game plays

[graceful saffron]

I nod I'd use it more as a thing they have to do to maintain those merits.

[worthy sundial]

im also unsatisfied w/ how abstracted itd be - aw's barter is a constant cost bc ur in a post apocalypse where ur scraping for food & supplies every hour of the day

v5 doesnt have a similar lvl of desperation, at least not on its face

[graceful saffron]

I nod No, not really. The nature of Hunger is sort of meant to be that, and already has effects for that.

[worthy sundial]

i think the play here is to make this be abt hunger, & then have ripple effects for the things u listed above

cuz all i rly need from this is to put pcs in a pressure cooker that inevitably shoves them into interesting situations every few sessions

which brings me back to whether a rouse check or straight hunger would be better for that

cuz the former is in line w how the game enforces the day-night cycle

but the latter is an immediate problem

[graceful saffron]

I nod A rouse check also allows a player to play against the system.

Which I don't think you want in this case. You want a consistent pressure, no?

[worthy sundial]

yea, tho i do wanna give pcs like outs

the pressure then comes in when theyre tryna get those outs

so if it were a straight hunger gain, id write in specific conditions as to when they wouldnt get it

or if its more than 1 hunger, when they would reduce it

ie 'reduce 1 hunger if easy access to blood nearby' & stff

[graceful saffron]

I nod That would set an interesting constraint on where players want to be on a session // day end.

[worthy sundial]

mm what if
at the start of every session, gain 1 hunger; if u have unchallenged access to blood nearby at the start of session, make a rouse check instead. if u gain the hunger point, say who do u turn to to get fed, & play it out

[graceful saffron]

Oooo

That is interesting. I want to compare it against the Hunger rules for a new day that I don't have on me,

but I like it.

[worthy sundial]

i have the pdf here rn, its just a rouse check

[graceful saffron]

I nod I like it then.

One is for days, one is for session?

[worthy sundial]

ideally itll be for both

since i plan to run things as slice of life

[graceful saffron]

Ahhhhh

So a rouse check, + this?

I do think that will add some pressure, aye.

[worthy sundial]

no as in this replacing the rouse check

[graceful saffron]

Ohhhhh

I'd like it more as additive!

[worthy sundial]

i just worry abt keeping track lol

[graceful saffron]

Lol!

Ooo, valid.

[worthy sundial]

realized nearby blood only giving a rouse check is inconsistent so i think 'drank blood last session' would be a better conditional

[graceful saffron]

Ahhh, that's interesting. Have you experienced V5 much prior to this homebrewing?

I found people fed once a session anyways.

[worthy sundial]

not at all lol

tbh i dont even know if ill rly go thru w/ this, ill be askin my table abt it

[graceful saffron]

Personal experience at my tables sees this as just weakening the existing rouse rules, if you make it "fed last session"

because Hunger tends to either favor one player so hard that they can just luck past all this, or one player is feeding every few scenes, with a wide variance between.

[worthy sundial]

mm what would u suggest then

[graceful saffron]

I'd make it additive to the normal rule, or make it the second version you described.

Where you want nearby, uncontested access to blood to turn it into a rouse check.

That way players do have to consider where they end sessions, and lodging together becomes riskier.

[worthy sundial]

nodnod

[graceful saffron]

One thing I found useful when I first picked up V5 was doing test rolls with Hunger. Stat up some dice pools based on Character powers and the upkeep system, and then either crunch the statistics or try out a few rolls itself.

I think it's system would be an excellent way to add pressure that V5 sometimes lacks,

but I wouldn't want to lead you astray either!

[worthy sundial]

does v5 have an upkeep system?

[graceful saffron]

That is what Hunger is, effectively.

The way its supposed to work is you risk Hunger semi-frequently, and with bad rolls it can get out of hand fast.

[worthy sundial]

ahh ic ic fair

[graceful saffron]

My biggest issue with Hunger in V5 is that its somewhat easy to benefit in the surrounding areas of your life.

[clear delta]

So are in 2e, both tammuz and unfleshed are associated with servitude?

[marble sorrel]

...huh...I'd not realized how good vampires are at countermagic in V20 until now.

Reflexive Wits + Occult (Need occult 1 to roll), successes drain from the mage's successes is a lot of dice.

[mighty zephyr]

Yeah its not great

[marble sorrel]

I mean, i'm the vampire and I have problems with mages so I think it's great right now 😛

Things might be the other way about if I was the mage. XD

[mighty zephyr]

Chargen theurge able to mostly shut down Dante

That's also m20 not v20

[somber scarab]

OWOD Mages are cracked AF so it's okay, they deserve it

[mighty zephyr]

Oh they arent, not in 20th

They're startlingly weak if you go by RAW

[marble sorrel]

Honestly, despite me thinking it's great it's not liekly to matter that much against these mages.

[somber scarab]

Ah I didn't know M20 changed that

[marble sorrel]

It doesn't protect against Flaming Sword and these are Knights Templar.

I need to dodge that the old fashioned way

[mighty zephyr]

M20 tries to make things cracked but the sphere bloat and xp sinks mean that unless you just like

Cheat

Youre not actually accomplishing that much

[somber scarab]

Ah, I'm only kinda familiar with MtAs and less familiar with M20 changes. What's the TLDR on sphere bloat?

Did they go from 9 to like 20 or something?

[mighty zephyr]

No, just basic spells usually require 2 to 3 spheres at largely equal sphere levels

[somber scarab]

Ahhhh

[marble sorrel]

M20 mages need more paths as I understand it to affect things. It went from 'I have X, I can do Y' to 'I have X and Y, I can do Z'

Like if you want to Stop A Werewolf's Heart with life, you need life and spirit as you're affecting a being that's both spirit and alive.

[mighty zephyr]

You also need Correspondance if youre doing it farther than like 10 yards

[marble sorrel]

That said: This being Dark Ages, that's not a factor. They're using the much more versatile but also much more specific Pillars, rather than Spheres.

Which also means no paradox etc

[mighty zephyr]

Also you need Arete to increase your dicepool and Avatar to be able to spend Quint to lower your difficulty to make your small dicepool work

[marble sorrel]

These are what the Knights Templar will be beating my ass with instead of spheres.

[somber scarab]

Oh boy

[marble sorrel]

Spoilers: Gavri-El and Mikha-El is bad for me. XD

[mighty zephyr]

I do not think the nightfolk counterspelling rules would really work for a dark age chronicle fwiw

I dont think its really balanced for that

[marble sorrel]

Fair. I'll have to talk to the GM about that.

This game is a shitshow (Complimentary)

[mighty zephyr]

Idk if blood Sorcery has counterspelling built in

But youd probably just use that

[marble sorrel]

It doesn't though the GM has said I can attempt to use mine against Spirit-Based Effects.

Since it's Path of Spirit Manipuluation

So Werewolf Magic/Ghost Magic yes. Fireball? No.

For context of 'this game is a shitshow' (Complimentary)

Things angry at Aininur:
-Werewolves (She was in one of their Caerns recently/the local big werewolf knows she's a vampire because he killed her the first time when she was mortal)
-Baali (She foiled their schemes once so far and is hunting them)
-Mages (She's from the Sultanate of Rum and is very vocal about not being Christian)
-Other vampires (They have to interact with her and she's kinda an asshole)

[rapid glacier]

Hey @mighty zephyr can I bounce some W5 ideas off you later after I get home from work, I’ve suddenly found myself running three of them now

[marble sorrel]

So much wolf

[mighty zephyr]

That's a Lotta werewolf

Also yeah just keep in mind its 5am and I am suffering from insomnia

[marble sorrel]

I do find it funny that the issue local mages have with her has nothing to do with 'being a vampire' and everything to do with 'Being a non-christian spellcaster'. XD

[mighty zephyr]

I can abide the blood sucking and murder

But heathenry cannot stand

[rapid glacier]

I mean I get home around 9ish and will be going straight to bed so I’ll just get you a PM when I wake up

Third shift is brutal

[marble sorrel]

The downside to being in poland during the period of the Northern Crusades. XD

I am also putting together a W20 kitsune who has what is both a very good and very redundant thing. They've got the Shapechanging Linear Magic Path. XD

'With this level of magic you could turn into a fox' awkward cough

[upbeat forge]

Our GM had a oneshot of M20 for us on Saturday when the rest of the group couldn't show up, so now I'm reading the book and is it just me or are rules for instruments like, really vaguely written?

[marble sorrel]

Does Gauntlet rating do anything innately other than determine how hard is it for a werewolf to step sideways?

[rapid glacier]

I think technically might have knock on effects for vamps or magi that also do spirit things, and the gauntlet works for spirits trying to get out of the Umbra as much as it does for things trying to get in to it

Mechanically, I think it’s just used for traversing for Garou in the newest edition

[marble sorrel]

Mostly pondering if it would screw things up for anyone other than werewolves to push the gauntlet rating of an area through the roof with magic. XD

Aininur is a vampire but she tries not to bork the world around her.

[rapid glacier]

If there’s a Hecata around, then doing corpse chicanery would have an effect on the gauntlet imo

[marble sorrel]

...Hecata?

Googles

Oh, Cappadocians.

[rapid glacier]

I think in V5 it even refers to the barrier between reality and the Abyss as ‘the Gauntlet’ like the werewolf book does

Yeah Cappadocians, Giovanni, all the creepy necromancers banded together for survival and ate a Cappadocian for old times sake in V5

[marble sorrel]

Aininur is already on bad terms with the Cappadocians right now so I don't think they'd like her more for messing with that. XD

Spirit Manipuluation mage didn't respond well to opening her eyes to the spirit realm and seeing wailing spirits bound with chains of black metal to the local Cappadocian leader 😛

[rapid glacier]

Honestly probably them than whatever spirits are attuned to the Garou, those spirits barely tolerate them to begin with, being from the other side of the hedge basically marks you for consumption

Or worse

[marble sorrel]

There are concerns right now that the werewoofs might bite her head off because she was in one of their Caerns recently XD

You know, more than normal 'werewoofs bite a vampire's head off' levels of pissy

[rapid glacier]

I don’t know if they are more or less chill about licks in the Dark Ages, I assume much less chill because it’s easier to get away with just tearing heads off

Maybe don’t fraternize with the Silent Striders if possible

[marble sorrel]

Well, the local werewolf big guy killed her once already when she was mortal.

So I'm going 'less chill'

But yeah, basicly: Baali had attacked and were in the process of corrupting the Caern to Demons/Wyrm spirits.

Aininur's hunting the Baali

So she found it and drove out their spirits.

And in retrospect has gone '...wait, was that werewolf holy ground? Oh fuckity'

The biggest issue Aininur will have is that if werewolves do talk rather than fighting she's really not going to be able to resist going 'Man, it was a good thing I was there, as you clearly couldn't keep it safe'. And then she will be Very Dead.

She's kinda An Asshole, even if she means well.

[rapid glacier]

If your ST is hip to how pack and tribe dynamics work, they might leave you alive and just let you understand that the Razor Claws of Damocles are keeping an eye on you, which is still probably bad and fatal in the long term

[nimble gale]

Hi I'm the ST and werewolf is my second favorite owod splat after mage, iki's character is going to have a Great Time (TM) dealing with the local werewolves (who are mostly Silver Fangs and Get of Fenris, though poland's heavy Catholic and decent urbanization in the south of the country for the time means there's some Children of Gaia and Warders of Men as well. And a pack of Shadow Lords, becuase the Shadow Lords are always there.)

[marble sorrel]

Get of Fenris
Oh, I'm Dead Dead.

[high current]

have Fun

[nimble gale]

though honestly you're mostly likely to start dealing with the children of gaia first

they're currently having some conflict with the local lasombra. It hasn't turned to physical violence yet, but there's been a lot of petty religious bitching back adn forth.

[marble sorrel]

The local Lasombra sucks. 😛

[nimble gale]

which one, the blacksmith who's afraid of his own eternal damnation or the Smug Nun Shadowmancer?

[marble sorrel]

'Oh look at me, I'm actively using abyss magic while also fully believing in hell so I'm an absolute coward who refuses to get near anything more dangerous than a hangnail because I know where I'm going when I die a second time'

[nimble gale]

ah, both of them

[marble sorrel]

More the first but also: yes

[nimble gale]

at least you can trust the leader of the local gangrel, even if she is a weird religious fanatic

[hybrid dock]

Y’ know I suppose that’s fair

[high current]

yeah most vampires do

[hybrid dock]

thanks mourge

[high current]

https://youtu.be/TrAVDT7maJE

PSA for folks like me who fucked around on the old website and racked up blood points, check your email you might have earned a free upgrade to deluxe or premium edition(you still need to buy the base game but you'll get the dlc(s) for free)

[clear delta]

There was a game on the website?

[velvet sparrow]

I hope it's good

[high current]

iirc it was back when Hardsuit Labs was still making the game, and it was just like, finding clan symbols hidden around the site or something like that, idk

its been so long i forgot it even happened until i got the email, and until i saw them mentioning the old website in the FAQ i thought it was tied to the Tender ARG

[silver apex]

OMG i forgot all about that

you would unlock like clothes and stuff for your haven

stuff like neon clan symbols, coats, i think you could unlock some old bloodlines stuff

thank god i didnt burn that account

now im not sure whether to go tremere or toreador

[marble sorrel]

Which clans are they offering? Just the standard Camarilla ones?

[silver apex]

ummm tremere, banu haqim, ventrue, aaand brujah, and bonus (boo) is toreador and lasombra

banu haqim is nice, i never really read about them but i liked thre characters in reckoning

[rapid glacier]

Toreador being relegated to DLC is wild as hell

[marble sorrel]

...oh, they went with the V5 name for Assamites

[rapid glacier]

you'd think, for a game about an Elder, they would include the high clans at least

[marble sorrel]

I'm a huge Assamite fan so I'm going that and hoping they let you play Assasmite Sorcerers, not just Warriors.

[silver apex]

you have to drop like £20 too for the clans if you dont get them for free jesus

[rapid glacier]

there are lots of Assamite sorceries in V5 and the VR game had you play as a Banu Haqim that had a bunch of them, too

[silver apex]

i wish i had VR for the fragment of wraith the oblivion content in the modern day

[marble sorrel]

I guess Tremere, Assamite, Ventrue and Brujah gives you like '2 Set in Stone Carmarilla, 1 Independent, one Carmarilla/Anarch flex clan'

[rapid glacier]

Depends on when its set tbh, Brujah pull the chute on the Cam around the time Hardestadt get his head blown off, so if that hasn't happened yet Cam Brujah are on the table still

[silver apex]

the game has a set date right, its still set in christmas 202... forgor

[marble sorrel]

Oh yeah but for a long time before that they were Anarch-flexible. XD

[rapid glacier]

the old version of the game as announced, where you were a thin blood, was supposed to be set in like 2016

[marble sorrel]

Really surprised that Lasombra is on the table and Gangrel isn't

[rapid glacier]

I wonder how much of that still holds, because that might be before the Convention of Thorns

[rapid glacier]

Gangrel and Brujah formally left the Camarilla in V5; there's very few of them still banging around the Camarilla holdings in fiction, and the ones that are tend to be old and established

what's left of the Tscimize join the Anarchs and the Lasombra sort of kind of but not really are trying to fill the Brujah shoes of 'Camarilla Violence Do-ers' now

politics on this game are gonna be wild as hell no matter what; Seattle is Anarch territory (or is supposed to be)

[marble sorrel]

...wait, if Tzimisce are anarchs now, who's running the sabbat? They founded the Sabbat with the Labombra.

[rapid glacier]

Sabbat kinda got its shit kicked in

they started ramping up their fights right around the time SI started making more moves formally across the globe

I think its called out in the Sabbat or Anarch book that Anarchs and Cam had a sort of truce to gang up and stop SI and the Sabbat which sort of worked, but the Sabbat never really goes away and cells of operators are still around causing trouble

SI got its ass kicked a bit, but they're in the same boat

this is all stuff with V5 advancing time to like 2018? 2019?

well past bloodlines 1 at least

[marble sorrel]

I do find it funny that:

Things that get your entire clan genocided: Having too many eyes.
Things that get you invited back to the Camarilla: Literally founding the Sabbat.

[rapid glacier]

'invited' is doing a lot of heavy lifting there; Hecata get more respect than Lasombra do, generally

Lasombra get treated almost as bad as Nosferatu do

[marble sorrel]

On the plus side: Means I can have a character who entirely unironically in modern nights goes 'Fuck the Man! Yes I'm a literal old world noble, this doesn't conflict with my ideals at all!' XD

[rapid glacier]

yeah Lasombra have adapted well tbh, moving away from churches to more business and government entities and power bases, but joining the Camarilla meant their own clan hunting each other down to prove loyalties so they're still the ruthless bastards they've always been

Probably worse about it, now that I'm thinking of it; lotta patricide for V5 Lasombras

[marble sorrel]

Lasombra have adapted well tbh, moving away from churches to more business and government entities
Oh no, they paid the ultimate price: Their Drip.

[rapid glacier]

I mean they still wear all black and silk, just turned the anhk upside down

or right-side up?

[marble sorrel]

...with the Assamites not on the Tremere shitlist any more, did they ever actually undo that 'hey, we cursed your entire bloodline, preventing you from doing a lot of your things'?

Looks like in 5e they don't have the 'drinking vampire blood makes them sick' any more

So I guess the Tremere finally pulled their head out of their hampster hole.

[marble sorrel]

...umm...sorry if this is a dumb question/if I'm being blind - Where in V5 are the rules for PC-side True Faith? I've found the NPC-side true faith but nothing for how to make a character that has it beyond 'ask the GM'

[high current]

The game is using V5 as the basis for most things, so yeah

[high current]

Dunno about that, I think it would have been 2018 at the earliest since that's when we got V5 and the game was announced in 2019

And yeah modern nights the only truly independent clan is Hecata

[marble sorrel]

Feels a bit weird when the previous one was oWoD but...eh, not like we don't have a lot of D&D games that jumped between editions wildly too.

[untold elm]

the likelihood of bloodlines 2 having basically anything in common with 1 is vanishingly low

[marble sorrel]

Yeah, that's my thoughts.

[high current]

page 222; it works like a merit but RAW isn't purchased with xp, because it's meant to be more of a narrative thing or w/e idk

[marble sorrel]

Yeah, 222 is what I found but it's very 'how do I get this' and it's 'I dunno, beg the GM for an extra shiny with no listed cost?'

Feels weird when most backgrounds are narrative things but still have a cost during chargen.

[untold elm]

i simply do not want to be given a power fantasy of being the cool mighty vampire elder rediscovering how cool and badass they are while being named phyre. please give me the grounded dirty vampire video game

[marble sorrel]

My big concern about v5 being the basis for VTM2 is ironically more than anything to do with vampires to do with non-vampire stuff.

V5 is a lot less 'Hey, it's a weird world, do crossovers' than oWoD did.

And I like that weird world where shapechangers and mages and honest to goodness demons are lurking in the shadows, not just vampires.

Put my vampire up against a HIT Mark and I'm laughing my ass off.

[high current]

crossovers are actually easier in WoD5 because the games all use more or less the same mechanics

[untold elm]

didn't really come up in 1 besides the werewolf right. and the wereshark and hunter i guess. man the back third is bad

[marble sorrel]

And the Racism entire chinese section.

Where they put you up against Jiang Shi, who are not vampires technically and more like asshole wraiths.

[high current]

and like, V5 handles putting werewolves/ghosts/etc in your game about the same way older editions did, they have stat blocks but their stats use V5 mechanics to represent the abilities of the other splats because it's shorthand for the GM instead of saying 'go buy another $60 book lmao'

[untold elm]

that is the back third!

[clear delta]

The Japanese hunter, uhhh
With that tentacle joke

[marble sorrel]

Oh yeah but I mean there's a lot less 'X faction fron one splat meets Y faction from another splat' in the general metaplot. They tend to silo things off a bit more in that the groups don't tend to have big interactions with each other/most events were for only a single splat.

Like...to try and phrase it, there's a lot more 'oh yeah, you can fight A Werewolf' and less 'Okay so how do the vampires and mages in this city interact?'

[high current]

i mean, they haven't done a lot so far but that doesnt mean they wont ever and have no plans to

[marble sorrel]

||That and I'm kinda salty that one of the things they've definitively won't do is do a v5 version of my favourite splat, as they've said they're not interested in its style of horror.||

As an aside; When v5 eventually gets around to doing a changing breeds book I hope they kinda...decouple the werefoxes from being all about Asia. There's a lot of foxes all over the world and it's not like the archetype of 'Sneaky trickster fox' is unique to kitsune.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2igjYFojUo&ab_channel=SearchlightPictures

[grave gulch]

that looks like my kind of movie

[mighty zephyr]

Have you seriously not seen fantastic Mr fox

[marble sorrel]

Considering the age of most of the oWoD writers at the time the first changing breeds came out I am genuinely shocked that they didn't put any kitsune in england purely due to Disney's Robin Hood. XD

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLhYSw67pdg&ab_channel=donriddick Average Fera depiction of Garou history (Not unfairly)

[clear delta]

Tangentially related to wod
A magical girl retires
||Yeah, lee mirae has the power of acceleration, and is hastening climate disaster
I think mc might get time stop, and we get celerity vs temporis
But dunno how that fits credit card as her magical tool||

[mighty zephyr]

I really wanna play Princess the Hopeful

[clear delta]

Literal accelerationist, lmao

[clear delta]

If you have/get an understanding of the versions, please tell me the differences and quality
I cannot keep track of the 4 well

[high current]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDjeQUIE054

Required Malk gameplay

(Fabien is a younger vamp that afaik Phyre diablerizes at the start of the game, acts as a guide to modern vampire society, and I guess there's sections of the game where you play him in flashbacks)

[velvet sparrow]

That got undone when some 7000 year old Assamite woke up and went "Oh you think you know blood magic I'll show you blood magic" and shattered it instantly

[mighty zephyr]

Yeah the Banu Haqim are framed as equal or superior to the Tremere since their methuselahs have been doing blood Sorcery for millenia longer

[mighty zephyr]

I do not ive only read one

And at this point I forget which one it was

[marble sorrel]

Makes sense. Their blood sorcery goes back to Solomon or even further, if you believe the stories they tell. Which is...a little older than the Tremere. XD

[hybrid dock]

Wh-SOLOMON???

[marble sorrel]

The Path of Spirit Manipulation, one of the blood magic paths is the Path of Sulaiman to them and one of their native styles. Not sure if it's gotten a v5 translation yet.

Now if it's true? Ehhh...that's a lot more 'who knows?'

[nimble gale]

yeah, Solomon is mythologically involved in a lot of different things in the wod

well, the owod

the Order of Hermes, Celestial Chorus, and Taftani all claim him as a founding member

[marble sorrel]

I think about the only group that doesn't claim he's connected to them is the werewolves, because they'd never be seen with someone who knows how to read and count past ten.

(I'm being a little unfair to werewolves. Just a little)

[nimble gale]

HOnestly I'm sure the Silent Striders would likely have some call to go 'yeah we knew the guy' but other than that, agreed

[marble sorrel]

I'm sure the Settites have someone wandering about who says he never met Solomon but he met Moses and thinks he was a jerk.

[mighty zephyr]

Paths dont exist in V5

Also most major occult figures have every splat claiming them to some regard

Which means most likely every supernatural is lying about it for clout

As they are wont to do

[marble sorrel]

...huh, looking over it, V5 Blood Sorcery seems to be purely the most literal 'blood magic' of the Thaumaturgy paths, none of the others. Rather lean.

[high current]

paths dont exist but there are rituals and additional powers that let you accomplish similar things(see: Koldunic Sorcery, which isnt exactly the same but works similarly)

[mighty zephyr]

Any sensible update was gonna pair down Thaumaturgy since it was just 16 disciplines in a trench coat

[high current]

koldunic sorcery was added to V5 in blood sigils, along with some rituals
tl;dr is 1-dot power to attune to an element, make rouse checks to sense things through that element in increasingly large radius depending on how much blood you spill, rituals at 2-5 dots that let you use the element you attuned to for various shenanigans, the 1-dot power can be re-learned at higher blood sorcery levels to attune to additional elements

[mighty zephyr]

Koldunism is so bad

It really needs a change or an excision

[marble sorrel]

Sure it just feels weird to have Assamites get Blood Sorcery but...none of the Dur-An-Ki paths. No Path of Solomon, no Awakening of Steel, no Hunter's Winds etc.

[nimble gale]

I rather liked the V20 approach to Koldunism where it was based on where you live instead of just generic elementalism, the Krainas etc

[mighty zephyr]

I mean i dont mind that change, it just sucks mechanically

For players or antagonists

Its just an omnipresent instant kill a guy discipline

[graceful saffron]

It flattens the unique sense of culture and identity.

[mighty zephyr]

It adds nothing to stories

[marble sorrel]

(Been pondering how I'd translate a character from oWoD to v5 keeps running into 'I don't think you can'. As she's an Assasmite Sorcerer but none of the stuff she did is in v5 Blood Sorcery. Since she's a medium and exorcist who works with Spirits.)

[graceful saffron]

I nod I think its a catch 22 that v5 doesn't know how to navigate.

[mighty zephyr]

I mean i think it navigates it fine

Its just thaumaturgy had So Much beforehand that people resent it being put in line with the rest of the disciplines

[marble sorrel]

I think part of it is also that...Regae Vitae is perhaps the single most boring path WoD had, so it becoming What Blood Sorcery Is kinda hurts. At least imo. XD

[mighty zephyr]

Its also the most thematically relevant for vampires and makes the most sense to keep as the main focus.

[graceful saffron]

I don't. I think it actually dips into the longstanding issue of culture and belief in oWoD.

OWoD wanted to be multicultural, and was really hit and miss about it. Some distinctions were fine, some were stereotyping.

But some folx really want to be seen in Vampire, or explore those differences. If you collapse them down you risk equivocating,

if you don't, you risk imbalance or stereotyping again.

Blood Sorcery is tricky on this because its not just a power, its an expression of beliefs

[mighty zephyr]

I do not think that different ethnicities and cultures need different mechanics in order to be represented

It also isnt an expression of belief, its very explicitly a power anyone can get with the right tutelage or by eating a guy.

[grave gulch]

so if i eat a wizard i become a wizard?

[marble sorrel]

I think part of my issue is that well...Regia Vitae works very well as the Tremere blood sorcery but it doesn't work great as the Assamite one. Keepers Way was the only really 'blood' focused sorcery they had and it wasn't really a 'main' path for them.

It's kinda forcing one clan into a different clan-shaped box.

[graceful saffron]

I nod Which ends up defining that clan a lot, yeah.

[mighty zephyr]

I think this is addressed by adding a lot of thematically relevant powers and rituals that fit the Banu's vibe as justicars and assassins

Which they did

[graceful saffron]

That is a valid take, and I respect it. I personally think it can be done well, and is great when it is...

But that is my specific issue. Its both a power and was, in oWOD, an expression of more than just powers.

[mighty zephyr]

It was also just way too out of hand, imo.
It was a discipline that only two clans had in clan that could result in a character being able to do hundreds of possible things no other character could.

[marble sorrel]

I dunno...between this and the 'We didn't give true faith a points cost for some reason', this has kinda really torpedoed this attempt to get into v5 by translating an oWoD character and seeing how they look. XD

[mighty zephyr]

Its because its an antagonist ability

I dont see why vampires should get true faith

Outside of extreme plot measures

[marble sorrel]

...what? No. True Faith has always been something vampires can have. it's not common and it was always expensive as hell but it's not 'only antagonists can have'.

[untold elm]

Googljng shows me a reddit post where someone says its mostly just for mortals. Even hunter doesnt have real true faith rules its just a way to flavor your edges

[mighty zephyr]

Yeah you can do most true faith things with Edges in hunter

[high current]

some stuff that used to be part of Quietus became Blood Sorcery powers(the stuff that turns your blood into poison/acid)

[marble sorrel]

I give up trying to translate Aininur to v5 to see how she'd look. I think this might be the first Vampire I've seen erased by paradox. XD

[mighty zephyr]

But I dont think vampires should be able to use it outside of extremely unique individual cases.

Its like giving a vampire the ability to set themselves on fire. That should be a thing One Guy does and he should be a horror for being able to do so.

[nimble gale]

True Faith would arguably be more common for vampires if they buy into the caine part of the story, honestly. Hell, multiple clans were known for having true faith--lasombra, salubri, assamites. Hell, there were cainites who had true faith in caine in the sabbat, traditionally speaking.

[mighty zephyr]

I think having faith is fundamentally different from true faith and keeping it a thing mortals wield against the supernatural is good.

[high current]

i think 'true faith in caine' got converted into the 'cainite heresy' loresheet, more orless

and yeah, true faith was always intended to be extremely rare amongst mortals, to the point that 1 dot is already saintly iirc

[nimble gale]

I don't remember the numbers off hand but I believe it was something like about one in ten thousand mortals have true faith, and even then just a singular dot

[marble sorrel]

Depends a bit on when. The example priests in dark ages range from 0 to 2. The saint has full true faith 3.

[nimble gale]

which is conviently one mortal true faith haver for eveyr vampire that is supposed to exist in a setting

[mighty zephyr]

Theres also the saintly genociding abiding gargoyle with true faith 7 or 10 or something silly