#World of Darkness

1 messages · Page 47 of 1

marble sorrel
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When he's done it enough he can do a rite and get +1 rank of Humour renown

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However if the vampires make him blow himself up with his comical large bomb before he does the rite he can lose some temporary renown.

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If he HAS done the rite he won't lose a rank as you need to REALLY fuck up to lose permanent renown.

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And it would just be very embarrassing as he sits there in his crater coughing up smoke.

olive citrus
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And the rite is only during moots?

marble sorrel
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Nah. It's generally done during big social situations as it adds the social element of 'look at me, I'm so cool' for other woofs.

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But renown isn't about what other werewolves think of you.

rapid glacier
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Well not just wolves

marble sorrel
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Oh sure but I mean 'even if you do a great deed in secret, it still gains renown'. The world recognises you and your deeds.

orchid void
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Yeah it’s part of the spirit-nature of werewolves

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The Forsaken have it harder those guys have to summon a Lune

rapid glacier
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Someone in my home game called it a ‘Spiritual Yelp Review’ and while it’s accurate he shouldn’t have said it

orchid void
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And then the Lune carves new tattoos into the urthura’s soul

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And your Renown is solidified in moonsilver veins that glimmer and shine in the shadow

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love that Forsaken get moonsilver tats. it’s cute.

rapid glacier
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I stole that concept for my W5 games, it’s way too cool not to have in some form

marble sorrel
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Mind you, I don't think Forsaken can lose renown by having the Silver Claw Leader make you Twitter Main Character with a Rite of Punishment so it's not all upside for the Garou 😛

orchid void
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i managed to get a physical of forsaken 1e recently and boy 2e is waaay better bc a lot of 1e feels like writers going “we CANNOT be Apocalypse but we still have to be Werewolf uuuuuh”

marble sorrel
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Less identity of its own?

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With 1e, I mean

orchid void
rapid glacier
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It tries real hard to use different words and bends over backwards trying to make an identity that doesn’t really mesh well with itself

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Was my experience with it at least, I didn’t play it

orchid void
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Whereas i find 2e a lot more confident in itself and takes a more Xenofiction angle to stress the Otherness of the Wolf

rapid glacier
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By the time CofD 1e started printing my group moved on to Shadowrun

marble sorrel
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I played a Wolf Shapechanger in Shadowrun once. That was fun. Hang was also...let's be frank: Dumb as a sack of hammers where each of those hammers had been dropped on their heads as children.

But she meant well and is likely one of the more Genuinely Heroic Shadowrun characters I played.

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I played some Vampire and some Geist in CofD 1e. I didn't mind the mechanics of CofD too much and I loved the feel of Geist (But as someone who loves oWoD Mummy, that's not surprising, they're the same game).

orchid void
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awakening 1e is like. One of the first games i bought myself

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and awakening remains the better mage, fight me 🫶

marble sorrel
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I like both for their own aspects.

Changeling is a game I have complex feelings about.

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I recognise it means a lot to a lot of people.

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And I recognise it's really good at telling the specific sort of story it wants to tell.

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But as a Changeling: The Dreaming fan...I kinda bounce off it, hard.

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So it's a game I don't like but I appreciate.

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If that remotely makes sense?

orchid void
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i do understand

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but also iki I’ve had a thought and i hope this doesn’t sound mean

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but ur the only person I know who is so at bat for dreaming and not a transgender otherkin

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i say this with a deep affection for all parties involved and also dreaming a game i bounced off really hard

marble sorrel
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I'm merely a non-binary mythology nerd! 😛

orchid void
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exactly

marble sorrel
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It likely comes a bit from the fact that as a baby iki, I was given a copy of the Ealdwood Stories.

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And it permanently warped my interests

orchid void
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haven't we all read things we shouldn't have <it read CP2020 when it was like 6

marble sorrel
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It's actually the reason By Star And Melody is named that. It comes from there. XD

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Or at least, about a song about the series.

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It came to me to know then
That they need not die by hate
That I, might with my magic,
Battle to avert their fate

That I could bring them back this night
This to dwell within my hall
So now against hate, iron, and death
I go to pit my call

I call you now who came to me
Above my hollow hill
Now hear my song, and heed my words
And harken to me still

I call by star and melody
By love and magic bright
So come to me and bide with me
I fight for you this night
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And that series has basicly permanently seared into my head a place that Changeling: The Dreaming fits. That sad area of knowing one's time is passing but refusing to just give up, to work hard to make a better future for others despite that.

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But I'm rambling.

rapid glacier
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Hey we’ve all got at least one thing like that Iki

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Coincidentally, mine is probably unsurprisingly WtA

marble sorrel
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It's sorta a thing that makes C:tD for me both the saddest and the most hopeful of the WoD line. Working for building a better, more hopeful future full of joy and wonder...that you'll have no place in.

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The Changelings are there with the Mummies in being some of the only splats who conceptualize that the world of darkness need not remain dark. The Changelings just think that it will have to get through winter, the time of their own undoing, to get there.

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In other, less 'Iki gushing about changeling' things - Aininur is likely to be part of a werewolf rite soon!

No, she's not a werewolf. She's a vampire!

No, this is not a good thing! It's not one of the good rites.

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Blood Chalice
Merely owning this unholy item is a transgression against the litany, yet Grandfather holds the Blood Chalice as sacred. Only the most twisted of Lords would dare use it, and the mere possession of a Blood Chalice may be punishable by banishment or execution. Shadow Lords have no qualms about manipulating humans against their Garou rivals or creatures of the Wyrm, yet there are also humans who are used by the Wyrm to harm the children of Thunder. Lords of the Summit, who value justice above all, may decide to "dedicate" such a creature to Grandfather. 

The human is brought to a shadow moot so that he may see what he has opposed. The only purpose of the meeting is to dedicate the human. The Lords then shift into Crinos as a Half-Moon declares the human's crime against the Garou. The human may fight to defend himself, but if he is subdued, his blood is drained into the Blood Chalice. In a distorted interpretation of the law, the Garou have "spared the flesh of the human" by only draining his blood and have kept the Litany intact. His blood is then drained into a chalice, which is consecrated to Thunder. A Shadow Theurge holds the chalice to the heavens and then consumes the human blood. The soul of the transgressor is obliviated, and the heart of the victim shatters as a peal of thunder echoes throughout the land below. The victim is then interred under a layer of urine and feces.

Note that the conditions of the ceremony of dedicating a soul to Thunder may be carried out against any human. A ghoul, vampire, acolyte, psychic or mage will also suffice. Such is the consequence of acting against the Children of Thunder.
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Aininur: "How am I the less creepy blood person here? I'm the vampire!"

rapid glacier
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Seems like a lot of effort, a Shadow Lord Theurge can just hit their ass with lightning for a similar effect

marble sorrel
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Yes but she's kinda made them look bad recently/it's about sending a message, not just killing her.

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Things she did (If you listen to the Lord, she has a different take on the events):

-A few years back, permanently scarred one of the lord's sons/cost him a hunt of a vampire.
-Defiled one of their cairns.
-Used magic to steal werewolf power.
-Dishonored the lord's daughter.
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Her take on those events:

-I walked in on a werewolf attacking a traveller and in the process of him grabbing and gutting me, my silver necklace got shoved in his mouth. I wasn't even a vampire at that point!
-The Baali defiled it. I turned up to drive the evil spirits out because I could feel the dark magic corrupting the land.
-I'm a medium, werewolves don't have a monopoly on spirit magic or fetish creation.
-We kissed. When I was still human. And maybe a couple of times more after I became a vampire.
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Aininur's really good at ticking people off. Sometimes even intentionally.

marble sorrel
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Sorry for rambling.

nimble gale
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My first ever non-dnd game I ever read, and the first ttrpg book I bought, was mage the ascension revised edition. It had... Effects.

rapid glacier
rapid glacier
nimble gale
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Well revised is a lot thinner and easier

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But mostly I put conspiracies in everything and was a philosophy major for awhile

vast blaze
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Question regarding Mage 20

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The Avatar background states that at level 3 it becomes a distinct entity, what exactly does that entail

mighty zephyr
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Nothing really in gameplay terms

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Just that it now has its own personality and goals and character

high current
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basically at 1-2 you can kind of handwave your Avatar as being a vibe or sense your character feels that encourages courses of action, but at 3+ it's more likely to actually manifest as a being only you can see that you can communicate with

clear delta
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Okay, jotting down here.
Coal God fed workers as sacrifices is freed from its prison in the mines

mighty zephyr
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Bloodlines 2 is out

vast blaze
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Oh nice

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Wonder if it's any good

nimble gale
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From my understanding it's a perfectly acceptable action game with RPG elements set in V5's version of the setting, but the more you were hoping for a mechanical or stylistic sequel to the first game the less you'll enjoy it, but that's secondhand information so take it with a grain of salt, I can't afford to pick it up to try myself until my next payday

olive citrus
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Despite the basic rules for this game being simple, I didn't realize how crunch this system is.

velvet sparrow
vast blaze
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Mmm

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Not promising

mighty zephyr
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Alfa likes it so I'm excited to play it

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Trust my friends more than anyone tbh

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A LOT of these reviews are people playing for like 6-30 minutes and leaving a poor review

high current
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everything ive seen has me interested, im assuming the negative reviews are essentially people who are mad it isn't Literally The Same Exact Game

mighty zephyr
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so I'm not putting stock into it until I play it myself

vast blaze
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...apparently there aren't any weapons...?

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Which isn't a dealbreaker but that does seem kinda weird not to include any weapons

high current
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yeah most of the negative reviews are either 'not the first game' or 'not the game we were shown 5 years ago before they cancelled it and restarted with a different dev team'

vast blaze
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I mean there's something to be said about using Super Cool Vampire Powers rather than a sword or a gun but still

high current
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there's a couple that played for like 5 minutes and left negative reviews for lack of FOV slider/motion blur toggles

vast blaze
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I think I'd quit after five minutes if the motion blur was particularly bad tbf

velvet sparrow
high current
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yeah it seems like most of the negative reviews are people who went in looking for reasons to leave a negative review, immediately alt-F4'd and went to whine as soon as they found one

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went and checked out Outstar(WoD community manager)'s playthrough a bit, and it doesnt look like there's much motion blur vvShrug

velvet sparrow
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Oh right the negative reviews also mention lack of FOV slider which seems

quite bad

silver apex
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im at the 3rd main quest, i dont think its super inspiring so far but i like the ||1920s segments||, kind of reminds me of the cancelled dead sun legacy of kain games concept

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with fabien

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the main cast VA are really good though

vast blaze
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Didn't they get Sienna's VA to voice a Tremere NPC?

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Yeah, Amelia Thorne is voiced by her

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Vaguely hope she's a Lure of Flames user

high current
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Lure of Flames doesnt exist in V5

vast blaze
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LAAAAAAAAAAAAME

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No Levinbolt either I assume

high current
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nothing except Path of Blood exists in any way similar to how it existed in previous editions

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there are rituals that achieve similar effects, but straight up just throwing a fireball or lightning bolt is off the table

mighty zephyr
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Well you can still do it with Koldunism

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Which is now Blood Sorcery

high current
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with a ritual, iirc

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granted, it can theoretically be done in one turn, but it's still less 'boom fireball' and more baseline mystical

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(there's 2 rituals that can be used to deal damage with the element you attuned to, both require you to scratch open the scar you made when attuning to the element and then make a roll to activate the ritual, which includes a rouse check)

strong bronze
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Can you become a ghoul witouth being bloodbonded?

high current
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not really, best you can hope for is only taking a single sip from a given vamp so the bond isnt very strong

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there are like, signature lowercase-h hunter characters i think who make a point of taking a lil sip of vampire blood before they saw their heads off, so they can benefit from ghoul powers, at least in older editions

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one i kind of hope shows up in HtP somehow at some point is Caiaphas Smith, who is just an old bastard that keeps drinking vamp blood before he kills them
https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Caiaphas_Smith

White Wolf Wiki
Caiaphas Smith

Caiaphas Smith is a famous vampire hunter. He prolongs his own life through the ingestion of vampire blood, and might be the most powerful mortal character in Vampire: The Masquerade. He is...

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mostly hope he shows up in HtP because of the potential for a Caiaphas Cain joke

mighty zephyr
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Yes you can but it's incredibly difficult

marble sorrel
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You can grab them with your vampire powers, fire them until empty and then you toss them away.

vast blaze
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...that's kinda lame

craggy coyote
mighty zephyr
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I mean to balance this you can punch people across rooms at base

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which I think is cool and good

marble sorrel
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There's also the occasional very rare ghoul who's just flat immune to blood bonding.

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Though if vampires find out you're immune to blood bonding you're likely not long for this world.

high current
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NODDERs as far as i understand thats basically Caiaphas Smith's method, he's an independent ghoul that drinks blood from the vampires before killing them

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also right, i forgot bond immune was a thing

marble sorrel
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So they tend to go independent fast

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And I'd not reccomend trying and finding out if you're blood bond immune. The penalty for finding out 'no' tends to be high. XD

vast blaze
high current
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there's also one named Sullivan Dane, which is a play on Solomon Kane

marble sorrel
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My stance having played some of the new VTM game is - I can get why people would like it but I can also very much get why people who expected a sequel to bear much resemblance to it's precursor are unhappy. Neither's really an unreasonable stance to me.

It's not a bad game but I would say it's not a good sequel and if you're going in expecting a Role Playing Game even to the kinda truncated level of the previous game, this isn't it.

high current
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but he's not a ghoul

craggy coyote
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and camp "kill everyone with hum 5"

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He's great

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very flawed but fun NPC

high current
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i had a game that started with our GM throwing Dane at us once vvSuffer like, it wasnt the first session, but one of the first few iirc we caused a scene and he showed up the next session

craggy coyote
vast blaze
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There any way to boost your movement speed in Mage 20th, besides Time Sphere shenanigans?

mighty zephyr
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Depends on how your ST runs it

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It's incredibly dependent on if your game uses sphere determinism or paradigm-based mechanics for it's game

high current
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theoretically Forces to eliminate friction or push yourself with wind or w/e, or Correspondence to just teleport rather than actually moving

nimble gale
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Life can just make your body faster in general with MUSCLES and SPRINTING

vast blaze
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Correspondence is probably my best bet here...

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Theorycrafting a stupid Power Armor Wizard build centered around having that Alanson hardsuit, was trying to concoct a means of getting around the "You can ONLY move 20 yards/turn" hard cap

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I won't actually be playing it, I just thought the idea was fun

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Wizard running around in a bigass suit of Space Marine power armor

mighty zephyr
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Keep in mind you can do 1 Effect Per Turn

marble sorrel
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Well, if you're Technocrat, there is also the best transport method. Dimensional Science!

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Portal Gun/Stargate yourself places.

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Also good for dropping nukes on Ra. A guy who canonically exists in WoD.

orchid void
vast blaze
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How does one invest into that?

mighty zephyr
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It's just Spirit

marble sorrel
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It's spirit But Cool.

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There's some minor mechanical differences but it's Mostly Spirit

vast blaze
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Ah, I see

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Guessing it's listed somewhere in the main book I haven't looked at yet, lemme see if I can find it...

marble sorrel
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The primary difference is that spirit finds it easier to transition in areas closer to unspoiled nature.

vast blaze
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...wait wouldn't Data be the teleporting one

marble sorrel
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dimensional science wants pristine technology and workshops to make it easier

vast blaze
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Since it's the Technocracy analogue to Correspondence

marble sorrel
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Funny thing: The guys who have teleporters don't use data, they use Correspondence + Dimensional Science.

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Void Engineers are a Bit Weird

vast blaze
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I love VEs

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One of the few Technocracy subdivisions that didn't devolve into sociopaths tightening their grip on the world

marble sorrel
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But more seriously: Dimensional Science and Correspondence can both to teleportation. Spells care not just 'what is the effect' but 'how is it doing that effect?'

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Correspondence is more Transporter Classic.

vast blaze
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Aaaaaaaaaaah

marble sorrel
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Dimensional Science could transport you places by sending you through the Umbra Void and popping you back out at the other end.

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If you want to do up a big cool multi-purpose transporter you'd likely want some amount of both.

vast blaze
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Eh, was just wanting personal teleports to overcome how fuckass slow that hardsuit makes you

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...unless 20 yards isn't actually significantly slower than normal

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Admittedly

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It probably wouldn't matter hugely to a Technocrat

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Why bother walking up to someone when you can just

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Shoot em

mighty zephyr
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All of 'em did

vast blaze
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Well okay true

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But the Engies are one of the few that are redeemable

mighty zephyr
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Any Technocrat is redeemable if they stop being a Technocrat.

marble sorrel
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The Victorian mage book that shows the alt-universe 'what if they'd lost the fight with the Order of Hermes' is kinda fun. As it's 'Underground Scientists trying to stop fascist mages'.

vast blaze
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God that would kick ass as a setting

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I wanna do that now

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THAT CAN BE THE PREMISE OF THE CROSS SPLAT GAME

marble sorrel
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It's very much 'yeah, the order of hermes are not the good guys. The Order of Hermes are just the guys who Lost The Fight'.

vast blaze
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Alt timeline where the Order won, devolved into fascists, and now it's up to our plucky band of intrepid rebels to go fight off the magic fascists ruling the world

marble sorrel
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Notably, the order winning results in them curbstoming most of the other traditions as they're only sharing power in modern nights because they have no choice.

vast blaze
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Suppose the Technocracy winning was ultimately the better ending to the war, then

marble sorrel
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So the Victorian book alt-history has non-order of Hermes mages + artisans trying to fight the order of Hermes.

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Which is kinda fun

mighty zephyr
vast blaze
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Mmm, true

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It's just the one at least started out with good ideals and still has some degree of those ideals

marble sorrel
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There isn't really a 'good' winner of the ascension war option as you can't really go 'My view of reality is right and will dominate out all the other views' and not be stomping other people into the dirt.

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And if you're not trying to make your view the Primary View of Reality, you're not really in the Ascension War.

vast blaze
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Aye

marble sorrel
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Like if you're an Akashic Brotherhood guy who's just trying to achieve personal enlightment, you're a mage but you're not really in the ascension war.

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Save for ending up collateral damage on other people fighting it.

nimble gale
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Whereas if your an Akshic who thinks everyone's life goal should be climbing hte mountain of enlightenment while living in monasteries and swearing off life's pleasures, and you will fight for everyone's right to do exactly that and nothing else

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you are in fact a fascist, just a kung fu fascist instead of a laser gun fascist or a grimoire fascist or a blood sacrifice while naked in the woods fascist

marble sorrel
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They turn up in Changeling 20th edition.

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As it's noted the Akashics don't much like the Fae and like to invade their freeholds for Delicious Nodes.

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So a threat Changelings need to deal with is 'Some Liquid Metal Delegate Motherfucker turning up to try and claim our home for his new temple'

nimble gale
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every single mage (even the small crafts) is guilty of stealing something from someone. Freeholds, caerns, and nodes are all the same thing with a different coat of paint, after all.

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There's no good guys in mage, just different levels of colonizer/fascist.

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This is a very CYNICAL take on mage, of course, but it's not inaccurate

marble sorrel
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Yeah. It was the Celestial Chorus who were behind the Conquistadors in the Americas, for example. As it helped spread their way of thinking to force faith at a swordpoint.

mighty zephyr
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I mean every single mage
Organization
maybe, but that's not every single Mage

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I think if you called a modern Esctatic, Akashic, or Dreamspeaker, even a modern Chorister a facist they'd hit you with a pipe

vast blaze
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If you called a Virtual Adept a fascist they'd fucking laugh their ass off

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They'd also hack your bank account and drain it but they'd laugh their ass off first

nimble gale
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The organizations as a whole, though, are there to enforce their views of reality on other people whether they want it to ro not.

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NO one is innocent in the ascension war.

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again, very cynical take on it

mighty zephyr
nimble gale
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but I'm not sure there's another arguement that can be taken anymore

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we just have to face the facts: they're all awful.

vast blaze
mighty zephyr
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I mean that's only if you assume stuff of the Traditions that isn't true though

vast blaze
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But yeah Virtual Adepts seem like the most straightforward "Not Shithead" tradition

mighty zephyr
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No, that's the Dreamspeakers or Estatics

vast blaze
nimble gale
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No their whole thing is 'the internet will set us free'

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except it turns out that entire paradigm didn't work

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and all the internet did was make everything worse for everyone

vast blaze
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...isn't their entire organization structured into like

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"Those that gather dirt" and "those that act on that dirt"

marble sorrel
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The VA at their best are cyberpunk anti-fascist hackers. The VA at their worst are Magic Kiwifarms

vast blaze
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But that is a WHOLE different can of worms

vast blaze
mighty zephyr
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Bloodlines 2 is fun btw

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I'm a couple hours in

nimble gale
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Well, it seems to me that pessimistic takes are hte preferred ones

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so someone has to voice the ones about the traditions

mighty zephyr
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Incredibly funny that Lasombra Phyre instantly picks a slutty crop top for his default outfit

marble sorrel
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Like, the VA do 100% have a lovely starting place...but then, so did the Order of Reason. Which started with the premise that mages should not rule over humans/that mages should work to improve life for non-mages instead of sitting in their towers and occasionally stealing people for experiments.

It's what those beliefs become over time, when people have power behind them that becomes more suspect.

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The VA benefit a lot from being a very new group.

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So they've not had a lot of time to accrue that sorta stuff.

mighty zephyr
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Well they still were part of the Order of Reason

marble sorrel
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But yeah. My general stance is: None of the groups are 'good' but you can have good people in most groups. Like, it's generally best not to ask what the Akashic Brotherhood's Japanese branch was doing in the 40s (The answer being 'mages are no less prone to nationalism than any other person') but there's plenty of entirely heroic Akashics too.

mighty zephyr
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I mean if we are counting The Present, solely The Present, the Traditions are largely good people with good intentions simply trying to practice their own views in peace.

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Largely, outside of like the Hermetics, that is the stated and enforced goal of the Traditions.

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And if we are counting the Present, and Solely The Present, the Technocrats are an institution that by their own admission runs on fascist, militaristic ideals.

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I just read Technocracy Reloaded, which came out in 2021, and even that calls them "undeniably facist"

marble sorrel
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...I mean, if you're counting the present and solely the present, the Akashic Brotherhood are actively invading Changeling Freeholds.

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The fae underestimated the Brotherhood on several occasions, only to have their freeholds annexed, much to the shame of the Seelie Court.
mighty zephyr
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I mean I don't see how this particularly

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affects anything

nimble gale
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'Give us this location, please.' 'No?' 'Then we are no longer asking' is not, uh, exactly teh best optics if you're trying to avoid being colonialists.

mighty zephyr
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I mean Changelings aren't any more or less indigenous
Places of Power are sacred to just about everyone

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Colonialism isn't "Being belligerent"

nimble gale
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In a lot of cases the changelings are indigenous though? Like if they have a freehold established, they've been there for awhile; it's legitimately a lot harder to make a plac eof power a freehold than it is a node or caern, it's not just some rituals and rites, it's a whole quest.

worthy sundial
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indigeneity isnt just abt whos there first or longest, its a question of social relation

marble sorrel
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Sure but...a lot of freeholds are socially and culturally important. Like Ularu is the biggest freehold of Australia, formed by Aboriginal Australian changelings to keep the Fomorians out.

mighty zephyr
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Okay but then if the local Aboriginal Dreamspeakers find out they founded that Node during the first migrations to the landmass, and want it back, that's not colonialism.

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That's just normal societal conflict

marble sorrel
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I mean, considering the book actively says the freeholds are annexed I don't think that's a factor.

mighty zephyr
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That doesn't at all indicate the Akashakics are a foreign threat

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Just that they are taking over the Freeholds

marble sorrel
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I mean, considering this started with 'all the factions are doing asshole things, even in the modern era', invading people's homes they need to stay alive is generally seen as an asshole thing to be doing.

mighty zephyr
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Yes, every faction is capable of doing asshole things because they have the capability of evil.
However the stated goals and mission statements of the organizations that we are comparing are vastly different.

marble sorrel
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I'm done. I'm going for a walk/will put this on mute for several hours.

mighty zephyr
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Alright

vast blaze
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A thought occurs to me

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Would Hunter: The Parenting's Big D be God's Number One Water Chugger, or would he regard drinking water the same way as drinking arsenic

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Cause on one hand, him being fanatical about dinking he oiter makes sense

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On the other, him not even wanting to consider it fits how fucking deranged he is

mighty zephyr
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Big D only drinks water that comes from reputable puddles

hybrid dock
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No snake oil puddles here folks

vast blaze
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Wait, better question

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Does Door drink water

#

Or does he subsist off of red meat and whatever the hell one might consider an "American" drink

mighty zephyr
#

Door drinks motor oil

#

Keeps his insides running

vast blaze
#

True

#

Marcus absolutely drinks Mountain Dew like it's water

#

Maybe energy drinks too

#

I'd say Bawls but that's too bougie

craggy coyote
vast blaze
#

TRUE

high current
#

Kitten drinks water regularly and begs everyone else to do so but it falls on deaf ears

vast blaze
#

Yeah Kitten would be a reasonable water drinker

clear delta
#

R corp could be used as inspiration for a PMC division in the Cheiron group, or a conspiracy in Deviant

#

The lack of law against multiple of the same people existing beyond 7 days can be worked around

  • Supernatural law that applies to this specific cloning process
  • The company wants variety, so they only want the "best" version of each soldier
  • Creature with power in the company imposes the rule
orchid void
#

yeah but like what are they Doing that would require players get at them

tough pebble
#

so $25 in the humble bundle yesterday and I now own W5 books (along with H5 and V5, as far as I can tell it contains basically all current 5th books minus a few freebies). I stopped checking HB manually years ago so I probably would have missed it if I didn't see a post about it somewhere, lmao

W20th is still a fairly heavy cost, even with the ongoing sale, for every sourcebook for a single TTRPG I definitely would not be able to convince any of my friends to play, so that version of the lore will still be out of my reach, but hey, I can finally make my own interpretations of the 5th edition text instead of relying on secondhand sources.

mighty zephyr
#

Huzzah

clear delta
tough pebble
violet sigil
#

Copying from the general channel but

Anyone here play/run Chronicles of Darkness before? If so are there any resources for like...how to actually run the game/structure an adventure

mighty zephyr
#

Do you have any specific difficulties or questions

violet sigil
#

This and my message above it are what I'm hoping to start with if it helps #tabletop-discussion message

orchid void
#

So!

#

you've got a good start with the idea of a Missing Persons case, great way to start

#

But WoD wants you to focus on characters more than it does set pieces if that makes sense? You are running a mystery and your job is to arrange scenes and characters for the players to bounce off of in their attempts to strive for the truth

#

If you're playing bluebook mortals, the structure of an X-Files episode is what I'd point as as a guiding star

#

@violet sigil

#

So what you need is People Who Knew The Missing and Where They Went Missing and then you build those characters and those places, and you fill them with Clues and Information

#

Say the Missing got that way by getting kidnapped by a vampire and made a blood doll, talk about the kind of social scenes the Missing was a part of, the people who knew them there, and the people who might have noticed the weird pattern of people Going Missing around certain parts of the social scene

#

Build conspiracy webs!!! i find things like Twine and Obsidian are good programmes for writing that kind of notes in

violet sigil
#

Ty for the advice, I'll keep those in mind for sure

#

I also had another question regarding storyteller characters, if I have a recurring supernatural npc e.g. a vampire or noble or whatever that isn't necessarily hostile, are those supposed to be built the same way player characters are? Asking since those cases don't really seem to be a good match for Horrors or Antagonists

craggy coyote
#

Player characters even in V5 and SPCs have to be built differently, because an SPC often needs to be capable of not being immediately bodied by 3-4 players

orchid void
#

Yeah, just write down what you think are some appropriate dicepools

high current
#

they're asking about CofD, not V5 rooSit

violet sigil
#

I kind of just assumed they were using V5 as an example lol, but yeah I'm asking for CofD specifically if that makes a difference

high current
#

i think in CofD/nWoD2e, its generally fine to build NPCs along the same lines as PCs, assuming they're not something special(like a Strix or Idigam, which have their own rules for building NPCs)

#

and then obviously give them some extra XP to represent not being complete newbies like PCs are assumed to be

mighty zephyr
#

CofD characters can also just have thematic dicepools

high current
#

it is also fine to follow the approach they're suggesting above though, and just say like 'yeah this daeva vamp is good at social stuff, so they should have a dice pool of like 6, maybe 7 specifically for seduction'

mighty zephyr
#

Like "busting skulls 9-dice" and "Parkour 7 dice"

violet sigil
#

Yeah, in practice I'll probably end up just writing down dicepools or something less rigid, just figured I'd ask since the PtH book didn't mention anything about it and the Foundry system just uses a single actor type for PCs and NPCs

orchid void
#

like for me

radiant marsh
mighty zephyr
#

God

Vampire swimming in my brain right now

#

Bloodlines is really good for vibes

vast blaze
#

Jesus CHRIST my fellow players are trying to kill me I swear to god

#

One of them said, and I quote, "[she]'s a paranoid bitch and has unregistered firearms"

#

In response to the Prince's limo pulling up

#

Jesus fuck

mighty zephyr
#

I am jonsing so bad I kinda want to try one of those pbp servers

#

But Good Lord I feel like thats a bad idea for me

craggy coyote
mighty zephyr
#

Power gaming, cliques, being recognized, and people who push very lackluster or gross parts of the lore that I would not be able to opt out of

#

Mostly that

#

Other possible quibbles exist

radiant marsh
#

I'm in a couple, but it's with people I know personally.

#

I would likewise be very hesitant about jumping in blind

craggy coyote
# mighty zephyr Power gaming, cliques, being recognized, and people who push very lackluster or ...

As someone who jumped in blind and screwed up a lot of things, and conversely still has... complicated feelings about a lot of things with people I'm on bad terms with, I'd say those are reasonable concerns, and a real risk of the format.

Larger servers in my experience will usually only have so many active people, and those who interact will tend to clique up to some extent, where it gets nasty is when you have in group out group dynamics, especially among staff.

the lackluster/Gross parts of Lore you can't opt out of part, I can say, look for servers that have flags, and veil/boundary sheets. Those servers tend to, not always, but tend to, be better about handling certain parts of the lore since they've put in the time to think through how to handle boundaries, so they're more likely to properly structure plots to avoid them.

Plus the worst case scenario of asking about if a part of the lore you hate is around, is you get to leave before you feel invested.

Power gaming can be an issue, but in my expereince is generally oddly leveled out by the fact that in servers where people don't know each other the default community instinct is not to start fights. I've been in like 3-4 servers that allowed people to make multiple PCs in multiple sects and the end result was that no one wanted to fight each other almost every time, with the sect war becomign a cold war at best 95% of the time. I encouarge looking at any prospective to server to see if there are exp caps, yes or no? How fast is exp growth? How do story tellers handle PVP, are there systems in place to handle consent for stuff like that or not, and why are they there?

I can say as someone who has a fondness for "I'mma make a melee build" the general trend I've noticed is power gamers also tend to get banned regardless because well... unpleasant personalities tend to start fights. a lot. I've been on both ends of those fights.

#

as for being recognized... I'd suggest joining a server with a dedicated alt in your case, or making it a policy upfront that you won't take questions about HTP. Every play by post server I've been on, and I do mean every, one, has had at least one fan of HTP besides me. I imagine that can be... annoying for you given you probably get questions about the series a lot, and I imagine that'd get on your nerves.

mighty zephyr
#

If i am not causing Plot I am not having Fun

craggy coyote
#

Voy i am in law school, belive me. I have the intrinsic desire to start shit in character and occasioanlly argue like you wouldn't believe in character

#

there is nothing you can do to make me want to kill an NPC faster than ahve them be loud mouthed and stupid

#

especially about things I KNOW

craggy coyote
#

I have a sheriff in one server who si currently fighting for his fucking life to not kill the Don of the Hecata

vast blaze
#

I NEED to be given a directive

craggy coyote
mighty zephyr
craggy coyote
mighty zephyr
#

Ye shoot

clear delta
# orchid void yeah but like what are they Doing that would require players get at them

That seems to be in reply, so
Conspiracies already have the plot hooks that they create, control and hunt
Cheiron group are Hunters
What is specific to this group is being mercenaries and being interested in animals (specially supernatural ones). They could be hired against players, or attacks say shifters for samples
Players could do some sort of work for them

clear delta
#

Also, homebrew r corp can be even more furry than the original version lol

#

Give em chimerical implants that increase the body's energy consumptiom

queen heron
#

https://www.tumblr.com/vexwerewolf/798210769307287552/the-opp-tried-to-drag-me-back-to-my-keeper-so-i?source=share

Vex Lancerfunny

🔁 vexwerewolf

vexwerewolf

We smokin those Hedgespun Habanero Hoagies. We smokin those Arcadian Ayahuasca Applejacks. Hit the blunt so hard it permanently lowered my Clarity. I shot a load through her Gate of Horn. Last Huntsman stepped to me got his Heart turned into toilet paper. I'm built different. Privateer tried to jump me and I turned his Seeming into a Definitely. I'm feral. I'm worse than a Beast. My Kith don't even have a Blessing, that's how fucked I am. My stacks so thick I got the Coin Regalia askin me for a loan. This shit ain't nothin to me, man.

vexwerewolf...

vexwerewolf

The opp tried to drag me back to my Keeper, so I dragged all his limbs back to his birthplace through separate Hedgeways. The one time Summer Court saw me unleash my wrath, they tried to become the Dracula Court on the spot. You are fundamentally unprepared for the truth of my existence. I'm the reason Winter was hiding. I'm an uncontrolled animal. I'm an _uncontrollable_​ animal. Shorty made a pledge to reach the hilt and the consummation of her oath made me nut so hard we forged a new Goblin Contract. I fuck like I Dreamscape: an intruder making your paradigm shift. This shit ain't nothing to me.

-# #changeling the lost #dracula flow

Tumblr ·
sour zephyr
#

i need a minute after reading that, holy shit
i love dracula flow style posts so much

patent talon
#

"You are fundamentally unprepared for the truth of my existence" is so fucking hard

orchid void
#

I'm Him. I been him. I will continue to be Him.

image.png
#

honestly can just make a soundboard of dracula flow for Count Fucking Dracula

craggy coyote
#

say what you will about 1d6 chan, but one of the bits they have for WOD lore is putting dracula flow lines in the quotes page for most of the vampire clans is pretty good

vast blaze
#

...is there any use for the chainsaw in Mage 20th

#

It just seems kinda shit in general

#

1 extra die of damage over a greatsword in exchange for 3 extra Difficulty and a not insignificant chance of just hurting yourself with it

nimble gale
#

chainsaws are cool

high current
#

chainsaws are famously not actually good weapons

#

they're just cool

nimble gale
#

they are, howeve,r not actually--yeah

high current
#

as a general rule, the cooler it is, the less likely it is to be useful vvvSip

nimble gale
#

like their use case is 'there's a marauder who's paradigm is horror movies' or similar

#

jason voorknees is here to chainsaw off your kneecaps while you're stuck in a pocket of quiet

vast blaze
#

That's true

nimble gale
#

(side note I love using marauders as an excuse to shove mage PCs into entirely different genres for a short arc)

vast blaze
#

Shame, was vaguely considering theorycrafting a Nuts from Berk build around the chainsaw

nimble gale
#

'Oh we love this game of wimsy and magical power' congrats a static marauder's trapped you in that one part near the end of Control are you ready to discontinue the cycle

vast blaze
#

The stupidass power armor mage I theorycrafted:

nimble gale
#

Void Engineers: "Sounds like our sort of recruit."

vast blaze
#

What Spheres are generally best for a more melee-centric Mage?

#

I know Time is REALLY good for stacking actions but that's just busted in general

nimble gale
#

Prime, life, matter, forces, entropy, time in no particular order, all have stuff that can directly buff melee. Mind, spirit, and correspondence are more indirect for hit dude with sword

vast blaze
#

Right, right

#

I'm guessing Life is the general best pick for self-buffs

nimble gale
#

It can be; it certainly covers a multitude of sins there. A big thing with mage is that like, spheres are more... what is the THEME of what is happening, more than 'X can only Y' in a lot of cases. Like say I want to pull a 'throw my sword hard enough to impale a guy into the wall', right? I could do that with life--getting stronger to throw it more accurately. I could do it with correspondance, where the physical act of throwing the sword is just the act of casting the spell, but the actual effect of it is using correspondance to move the sword to an intersection with the target, etc

vast blaze
#

Good point

#

So it's less "what allows me to do X" and more "what's thematically appropriate for what I want to do"?

nimble gale
#

yeah, absolutely

#

remember, one of the most physical of the traditions, the Akashayana, fill the seat of mind on the council of nine mystick traditions.

#

(not that the seats mean a lot, but they do mean something)

marble sorrel
#

Tinkering with fixing one of the more powerful changeling treasures.

Forged Immortality (***)
Treasure
The stories of myth are full of stories of impossible immortality, of beings who cannot be slain by some method. Excalibur's sheath protects one from that which would spill his blood, while Baldr's mother obtained the promise of every being that she believed might hurt her son. It is not uncommon for changelings to forge their own such immortality, weaving the impossibility of death that way into the world.

System: When created, this treasure provides a specific set of circumstances in which the bearer may not die. 'In combat' is too broad but 'By Sorcery', 'Against that which would spill my blood' or 'In a duel' are acceptable. The bearer treats all damage that aligns with that circumstances as bashing damage (Even if an effect would change its type), which can incapacitate them but cannot go further than that. A fey warded against fire will continue to burn once he has lost consciousness but is in no danger of dying no matter how long his foes leave him in a furnace.

An effect that would kill the bearer or otherwise leave them unable to remain a character (Such as a spell that directly stops the wearer's heart or getting turned into an object) instead fills all health levels to incapacitated with bashing damage but has no further effect.

Forged Immortality cannot protect against Cold Iron, even if it would align with the chosen circumstances.

Made it much less beefy/made it so you still get taken out but changelings can have a 'oh yeah, that shit can't kill me' object still.

nimble gale
#

I like it, feels good to me. The specificity of it is a good balancing point, I think

pure mauve
#

It seems good, but I could see it getting finnicky depending on how individual GMs interpret what does or doesn't qualify, or what circumstances are too vague or not.

marble sorrel
#

Oh 100% but well...it's Changeling. Changeling is already a very 'GM needs to decide if that's cool' game with Unleashing being 'Do literally anything that's in-theme but at a risk of it backfiring horribly'

#

The original version of Excalibur's Sheathe capped the max level of damage at injured, not incapacitated.

#

Which made it 'if this turns up, you can't lose the fight'

#

While I tried to make it 'Oh yeah, you can still lose. It's less likely and you won't die in the process but you can still lose'

pure mauve
#

I can't stop thinking about how Sin-Eaters would probably view Mages, since most of their interactions would be either because the mage was manipulating ghosts somehow, or the mage had entered the Underworld despite being alive. So the general opinion would probably be viewing them as well-meaning but dangerously uninformed and blundering around out of their depth at best.

high current
pure mauve
#

or... did you ever see that post about a bird briefly landing on a skydiver's arm before flying away?

high current
pure mauve
#

The Mages of course do plenty of things which have nothing to do with ghosts or the underworld, but there is a miniscule chance that sin-eaters would ever have any reason to know that.

#

...I just remembered the Thanatologists. They're Bound who are explicitly not Sin-Eaters, because they study death from a very academic standpoint and without any emotional investment. (And I just want to say that it's an interesting statement that Sin-Eater PCs explicitly should not have this worldview because it's tied to an NPC style of krewe; that's a very clear statement about the game's themes and intended playstyles.) And there's probably be a lot of common ground between them and Mages, or at least Sin-Eaters might treat them similarly.

#

I honestly just like the idea of Sin-Eaters interacting with people who know just enough to be dangerous. Random mages who treat the Underworld with insufficient gravitas. Ghost hunting youtuber teens who bumbled into a ritual that successfully manifests any ghosts lurking around. Stuff like that.

#

(the other, funny, idea is a ghost who died just after writing a novel and won't pass on until it's published, but unfortunately the novel sucks.)

marble sorrel
#

Sin-Eater Psychologist "But...I handle emotions...academicly...what am I?"

pure mauve
#

Assuming they're a good psychologist, they'd recognize that accepting and acknowledging strong emotions about events such as death is normal and healthy.

#

You can handle emotions academically while at the same time recognizing the validity of those emotions and understanding that every death deeply matters to many people, both the deceased and their loved ones.

#

As opposed to just analyzing death at a remove, and studying the underworld as it is with no thoughts on how it should be.

#

or more seriously, probably part of a krewe of either Necropolitans ("Krewes that bridge communities of people both living and ghostly.") or Pilgrims ("Krewes that see the Underworld as a personal journey to be understood and guided through.")

#

It's entirely a mindset difference. Pilgrims and especially Undertakers both also study death and the afterlife. What separates them from Thanatologists is that they don't act like they're just studying objective physical laws with no direct bearing on them, but are instead approaching things from a deeply human angle.

#

...I mean, I suppose it's possible that they did think about emotions and mental illness at a kind of a remove and focused on trying to make people "normal" rather than giving them better lives. That would definitely be an interesting backstory for a Kindly Sin-Eater.

marble sorrel
pure mauve
#

Oh, interesting. Overly intellectualizing and not accepting the validity of their own emotions?

marble sorrel
#

Yep. It's what makes someone Banal

#

Someone being an asshole does't make them banal

#

It's disconnect from emotions and wonder

#

The iconic one, Dr Anton Stark

pure mauve
#

I think that if I ever did get to play a Sin-Eater I'd probably play a Kindly. There's something fun about a character who lived a whole life building up patterns of thought and behavior which they now consciously know are wrong but which are still their automatic reactions.

marble sorrel
#

He pioneered 'If you abuse a changeling enough and do it with pschological mumbo-jumbo they stop being a changeling as they give up all hope of a better world'

pure mauve
#

ah like oppositional defiant disorder

#

I do appreciate how they make it clear that the modern psychiatric establishment is not inherently evil or opposed to whimsy, though.

marble sorrel
#

Yeah, they compare it a lot more with...well, let me get the quote.

#

It's directly compared with Conversion Therapy

pure mauve
#

...I still have no idea how I feel about Changeling: the Dreaming.

marble sorrel
#

It's not something for everyone/it's never going to be Vampire or Werewolf popular but it means a lot to me/I think it's got a lot of good to it.

mighty zephyr
#

They show up and tell people who live what they're studying and tell them they're wrong.

pure mauve
#

I realize I don't have a great understanding of what CoD Mages are about.

marble sorrel
#

CoD mages are much more underdogs than WoD mages, as the Exarchs are a much more direct 'yes, we decide reality' than even the technocracy are in WoD.

The Exarchs are functionally gods who cut the ladder out from under themselves.

#

Literally, the Celestial Ladder got destroyed by them so no others can become Exarchs

#

And they can have the power to shape reality to their will.

#

It's why they're not really who you spend your time opposing in CoD mage

#

...are you much of a comics fan? I have an analogy with a recent big comic thing but it might go nowhere if you're not. XD

mighty zephyr
#

@orchid void Can back me up

marble sorrel
#

The comics analogy: Marvel's currently ongoing Ultimate series. Greed and cruelty won, they remade the world in their own image. However, while they are powerful they're not absolute nor are they able to see everything that happens. Thus, some people are able to rise up to reach out to what they should have been, to help reclaim a self that was denied them by evil.

That's a CofD Mage. One of the many humans who had the world stolen from them, realizing it has happened and must be opposed. But to do that they need to understand what it could be, what it should be. Not just what it is.

#

The Exarchs climbed the Celestial Ladder and destroyed it behind themselves so no one else could rise with them. Despite that, mages have awakened. They've been called by the watchtower to become what they could have been, had the world not been stolen from humanity by the Exarchs.

#

It's very based in Gnosticism, with the Exarchs in the place of the Demiurge

pure mauve
#

Ah, alright. That all makes a lot of sense.

marble sorrel
#

The enemy mages you encounter are the servants of the Exarchs, people who believe it's better to have an elevated position in this flawed, broken world than to try to fight them.

mighty zephyr
#

I'm making a Lasombra

#

and choosing a 1 dot Oblivion Power is fucking hard lol

somber scarab
#

Well, some of the enemy mages

#

Other enemy mages are just doing their own thing, where their own thing is fucked up evil wizard shit

marble sorrel
#

That's fair. There's plenty of Entirely Mundane Asshole Wizards.

#

This is world of darkness

somber scarab
#

For a given defintion of mundane, yes

#

Shit, now inspired to have a evil mage who's just running a corporation and using transmuted gold to bribe politicians

valid merlin
#

Harrowed Banishers are probably my favourite MtAw antagonist

#

Seers are also great though

somber scarab
#

And if you ask "Why didn't you just sell the transmuted gold instead of spending all this time running a corp?" he does not take it well

craggy coyote
somber scarab
#

Nah I think it's funnier if he's just kicking himself over how much easier it would have been to run BUY GOLD infomercials

marble sorrel
#

Mind Rote: 'You should buy gold'

orchid void
#

where did i put it.

orchid void
radiant marsh
#

The pitch for the Seers of the Throne (the Exarch follower antagonist splat) is literally "We know we're actively making things worse and stifling mankind's potential for our own gain, but our own gain is worth it." Some may try to rationalize this, but it all comes down to greed, lust for power, and the desire to sell your soul for comfort.

#

They don't even have the excuse of like the Pure Tribes in Werewolf being a different culture and brainwashed cult. To be a Seer you are acknowledging and accepting that you're actively making the world worse because it benefits you personally.

valid merlin
#

There is also the more resigned pitch for the Seers
"The Exarchs have already won. Might as well join the winning team and at least get paid"

radiant marsh
#

They're almost classic Changeling antagonists in that their whole MO is making the world and human society at large soul-crushingly banal and horrible.

#

WIth the various Seer Ministries taking different approaches to it.

#

Like one focused on political oppression, one on religious heirarchy, one on economic systems, etc.

orchid void
#

Panopticon, Paternoster, Mammon~

valid merlin
#

Mammon technically isn't one of the big Ministries, but they're muscling in because the nationalism one is losing power

orchid void
#

Oh yes, Hegemony

#

The Ministries are all based around an Arcana, except Space doesn't get one because the Gate is said to ward the Abyss

worthy sundial
#

i need to run an mtaw game man

marble sorrel
marble sorrel
#

(It does amuse me that CTL Changelings and CTD Dauntain are nearly the same thing. The distinction being 'Are the Fey actually something to hate and fear or are you targeting them due to your inability to cope with other trauma')

nimble gale
#

lol

marble sorrel
#

If they really wanted to for C5 offer something a bit more CTL, I could see an option being 'A changeling who got captured by the Thallians'. Since they're the Fomorian souled beings and the Fomorian Dreaming got a bit of a resurgence since 9/11 but that's less 'a major archtype' and more 'specific character thing'. The vast majority of changelings are not really that.

nimble gale
#

we'll have to see what happens

clear delta
clear delta
patent talon
viscid stratus
#

Obligatory

image.png
#

(I too long for the day I get to play my Taftani again q.q )

clear delta
#

Thinking of an inquisitor demon who is moral/ethical, but knows demons are untrustworthy, and believes they should be treated as such. Maybe even is a bit in denial about being good
So she acts deeply pragmatic, and gives reasons to allies about why she's so peaceful and cooperative. Gives full disclosure about how demons can lie and do soul pacts, then gives people ways to verify that she's honest about agreements and doesn't do soul pacts. Claiming she does this to be left alone, instead of admitting she wants people to like and trust her
Until a situation happens and she risks a lot to save one or more people, and she has no excuse
"I couldn't just watch you die"

heady kestrel
hybrid dock
#

Gate: “hey guys look what I can do”
SOUND OF METAL SCREECHING AGAINST METAL, ANIMALS DYING IN AGONY, EVERY LIE YOUVE EVER TOLD BEING MORE TERRIFYINGLY TRUE THAN YOU COULD IMAGINE
The rest of the exarchs: “what the fuck is wrong with you.”

heady kestrel
#

True!

vast blaze
#

...my ST seems to be prepared to throw a fucking Black Spiral Dancer at us

#

Oooooooooooooooh god that's bad

#

This is about the literal worst shit that could be hanging around here

#

We have two Levinbolt vampires so if shit goes south we can MAYBE, POSSIBLY melt it down with liberal amounts of lightning

marble sorrel
#

Yeah, werewolves are not unbeatable but they are 'Nobody is getting out of this unscathed'. Doubly so if they're using actual Werewolf Book Werewolf rules.

orchid void
#

HUH

#

i've had those backwards

#

my b

high current
#

Eye is Space, Unity is Mind

valid merlin
#

Panopticon is Space, because that's what you need to observe and create connections to people

vast blaze
#

OH NO

#

TEAMMATE ROLLED FRENZY AND BLEW OUR COVER

#

Oh god I hope this doesn't alert that garou

worthy sundial
#

chat, need help ideating the effects of a human-only blood disease that a sabbat pack priest would try to magic into existence

pure mauve
#

Why are they trying to do this? Like, what's their goal?

craggy coyote
#

^

pure mauve
#

That kind of really matters.

worthy sundial
#

trying to advance the gehenna war effort

mighty zephyr
#

why can't they just use like

#

hepatitis

worthy sundial
#

i meant just 'involves blood sorcery'

pure mauve
#

Oh I assumed this was basically them doing weapon testing with the blood magic, and they don't need to use it but they want to practice or something. Was I misreading?

worthy sundial
#

yea in essence

#

i think likely itll be taking advantage of an extant blood disease
this is from a pc offering their sire w this plot thread attached, & they wanted to involve their characters medical knowledge in it so the ceremony being just a modified viral leukemia or w/e would scan

#

the big thing is i want it to Go Wrong & start affecting vampires way earlier in the process than intended

#

actually malaria might be a better choice given the setting (manila)

pure mauve
#

I was also thinking about some kind of contageous hemophilia, which might have the issue of vampires accidentally killing someone they're feeding on because the person loses blood significantly faster than the vampire might expect, or the wounds don't properly heal after drinking.

#

but malaria is probably better.

worthy sundial
#

the general goal of the path of death & the soul aiui is to make sure things stay dead, principally the antediluvians that the sabbat wants to kill

#

which brought me to the thought of mb like, onset paralysis? working off the effects of staking a vampire

orchid void
#

Sickle-Cell Anemia?

#

The prey grows weak and sluggish, the vitae clogs and does not flow

#

The blood catches in the veins on little barbs

worthy sundial
#

vitae being preserved cuz of it is also a good thought yea

orchid void
#

Treat it as like, Empty Vitae, yeah?

#

If you spend it, it doesn't Do anything.

worthy sundial
#

i had the opposite thought actually; the vitae works but its also infected

#

or wait i misunderstood lol

mighty zephyr
#

There's a canon blood disease like this

#

I think in Blood Sigils

worthy sundial
#

ooh thats good to hear

#

mm blood sigils seems to mainly have flu & common cold, & both r v knowledge centric

#

but i do get to call this guy a plague oracle now

mighty zephyr
#

I'll try to find it when I get home

worthy sundial
#

theres the blood rider which is a bug that makes a vampire hungrier and hungrier till a week passes & leaves for a new host

high current
#

might be referring to the Blood Rider, page 153

#

vvvSip jinx

worthy sundial
#

it might also be another book tbh

#

i am glad to get blood sigils tho, gives me some archetypes for npcs

vast blaze
#

Died

#

Lmfao

#

Popped a headshot and rolled so much damage the ST just decided "You know what, I'm going to be nice and not let this go to waste"

tough pebble
#

Congratulations on not needing a second obituary

vast blaze
#

Somefuckinghow

tough pebble
#

The somehow is "your storyteller decided to be nice today"

Depending on what kind they are, that's either no strings attached, or debt.

vast blaze
#

Probably debt

vast blaze
#

COYOTE'S WHAT NOW

SPOILER_image.png
#

(Spoilered for maybe potentially NSFW writings)

patent stirrupBOT
#

Yeah we know a few coyote storys that involve that

nimble gale
#

yeah the coyote, like, mythos/legendarium/stories are wild

vast blaze
#

That was a fucking slap in the face

#

||"Yeah you have a massive fucking schlong. Btw this is a bad thing."||

nimble gale
#

I want to specify the size involved is one that would, uh

somber scarab
#

Clothes that fit would be a problem

nimble gale
#

||make pants nearly impossible and make intercourse acutally impossible||. Since it is a flaw it is absolutely something that is not pleasant.

marble sorrel
#

I'll freely admit, if a player turns up and says ||my character turns up with a wheelbarrow to carry his genitals|| I'm going to give them a long look.

nimble gale
#

... I don't think I--wait, wait, the tanuki once. nvm.

vast blaze
#

Like that one fucking South Park episode lmfaoooooooooo

somber scarab
#

Yeah tanukis are a classic

vast blaze
#

Imagine pulling up to the cross splat game with a tanuki lmfao

#

"Alright, go ahead and introduce your characters"

"I am Lucien DeMontegu, vampire of Lasombra, tragic creature of the night, master of Celerity"

"I'm Jane Doe, werewolf of the Glasswalkers, a real hardass but a massive softy underneath it all"

"My name is Inigo Zamtoya, Mage. I seek the villain, for he has killed my father and must die."

"I'M AKIRA KYODAINA BORU AND I HAVE MASSIVE FUCKING MAGICAL BALLS"

marble sorrel
#

Honestly, you could run a Tanuki pretty easily as either a 'slightly modified Fera' or 'a type of changeling'. Both can do shapechanging and illusions and animal stuff.

nimble gale
#

a pooka that's a tanuki would be hilarious

marble sorrel
#

I dunno, Pooka are all about doing Shenanigans. Do you think a Tanuki would do Shenanigans? 😛

vast blaze
#

Aren't tanuki renowed for getting up to shenanigans

marble sorrel
#

Yeah, that was the joke.

nimble gale
#

lmao

vast blaze
#

Ah, sorry

#

Hard to read jokes over a screen sometimes

marble sorrel
#

It's fine, it's fine. Tone is hard to tell online

vast blaze
#

...huh, would you look at that
https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Tanuki

White Wolf Wiki
Tanuki

A Kwannon-jin of the Eastern Hsien, the Tanuki are commoners; Hirayanu Shinma attuned to the element of Metal with the ability to turn into tanuki or raccoon-dogs (often mis-translated as...

marble sorrel
#

Pooka are very good at shenanigans.

image.png
pure mauve
#

they appear to have conflated tanuki and mujina.

mighty zephyr
#

Also yeah, this is a thing with certain Native American Coyote myths

#

Old Man Coyote would sling it over his shoulder

worthy sundial
#

thats a neat bit of crossculture convergence

vast blaze
marble sorrel
vast blaze
#

Something hangs low

#

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

nimble gale
#

Hmm. Celestial Chorister that teaches high school concert/marching band. Focus on the 'chorus' part of the celestial chorus. One band, one sound.

#

i need more marching band in my world of darkness

pure mauve
#

...wrong channel. That must be incoherent.

#

I am so sorry; I am in two tabletop forum channels and accidentally posted in the wrong one.

vast blaze
#

Lmao

clear delta
marble sorrel
#

One of our characters has achieved Maximum Sad with her conscience roll over some minor planned murder.

image.png
worthy sundial
#

lmao

#

which gameline is this for, vampire?

marble sorrel
#

V20, yeah

#

Distracting a guard so that another vampire can actively murder him.

#

We're doing a lot of murder tonight.

#

But to be fair: These guys asked for it. It takes a lot to make a Tremere dry heave about the scale of blood ritual you're doing.

#

And this being Dark Ages, there's not really a Masquerade to maintain. Just a general 'try not to get too obvious' vague feeling.

#

We're also a bit concerned about Piotr. He's been a vampire for at this point about four weeks and he's humanity 4 and it doesn't seem to be likely to go up any time soon.

barren vortex
#

hey buddy slow down there

#

never go full "I reject my humanity"

marble sorrel
#

He's not even rejecting his humanity, he's just a callous asshole. He was humanity 4 when he was human. XD

#

The wonders of being a soldier from a Revanent Family. This is dark ages so they've not gone full 'Inbred murdercult' but they're still the butchers for vampires.

nimble gale
#

Though being fair, he's a Bratovich, so the butchery was secondary to 'raising the best warhounds and warhorses eastern europe has ever seen, because they're high on vampire blood all the time'

#

but yeah no mostly he's just an asshole

marble sorrel
#

He's firmly in that 'look, some people gotta die' level of callousness. All the other PCs are doing pretty solidly on morality but...not so much him.

high current
#

obligatory

vast blaze
#

Sad gang

clear delta
#

My old irl group mentioned an incident
Ventrue used dominate to throughly brainwash humans into loyal pets, even acting like dogs
He did well on his rolls and lost no humanity
Another member said, if he were the ST, he would have given humanity loss anyway

mighty zephyr
clear delta
#

Werewolf denji, hmm

mighty zephyr
clear delta
#

Actually, frog hosts do keep werewolves as pets too

vast blaze
#

Friend of mine mentioned making a Mage that's just a sentient factory and now I wanna theorycraft that

craggy coyote
#

Play by Post update:
< Be Me Toreador sheriff. Agree to guard a meeting between the leader of the local hecata, his aide, ventrue primogen.
< Don gets followed by 2i (he'd already gotten heat) to the meeting
< I spot the 2i spy, warn the group discretely, suggest leaving.
< they decide to use a ghost to posess the spy, and bring him in for interrogation
< messy crit + loophole in wording means the posessed spy runs across a busy street, nearly causes a car crash, and is visible running through building, before the ghost kills him
< Hear voice from radio saying they're sending people in
< be at H4 from trying to contain this shitshow
<FUCK
< Tell everyone to run
< My sheriff escapes before the attack heli shows up
< Hecata die in one turn, Ventrue turns 2-3
< MFW one of the STs says "you could have saved them"
< We're so cooked

mighty zephyr
#

I gotchu fam

#

Wait attack heli

#

In NEW YORK?

craggy coyote
orchid void
#

guys who love sin but not in the way where they open wounds like Worm hosts

clear delta
#

There are worm hosts?

orchid void
#

Spider, Rat, Locust, Wasp, Leech, Lamprey, Raven, Mushroom, and Worm i think is the full list

clear delta
#

Think I know all but worm and leech

orchid void
#

leech is described as endemic to southeast asia, it Joins with a person and then over the course of a week drinks all of their blood until they drop dead, then it goes to find a new host- if the body collapses into at least a stagnant puddle when it drops, it gets back up as a bloodthirsty zombie

#

Worm seeks out sinners who die awful deaths, and brings them back as a Walking Wound that slowly drives everyone around it to madness, a shambling corpse full of worms and hatred for all. It doesn't serve the Maeljin if memory is right, but just likes Wounds

#

oh right and Termite

#

i forgot about termite

clear delta
#

Think they are the ones who fill up bodies with dirt and trash
And try to lure people into their hideouts
And/or are the ones who follow orders well but forget everything unrelated to a current order easily

orchid void
#

And yes

#

That's the whole thing

nimble gale
orchid void
#

worm hosts!!! worm hosts!!!

image.png
#

worm!!! host!!!

image.png
nimble gale
vast blaze
#

Mmmmmmmm

#

Don't like that

#

:[

clear delta
#

We have other Shard options

#

Want frogs? Or maybe wasps inside you?

mighty zephyr
#

Though i think in 2e they switched it to imply Uratha are wolf hosts

orchid void
#

i know the Rats think that

clear delta
#

Rats rats we are the rats

orchid void
#

I always forget toad, termite, and wolf augh

orchid void
#

To make children was her act with father wolf, and the 1e stuff suggests it as weakening Father Wolf by opening him up the natural cycles he represents (fathers die and the children carry a burden)

#

So making the werewolves a kind of Host that got naturalized into the spirit ecology via Luna’s patronage where as the rest are remnants of dead demon-gods from before time who suffered the Hunt and were forced to change. They make parasites bc they aren’t in those natural cycles that Luna represents

spice abyss
#

I like the fungus host

clear delta
#

It's fun

spice abyss
#

They infest a locus, waiting for woofs to step sideways

#

Then, once they get on a werewolf this way, they infect the next human the werewolf kills, and start puppeting around the body to infest more Loci

clear delta
#

Mushroom was a pangaean of fucking with people, it seems

#

Anyway, this means killing people risks corrupting holy places, which is a neat theme

spice abyss
#

Indeed!

mighty zephyr
#

What's a good Moniker for a Lasombra gunslinger who's been warring against the Sabbat for decades

marble sorrel
#

So they're a Lasombra Antibru?

mighty zephyr
#

Yeah, descendent of Montato

#

So he's a Cammie loyalist since his sire essentially uses him as an attack dog and he doesn't really give a shit about the Sect war other than his nemesis is a Sabbat Gangrel

#

I'm thinking "River Dog"

#

Oh wait, Stray Dog is fine I think

marble sorrel
#

Careful, with that name they might get chased around by a Kuei-jin with the Dog Beating Stick XD

zinc robin
#

Cammie loyalist Lasombra with a Sabbat Gangrel nemesis? Is this an Alastor

#

(to be fair it's probably not specifically that Sabbat Gangrel)

mighty zephyr
#

I don't know who that is

#

Gangrel is named Jericho "The Coyote"

zinc robin
#

Alex Swift, the one on the red list

#

Who the Camarilla initially mistook for a Lasombra

#

Also just kinda an asshole ex-confederate soldier

mighty zephyr
#

He might be related tbh

#

Especially since some of the Sabbat in the area might be related to him lmao

rapid glacier
#

…Calamity Jane?

#

Emphasis on ‘Calamity’?

#

Oh HE wrong gunslinger

#

I have a Wild West card shark/gunslinger in the local werewolf game as an NPC but he’s a Malk and his name is Leonard

#

All he does is run a taxi and smoke, these days

#

Does he need a fancy name? Is it like a nickname that was given to him by the papers maybe?

nimble gale
#

'Five-Shot' Fred

mighty zephyr
#

Oh the guy's name is Atticus Beck

violet sigil
#

man

#

knowing how to program is cursed knowledge

#

spent way too long trying to hack together PtH actor sheets for the CofD foundry system and now I feel like I lost brain cells

#

should have just used pdfs

vast blaze
clear delta
#

Oh my god
Suggested a holiday themed cabal as a joke in onyx path servers, then actually did it seriously

#

Cat (New Year, cat zodiac) could focus on the idea of a "non-moment", a sort of period between states to rest and meditate
Santa would be about how light is brighter in the dark, warmth welcome in the cold
Hope and comfort in hardship, or how opposites balance into a whole
Jack would be about catharsis of facing negative emotions in safe ways. Fear, sorrow
And how the scary can protect. You know, carved images that scare evil, how a symbol of trauma like godzilla is a beloved figure and even a guardian of humanity in movies
Bunny. Easter has rebirth and renewal themes. There is some deep writing I can do, but my brain just slams "cloned modified soldier rabbits!"
More seriously, there's an obvious angle of healing and rebuilding. Like using life and matter to literal rebuilding. Or helping people change and start over.
Also buffing people with life

#

Moros, obrimos, mastigos, thyrsus

high current
#

Could do April Fool's for an Acanthus, Fool is big on trickery and luck rooSit I don't have the mental bandwidth to flesh out the idea beyond that right now

clear delta
#

Yeah, I thought of that, but couldn't develop April Fool much

orchid void
mighty zephyr
#

Ah fuck that's good

dusky ledge
#

Trying to figure out how to make my Tremere useful in combat, but I think I just. Didn't make any necessary build choices for it. Didn't take any poison powers, or high physical attributes, which also knocks out most rituals. Cauldron of Blood is looking like my only real option atm

#

And that has to be used sparingly because of the stains it inflicts, at least until I get my hands on Nepenthe

marble sorrel
#

Also: What's your general statline?

high current
#

sounds like V5 since they mention poison powers and Cauldron of Blood

#

older editions Thaumaturgy didnt have much for poison outside Soul of the Serpent

#

my recommendation would be to pick up a gun, because assuming you're fighting mortals even a small dice pool has a decent chance to fuck a mortal up

#

but also, potentially invest in Compel or Cloud Memory as ways to avoid the fight/deescalate

marble sorrel
#

If you're a tremere you've also got dominate. Telling mortals to 'Fuck Off' is generally a pretty solid use of dominate.

#

And it removes a guy just as easily as murder

#

There's also multiple stats you can use for doing shit with firearms.

image.png
#

I imagine you don't suck at all of them.

rapid glacier
#

I’ve always found Power Word: Boomstick to be effective, even if you’re bad at Firearms

gleaming wave
#

Bloodlines 2 has me wanting to run a cofd game

high current
#

it has me wanting to run a V5 game vvvSip

rapid glacier
#

Both are good options, best of luck 🫡

high current
#

i dont have time to get another game going unfortunately

#

actually technically am between games with one of my groups rooThink was aiming at getting a game going with Legend in the Mist once i get the setting/campaign book from the kickstarter, but i could pivot into V5

vast blaze
#

I know it's more suited for it than previous editions

clear delta
#

Hey, any massive threat enemies you used in games?
Like, Mr X, Nemesis in resident evil
Or vespa the taboo hunter in distortion detective
Like. A powerful enemy who is coming after players, but can be postponed or played around

mighty zephyr
#

My Deviant's Devoted counterpart was essentially just Mr. X who was meant to fill this role

#

I did however beat the shit out of him surprisingly handedly

clear delta
#

Oh. Was the ST disappointed at him losing so early?

mighty zephyr
#

Probably, hard to tell with her

#

But the game fell apart due to scheduling shortly thereafter

clear delta
#

Oof

gleaming wave
#

the only interaction the players had was seeing them roll 35 dice on an attack and rip a kindred in half

high current
#

im wondering how you even got to 35 dice tbh

gleaming wave
#

ok so BP 10 allows you to get 10 str, 10 brawl

#

thats 20

#

then you can spend up to 15 vitae for physical intensity, getting a MAX of 30 because 2 dice per vitae

#

AND vitality or wahtever the strength discipline is called I forgor gives a max of 5 strength

high current
#

oh if he was BP 10 then yeah that's just a big 'lmao fuck you dont even roll initiative if youre under BP 5'

mighty zephyr
#

Vigor

gleaming wave
#

but 35 is pretty doable even at 5 bp if you max str, brawl and vigor

#

sorry 25

#

original was 35

vast blaze
gleaming wave
#

thinking of running a VtR game set in some city in europe where kindred society is deeply lethargic and built upon a faux roman tradition

high current
#

if you involve Rome at all i feel like you're required to at least make reference to the Julii vvvSip (a former clan that was active during the Roman Empire but got wiped out by the Striges; you could have an NPC turn out to be a Julii was well, though, because Thousand Years of Night implies there's probably a few extant stragglers, but they'd probably pretend to be Ventrue)

#

most likely moment of the big reveal being when the thought-to-be Ventrue turns out to have multiple dots in Vigor, instead of Animalism, or else when a Strix shows up and does some fucky shit(2e Julii have increased difficulty resisting Strix bs)

gleaming wave
#

oh 100%

#

vtr is unfortunately a minefield for me rn

craggy coyote
dusky ledge
#

I did get my hands on an incendiary pistol at least

#

Think my Composure is sitting at 3 rn?

#

Dominate is gonna be hard to justify for this character. High humanity + personally suffered a ridiculous amount of abuse (even by Tremere standards) via the use of Dominate and the Blood Bond

#

I've also been going hard into Blood Sorcery both because I think it's really cool, and to represent this character's mindset of relying on these abilities wayyy too much

mighty zephyr
#

I mean you don't have to be good in combat

high current
#

hey composure 3 is a decent chance of success, and it will only go up if you put points into firearms or raise your composure

#

also yeah unless your ST is regularly forcing combat, there's usually other ways of handling things

#

VtM is not a combat-focused game typically

dusky ledge
#

I don't even need to be good, I just want to make sure I have something to do

#

Like we have a Gangrel, a Nosferatu with Potence, and a Salubri with everything dumped into Fortitude and kickboxing

high current
#

also worth remembering that blood surge exists, which is extra dice in exchange for a rouse check

#

(2 dice at blood potency 1, i cant remember what the rate of increase is)

mighty zephyr
#

I mean if you're at BS 3-4 you can just get like

#

Marionette

#

and blood bend at people

dusky ledge
#

I'm sorry. I can get what?

#

I've never heard of that one before, is it new?

mighty zephyr
#

Yes

high current
#

4 dot power, added in Tattered Facade

#

blood bending in the 'controlling the opponents body' way, btw, not the 'bloodlines 2 tremere melee attack' way

mighty zephyr
#

No, also in that way

dusky ledge
#

Holy fuck

#

I'd have to get permission considering I already have 4 dots, and didn't take the prerequisite power, but goddamn

high current
#

holy shit that's metal as hell i didnt actually know how it worked

#

i mean if you're already at 4 you can also aim for 5 and take cauldron of blood

dusky ledge
#

That's very much the plan

#

Stains are a concern though

high current
#

yeah well killing people tends to cause stains anyways

dusky ledge
#

Looks like there's also something called Fulminating Vitae?

mighty zephyr
dusky ledge
#

Thanks much

high current
#

i still wish Blood Salvo was an actual thing

dusky ledge
#

Same

high current
#

between both Bloodlines games making it just a thing

#

but it never really existing in the rpg

#

but hey Marionette is Close Enough

pure mauve
#

...hang on, is it literally called Marionette? Because Sin-Eaters have a power also literally called Marionette and it would be really funny if, in the transition from oWoD to CoD, they just transplanted an entire power between splats.

mighty zephyr
#

I mean its a common word

high current
#

Marionette didn't exist in prior editions of VtM afaik, and the two are very different powers

valid merlin
dusky ledge
#

Right? Like it's RIGHT THERE

mighty zephyr
#

That is Marionette

#

You fully control blood and can use it to attack with manipulation+BS with +2 damage

dusky ledge
#

It does say you shape it into vaguely humanoid forms though

#

Personally I'm more interested in Fulminating Vitae, and our Tzimisce is VERY interested in Squirm

mighty zephyr
#

If they try to antman someone just make sure your ST is aware if PCs can do it so can NPCs

pure mauve
#

Ah. Geist!Marionette is moreso mostly poltergeist stuff, controlling random objects with threads of plasm, although at higher tiers it does let you control the bodies (if not necessarily the minds) of people.

mighty zephyr
#

Also fun fact

#

Forsaken are canon in W20th

#

Thanks to multiple typos

hybrid dock
#

JSAKDASK

worthy sundial
#

oh is this why theyre in htp

#

cuz if so thats rly funny

high current
#

i think they're just in HtP because the team likes to goof around and reference things

#

im still hoping we get M5 news in the next few days rooSip2

worthy sundial
#

pls so i can commit to another campaign thatll end after session 1

high current
#

although it is occurring to me, i wonder if they're going to like, remove all the cultural flavor of the Cult of Ecstasy/Sahajiya, Euthanatos/Chakravanti, Verbena, Dreamspeakers, etc VVSipp

#

oh and we cant forget the Akashayana

vast blaze
#

God I hope they don't gut magic

mighty zephyr
#

People are gonna say its gutted if its designed well

tough pebble
#

People are going to say its gutted based on how the lore is changed tbh

orchid void
#

it’s like playing lawyers, you present your case and your logic and you string it together

#

right?

vast blaze
#

Part of the fun is stringing together random bullshit

orchid void
#

mage the ascension is wrong to get rid of tools arguing your paradigm is way funner

mighty zephyr
#

Ru is running towards you as we squeak

mighty zephyr
hybrid dock
#

Lmao

#

The yapper

#

(Affectionate)

gleaming wave
#

I've been thinking of doing chicago by night and running v5...

#

VtR or v5... videogames

mighty zephyr
#

Depends on what you want

#

I find them incredibly comparable

gleaming wave
#

They are pretty comparable

high current
#

biggest questions are do you want 5 clans or 14(16 counting thin-bloods and caitiff), and do you want a vitae pool that gets checked off or hunger dice that are rolled

gleaming wave
#

yeahhhh I do prefer the mechanics of vtr

#

I've played both

vast blaze
#

Bit of an odd question: In most 20th edition games, what type of damage is most armor piercing stuff?

#

Making a Mage character for a cross-splat game and I'm debating if I want Too Tough To Die, considering I plan on gallivanting about in heavy armor disguised as something else

marble sorrel
#

Generally unless it's real fancy most dangerous stuff is lethal

#

An anti tank rifle is lethal. A plasma Cannon is aggravated

vast blaze
#

Makes sense

#

Probably wise to snag that then

#

...that and I won't be fully armored up 24/7

mighty zephyr
#

Agg is in and of itself armor piercing

#

Since you cant usually soak it

vast blaze
#

This is very true

#

I referred more to stuff like anti tank rifles, like what Ikiryo said

marble sorrel
#

Well, armour expressly can soak aggravated unless it's otherwise unsoakable.

#

Protean/Werewolf claws can be foiled by armour

vast blaze
#

...actually how does armor piercing work in most 20th edition games

#

Is it just "Yeah no you don't get to use your armor to soak"?

mighty zephyr
#

I would presume Ignores (x) armor value = to AP value

vast blaze
#

Right

#

It's not came up in any of my Vampire games, so I wasn't sure about how precisely it functions

orchid void
#

Probably doesn’t for much of WoD

vast blaze
#

True

dusky ledge
#

Currently working on typing out about 6 months worth of in-game time for notes

#

There's SO much

rapid glacier
#

Godspeed, I’ve been there twice recently for my games but it was well worth the prep time

strong bronze
#

query

a vampire was ambushed

had their entire group wiped out

running at the verge of final death

looking for anything to help them,they find potential help on some random poor soul,immediatelly falling upon and embracing then,

while their wounds heal from the newfound vite,they sick the neophyte who is likely in a frenzy upon the drained hunters

is this like

a valid backstory for how my character could have been embraced

rapid glacier
#

What clan?

#

It might matter, is why I ask, as there might be Repercussions to being sired in such a manner

#

Assuming you survive the encounter with the hunters

#

But it’s a solid start, gotta fill in the details on your sire and their situation and some kind of agreement to not be turbo-murdered by the Cam or the hunters and I think it’d be fine

orchid void
#

It’s a rather big violation of the Traditions, but in a small enough town why does that matter?

dusky ledge
#

The Prince could also find some use for them, placing sire and childe both under a boon debt maybe?

strong bronze
rapid glacier
dusky ledge
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Our newest player drew our coterie!

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rapid glacier
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Hell yeah, look at those licks

dusky ledge
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From left to right:

  • Dr. Morgan Fawkes, Tremere 12th generation
  • Clover Goodwin, Tzimisce 13th generation
  • Eden Morrison, Salubri 12th generation
  • Roe Adrasteia, Gangrel 12th generation
  • Zacharie Che, Nosferatu 12th generation
  • Roxie Marlowe, Hecata 13th generation
rapid glacier
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Wouldn’t have guessed the Salubri or Hecata, at best I’d have got them backwards

dusky ledge
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Ye, that's why her hair is like that, specifically to cover the third eye

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The Hecata works in a nursing home, and is a morphine addict. So she constantly gets her fixes off the elderly residents

rapid glacier
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||he was a Grim Reaper and took the Long Sippy on the almost dead or dying in said home||

dusky ledge
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Oh she's the same pred type I think

rapid glacier
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His day job was a coroner for the city of Boston, so like

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He got away with it a lot

dusky ledge
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Understandable

rapid glacier
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I can’t wait till I have some more art from the WtA game to share

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I got some commissioned for a sizzle reel for the stream breaks and such

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A quick teaser of our Ahroun cutting the corner of a train and landing through the roof onto a fomor

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That was her athletics check

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dusky ledge
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They're working on adding in some more minor recurring PCs too

  • Victoria Adaire, Toreador 13th generation
  • Gracie Nightingale, Thin-Blood 14th generation
  • Carter Nightingale, current ghoul and hopeful Thin-Blood
rapid glacier
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They’ve got a good art style for the setting, hope they’re inspired for more characters

dusky ledge
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The latter two are siblings, and the former two are sire and childe

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Oh they churn out this shit CONSTANTLY

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Especially memeing stupid shit we say

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The pieces on the one I shared are specifically from full-on reference sheets they've done

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rapid glacier
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Oh that’s good

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I’ve got a similar thing going, but just their names, auspice/tribe, and stat line

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Might get more creative later who knows, I’ve got a big budget for art these days haha

fair jungle
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Question, how you would positively sell the Toreador clan to someone that is
Really not into the sex/seduction thing?

gleaming wave
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being really suave

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being very good at convincing people

strong bronze
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they are also the clan of artists

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not just human beauty,obsessed with aesthetics and beauty in general

nimble gale
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Beauty in stillness and beauty in motion. I've seen Toreador who were extreme sports fanatics, finding the beauty in adrenaline, the fine line between life and death, and the actions people willingly take to experience both.

mighty zephyr
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You can play a pathetic loser artist who nevertheless finds themselves endearing to people

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You dont have to have confidence at all

fair jungle
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But thank you yeah
After playing Bloodlines 2, Patience, the character, make me wonder of other kinds of Toreadors that aren't just your 'sexy vampire'

high current
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toreadors are stereotyped as the sex clan, but their actual thing is art and beauty, as defined by an individual's aesthetic preferences

craggy coyote
# fair jungle But thank you yeah After playing Bloodlines 2, Patience, the character, make me ...

blunt answer: a lot.
you can be me and play a former soldier embraced because even roses need people to trim the hedges ... and .45 trims it pretty well with copious amounts of celerity and auspex.

there's also a very strong ability to play an investigator with their disciplines. it's not always the smooth talking socialite. a nature photographer who spends his nights looking through for perfect shots, a musician who uses auspex to tailor their music to a crowd, etc

vast blaze
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...god I wish Mage 20th's chainsaw was good

fair jungle
mighty zephyr
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Do flavor its infinitely more fun

fair jungle
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Or even a gunnut Toreador...
Like Ocelot describing how he loves to reload his revolvers

clear delta
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Painter toreador studying human suffering to paint a perfect depiction of hell
So they do their best to learn about people, their lives, about hidtory

vast blaze
viscid stratus
# fair jungle But thank you yeah After playing Bloodlines 2, Patience, the character, make me ...

One of my favourite NPCs to run in WoD is Evelyn Langland, a young british girl dying from consumption in the 12th century, who had a passion for poetry.
Owing to some quirks (and her Sire being fucking Iontius), she has never slept a single day since her siring, because she is convinced that Golconda is a poem, and it's up to her to find it, in the maelstrom of all languages and all narrative traditions in the world.
So there is this small, mousy, immensely powerful and powerfully weird blonde girl that wanders from Court to court, awkwardly tolerated because do you want to be the one to tell her to leave?
She also has one of the funniest character sheets because of her specialization spread:

specialties.jpg
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being a toreador isn't about sex, it's about obsession

vast blaze
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Something tells me she's into poetry

dusky ledge
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My thoughts exactly. Sure that obsession can be sex or conventional beauty, but it can also be several lifetimes dedicated to creating aesthetic perfection

viscid stratus
# vast blaze Something tells me she's into poetry

amusingly, whenever someone has actually asked to see her recent work, it's always been horrifically, mindbendingly abstract "take a fear frenzy to read more than the first line" type stuff, because she has spend 870 years in her own head, ceaselessly iterating on something that became utterly hermetic to anyone else around the time Napoleon rose to power

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in four different chronicles, this character has not taken an onscreen hostile action once, and somehow every PC has been deeply worried around her 🙁

dusky ledge
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Aside from the core book, players' guide, and blood sigils, what v5 books are most worth getting? Working on filling out my wishlist

rapid glacier
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The newest one is pretty decent, Gehenna War has more combat and action-oriented rules to add in if you want

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Cults of the Blood Gods has some interesting bits for villains and protags alike, but it’s not a necessity tbh

dusky ledge
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The newest one being Tattered Façade?

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I was considering it if only because of all the powers

rapid glacier
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Yeah that’s the one, I don’t have it yet since my VtM game wrapped for now but I’ll grab it eventually

mighty zephyr
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Tattered Facade whips

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I also like Gehenna and Cults of the Blood Gods

rapid glacier
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Ngl I know fuck and all about Baali or Ghul so I wasn’t invested in them coming back, but I’ve heard good things about the splat from others

marble sorrel
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The Baali and Revenant stuff is kinda controversial, as it is pretty big changes for both. Some people are into it, some are not.

mighty zephyr
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Oh I don't care about the Baali, I just think the vibes about Horror are really well done

rapid glacier
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Oh it’s got Revenants, too? Or is that the Ghul?

mighty zephyr
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Ghuls are different

rapid glacier
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Revenants have been hinted about since the core book I think but I won’t say no to more stuff for them

marble sorrel
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Revanents are basicly Generational Ghouls. Families bred to fill the role of ghouls. The Precise Specifics of how that works is rather different in v5 and pre-5 but the 'generational ghouls' part remains.

rapid glacier
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Oh I think they were using that term for in-bonded Ghouls, too

marble sorrel
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In V5, being a Revenant is a pretty bad deal. You're reliant on Vampire Blood to say alive so you're a generational ghoul in the sense of 'You must become a ghoul, as you'll die in a few months without vampire blood'.

Pre-5 Revenants are a result of experiments to make true-breeding ghouls and kinda a success. They don't need vampire blood and in fact naturally generate some to fuel disicplines. Unlike normal ghouls though, they do have bloodline weaknesses as they're really straddling the line of 'ghoul' and 'nearly a vampire' and also being kinda flawed as a result of medieval punnet square experiments by the Tzimisce to get there.

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One of the vampires in @nimble gale's Dark Ages game is an Ex-Revanent. His dad could kick the ass of any of the 'full vampire' PCs most likely due to being a century old Revanant 😛

nimble gale
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Mm hm

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He's got Potence, Fortitude, Animalism, and Viscisstude dots.

rapid glacier
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Oh that’s a rowdy ghoul

nimble gale
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He's the head ofthe local branch of the Bratovich family, who are the Tzimisce's stable-keepers and kennel-masters

dusky ledge
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Admittedly, my current game is unlikely to deal with such things, outside of one instance

nimble gale
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he's bred warhorses forthe grand duke of poland, so he's got temporal as well as visceral power

dusky ledge
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My character has secured Erichtho as a mawla, and my ST mentioned something about her having connections to I think a revenant family? I don't remember the name though

marble sorrel
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And well...Tzimisce Horses are...I don't think anyone without Fortitude should be around a Tzimisce Horse.

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They're meat eaters.

nimble gale
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they're not surviving to the modern nights more than likely but said revenant has acutally figured out how to breed revenant animal lines.

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HIs logic was literally 'well it worked for us for the masters, why can't it go down one more level'

marble sorrel
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Meanwhile Aininur's horse is 'merely' a Ghoul but well. She's also a lot less Murderous than the local fancy ghoul warhorses. XD

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Fajr (Warhorse Ghoul)
Attributes: Strength 7, Dexterity 2, Stamina 6, Perception 3, Intelligence 2, Wits 2
Abilities: Alertness 3, Athletics 3, Brawl 3, Empathy 2, Intimidation 2
Willpower: 4, Health Levels: OK, OK, -1, -1, -2, -2, -5, Incapacitated
Attack: Trample or kick for nine dice bashing; bite for five dice bashing
Disciplines: Fortitude 1, Potence 1
Blood Pool: 10/10

Kaarina (Domesticated Cat Ghoul)
Attributes: Strength 1, Dexterity 3, Stamina 3, Perception 3, Intelligence 2, Wits 3
Abilities: Alertness 3, Athletics (Climbing) 3, Brawl 2, Intimidation 2, Stealth 4, Empathy 2, Subterfuge 2
Willpower: 3, Health Levels: OK, -1, -2, -5, Incapacitated
Attack: Bite for two die bashing; claw for two die bashing
Disciplines: Celerity 1, Potence 1
Blood Pool: 10/10

She has 2 ghouls, both animals and both disgustingly pampered.

nimble gale
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potence 1 housecat can kill a peasent

marble sorrel
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Celerity 1, Potence 1 cat is just not a fair fight for the average peasant. Fortitude 1, Potence 1 Warhouse is not a fair fight for a soldier.

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Actual Barding + Stamina 6 + Fortitude 1 + Ghouls can Soak Lethal = 'Why is my spear not working?'

rapid glacier
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Ghouling animals is always a treat

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I’ve got a Nos NPC who ghoul’d a whale that follows his cargo boat around

marble sorrel
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Aininur prefers animals because she finds ghouled humans unreliable due to how monofocus on you they are.

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It's entirely fine if your cat is a bit needy about your attention

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It's not so much if your housekeeper is

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She'd rather get humans to do things for her with the power of 'I will pay you money'

rapid glacier
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You ghoul humans for loyalty, typically

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Cause the upkeep is real, and in V5 you can only sustain so many based on your potency

nimble gale
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money is a great superpower to have

marble sorrel
rapid glacier
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In WoD sometimes it even works like a Flaw, everyone notices the guy who flashes stacks of cash

craggy coyote
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I like my bad guys to be bad guys

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Don't give me that "oh we're summoning demons to prevent a greater apocalypse!" bullshit

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You summon demons, you build human sacrifice pits, and you do enough sex drugs and rock and roll to give a 50s father an aneurysm, fucking own it

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fucking Nergali

violet sigil
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With Style Merits in CofD, if I have e.g. Parkour which costs 1 to 5 dots, in order to get all the manoeuvres would that cost 5 total (i.e. you upgrade the existing merit by one each time), or 5! total (i.e. you purchase the 1-dot version, plus the 2-dot, then the 3-dot, etc. all separately)

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this rulebook is worded rather poorly

strong bronze
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how much stronger would you say your average modern vamp is to a human witouth any disciplines

rapid glacier
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If they can blood surge, noticeably stronger but not necessarily overwhelmingly so

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If they’re older then obviously that gulf widens dramatically but a 13th gen or a thin blood aren’t that much different from a regular human without using blood surge and getting hungry/spending blood points

marble sorrel
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They're a bit beyond what you'd expect a human to be capable of.

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And disgustingly able to take hits and keep going.

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But not so inhuman that you can't imagine them losing.

rapid glacier
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Durability is the big one, cause they can soak lethal / reduce all Superficial damage by half, even from firearms

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You’d lose to one in a fistfight through attrition alone

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And yeah what Iki said, with blood available this goes off the rails quickly and instantly

marble sorrel
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That said: Worse generation means it takes longer to get to that/they have less reserves to work with.

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For a 2/3/2 vampire (Physical Tertiary) to hit 6/6/6 would take 11 blood and if they've got no generation, they're capped at 10/doing it 1 per turn. So they'd need a snack mid-way through.

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If they've got a little generation or are not a very physically unimpressive vampire they could do better.

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Aininur's 3/5/3 and can spend 3/turn so she can hit 6 in any given stat in a single turn or 6 in all stats over 3 turns.

lucid cape
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I really wanna get into WoD, what are the systems I can get into?

valid merlin
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So first off
WoD or Chronicles?

lucid cape
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What's chronicles?

marble sorrel
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Okay so, there's a few main gamelines these days:

WoD20 (Vampire the Masquerade, Werewolf the Apocalypse, Changeling the Dreaming etc)
WoD5 (Vampire the Masquerade, Werewolf the Apocalypse. No others yet)
Chronicles of Darkness (Vampire the Requiem, Werewolf the Forsaken, Changeling the Lost etc)
and of course, Dungeons the Dragoning 40,000 7th Edition

20/5 share the same setting more or less but there's a lot of supernatural types that are not in X5/likely never will be. That one is more 'different editions' but there is some tension there since there likely won't ever be 5 versions of quite a few things.

Chronicles of Darkness is an entirely different setting. It's got some similarities to the WoD but has some unique gamelines and it's own spin on things.

lucid cape
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What kind of spin on things?

marble sorrel
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To go with one I'm very familiar with: Changeling is in both WoD and CoD and are dramatically different games.

worthy sundial
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wod changeling & chronicles changeling r entirely different premise-, tone-, and subject matter-wise

lucid cape
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Elaborate

worthy sundial
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ill let ikiryo do it lol

marble sorrel
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Changeling in CoD is about being an abuse survivor and attempting to deal with the trauma you have suffered, while Changling in WoD is about being a muse of wonder in a banal, sad world that is leaving you behind.

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Theme-wise, at least

worthy sundial
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this is made most clear in what constitutes 'fae' between both games

marble sorrel
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A WoD Fae is an ancient soul fighting as a dying light against darkness and cold, trying to spin the human spirit to recognise joy.
A CoD Fae is an asshole kidnapping children to neverland for his amusement.

lucid cape
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That's not nice

worthy sundial
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asshole is making them sound too human imo

marble sorrel
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There's a reason why you play as a Fae in WoD and you run from a Fae in CoD

lucid cape
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How about the Vampires and Warewolves?

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Spelling mistake

marble sorrel
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Vampires are the most similar across the two lines.

worthy sundial
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those r the closest in theme

marble sorrel
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The difference there are more 'political' than structural.

rapid glacier