#World of Darkness

1 messages · Page 48 of 1

rapid glacier
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Like are you a Noir person, political thriller, etc etc

marble sorrel
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Or is there a particular supernatural beastie you're super into?

lucid cape
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I honestly just wanna play monsters

rapid glacier
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Cause each splat might share the setting in common but they approach it with very different purposes

worthy sundial
lucid cape
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Now this is a philisophical question

rapid glacier
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Yeah ‘monster’ doesn’t narrow it down in the slightest lmao, even the human mortals Are Not Good People

marble sorrel
rapid glacier
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Explaining all the splats and their relationships to each other is yarn on a cork board territory tbh

marble sorrel
rapid glacier
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If you’re interested in a particular beastie, read through its corebook and see if you vibe with it

worthy sundial
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if what ur out for is someone contending with their monsterhood, head to chronicles

lucid cape
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Political thriller sounds like my speed

rapid glacier
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There are also many games and interactive fiction pieces as well as actual plays that give you an idea of how things go

worthy sundial
lucid cape
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Damn

marble sorrel
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Political Thriller is generally Vampire, with a bit of WoD but not as much CoD changeling.

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Like all of them can do it

rapid glacier
marble sorrel
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But WoD Vampire can be a lot of 'politics the talkening' even by WoD standards 😛

rapid glacier
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Yeah Vampire is specifically Political and Personal horror angles

valid merlin
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CtL has Changeling politics as something you can lean into but its not always as much of a factor

rapid glacier
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You can have that in any game line, my WtA game has a lot of it, but that one laser focuses on that as a theme

worthy sundial
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vampire set the archetype for wod as it exists so its generally the one most expected to deal in factional politics yea

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especially with old as fuck vampires

lucid cape
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I see

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Hehe

marble sorrel
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CtD has politics as a notable factor but it's not quite as primary as it is for Vampire. Seelie and Unseelie are not as fire and water as Cam and Sabbat is for vampire.

lucid cape
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Anyways, specifics! Lemme think

worthy sundial
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i think the other big political game r the mage gamelines

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but yea basically all the games involve faction politics to some degree

lucid cape
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Suddenly thought about how this sounds almost like the Like A Dragon games but underground politics aren't uncommon

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Not all of them are grim right?

rapid glacier
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@lucid cape the new game lines have Primers available, which explain the setting and themes of each splat as well as mechanics; these are free on Renegade’s website and are a good peek into the books without the upfront cost

marble sorrel
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Geist for example is one of the least grim lines CoD has despite literally being able dead people walking.

rapid glacier
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They won’t succeed, but they’ll try bless their little hearts

lucid cape
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Lmao

valid merlin
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How hopeful things are varies a lot yeah

worthy sundial
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theyre all grim to some degree

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chronicles has the most grim lines just by volume i think

valid merlin
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Vampire tends to be pretty bleak, because you only have so much to look forward to in unlife

lucid cape
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What is the kind of story Warewolves tell in WoD?

rapid glacier
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Werewolf is “what if Captain Planet fused with The Punisher” and their best outcome frequently involves bleeding out in the snow at sunrise after killing a big evil guy

lucid cape
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I keep fucking mispelling it

valid merlin
marble sorrel
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CtD varies widly tonally, by design for example. One day it can be about fighting a cold iron dragon that seeks to devour people's dreams, another day it can be dealing with the horrors of Conversion Therapy.

worthy sundial
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wod werewolves is spirit powered ecoterrorism yea

rapid glacier
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I mean it’s Anticapitalist Wahhabism

valid merlin
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Chronicles Werewolves meanwhile makes you spirit border patrol

worthy sundial
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wahhabism is an unnecessary pull

lucid cape
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Sounds like it fucks

rapid glacier
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It’s frequently a lot of things, but their tag line is “Warrior, Shaman, Hero, Monster”

marble sorrel
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Wod Werewolf 😛

image.png
lucid cape
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What

rapid glacier
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Werewolf is also the one that really hammers home violence isn’t really a good tool for long term change, so any good game is gonna have some politics involved

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Hammers are only really good at driving nails and breaking things, and the Garou are the best Hammers ever made

marble sorrel
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Werewolf's general vibe is 'Ecoterrorism with Ancient Mythological Spiritual Journeys and a lot of 'Cú Chulainn tied himself to a standing stone and stood against an army that could not pass as long as he lived''.

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With the issue that...yeah, there are problems that 'A guy who can fight an entire army of mortals' can't really solve

rapid glacier
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It’s also got a lot of “the older generation shit the bed and now the youngsters have to branch out and make a difference because everyone else is too depressed to function or too callous to care about anything but murder”

lucid cape
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Ah

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Also, faren, cant find the primers, where is site?

rapid glacier
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Werewolf is a lot more complex than it looks at first glance but you can absolutely play Power Rangers: Mortal Kombat Edition if you want

lucid cape
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That sounds like an amazing oneshot

rapid glacier
marble sorrel
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...the Changeling/Get of Fenrir interaction gets a lot less 'Those poor werewolves' with modern Get being non-playable neonazis and a lot more 'Those assholes had it coming'. XD

rapid glacier
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Also I am running a W5 game over on twitch every other Thursday called ‘From Dusk Till Bawn’ about a group of cubs and some older wolves trying to solve problems in Sieverville, TN

lucid cape
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Thanks

rapid glacier
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Our next game is this Thursday, actually, I’ll send you a link to the collection if you’re curious for my take on the setting and genre

craggy coyote
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consistently capable of doing more than their appearanc will suggest is the way I'd phrase it. a brujah with 0 potence 3 athletics and 4 strength is capable of suddenly rivaling world champions on a whim. it's ajother aspect to their horror. that little waif? she's strength 4 and can surge to 6 and has spent 100 years learning the secrets of kicking the shit out of you. good luck.

marble sorrel
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...I think a general idea with Werewolf's 'vibe' is that the good end for a lot of characters is not 'Retired safely' and is more 'Died in a way that bards will sing of for generations'

craggy coyote
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any of the normal tells humans use for dangers aren't really viable around vampires

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it's another reason theyre so damn hard to kill em masse for hunters

lucid cape
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I was gonna ask if theres one who's main purpose is just tearing stuff up, but I feel like that encompasses basically every one of them

craggy coyote
marble sorrel
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Werewolf. The non-fightiest vampire is 'tougher than you'd think'. The non-fightiest werewolf is 'a monster that can slaughter almost any other splat if they're not prepared'

craggy coyote
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^

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or at least baby splats

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wereolves start off strongest of the big 3 but can taper off hard compared to mages

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or vamps

pure mauve
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...all of this is to say nothing of the CoD Demons, who are spectacularly weird in every way.

lucid cape
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Whataboutem?

pure mauve
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They interact with every part of the setting in a very strange way, and exist in a spy thriller.

valid merlin
pure mauve
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And have powers that literally force the world around them to embody the tropes of a spy thriller.

rapid glacier
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I thought CofD Demon was The Matrix

pure mauve
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It is

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But you're a rogue Agent Smith.

lucid cape
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How does one set up a werewolf story?

rapid glacier
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Ah

pure mauve
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And rather the world being a computer, it's a story, and so rather than manipulating code, you manipulate tropes.

marble sorrel
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For an example of the difference in starting characters:

To go with an NPC in the dark ages vampire game I'm part of: Sera is a werewolf who is 5ft tall if she's wearing heels and is a noble girl from the sultanate of rum.

Aininur is a Banu Hakim Vampire. A sorcerer warrior who is a deft hand with a blade who can move faster than a human can blink, literally teleport and call upon the spirit of her blade to guide her.

Sera would beat her girlfriend's ass from pillar to post if they got in a serious fight.

craggy coyote
# valid merlin Most splats can do this, but put a different spin on it

while true werewolf lore in particular revolves around the fact that you are capable of enacting incredible violence on a whim in a world where that is very rarely the solution and trying to figure out what to do with that.

so of course a lot of the time the answer is beat the shit out the symptoms of the problem consequences be damned

rapid glacier
lucid cape
tough pebble
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cross-splat games are odd ones

marble sorrel
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Oh, she's an NPC. Aininur took True Love + Sleeping With The Enemy 😛

lucid cape
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The what and the what

marble sorrel
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And the GM thanked me for giving him enough rope to hang the character with.

craggy coyote
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congrats you now have the basics for a campaign

lucid cape
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Sounds like I can make a revolution storyline with werewolf

marble sorrel
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Oh and then you give the oil company hellfire flamethrowers and evil Captain Polution mutants.

craggy coyote
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it's one way to play it. activist infighting, the idea of generational problems that you can't correct, and more are all part of it too

lucid cape
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Yeah, I fuck with the Werewolf vibes

craggy coyote
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because the other thing about wta is your ancestors fucked up royal and the odds of you cleaning up the mess in your lifetime is basically nill

marble sorrel
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WoD has a lot of bad guys but few of them are as gleefully bad guys as Pentex.

craggy coyote
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but if you don't try nothing gets done

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so get fighting

lucid cape
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Fun

craggy coyote
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like the prime examples of this are the fact the werewolves solutions to people they disliked is genocide

tough pebble
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It probably should be mentioned that Werewolf the Apocalypse is also one-half heavily animist shenanigans.

When you're not fighting ecological disasters of companies, you're fighting corrupt spirits of decay, and giving respect to those that remain.

craggy coyote
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they literally tried to eradicate humans so much it created the species wide fight or flight of the delirium as an explanation for the myths

lucid cape
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Was about to say, oh Wolfenstein, but not as wolfenstein as I thought

craggy coyote
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and they also murdered a lot of other shape changees

marble sorrel
craggy coyote
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because surely murdering parts of the world you don't understand is the solution

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and it's good when the garou do it

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smile

lucid cape
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The what

marble sorrel
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Garou is the term werewolves use for werewolves

tough pebble
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WtA has a bunch of Proper Nouns for everything

lucid cape
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Oh...

craggy coyote
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yeah

lucid cape
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So that's why that one game I like is called Garou: Mark of the Wolves

craggy coyote
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short version there are other things like were bears sliders and such

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the werewolves tried killing most of them

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and in a few cases succeeded

rapid glacier
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Yeah Werewolf isn’t strictly a bash stuff game, and you’re gonna be dealing with weird spirits and spiritual burnouts as well as corporate mascots and jackbooted thugs

tough pebble
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In either case, it should also be clear that Pentex is not every ecological distaster of a company.

Just the worst of them.

rapid glacier
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Honestly go grab the Primer it really helps

lucid cape
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I very much vibe with this

rapid glacier
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If you’re a CYOA game player, there are a bunch of Werewolf ones that are good (and one that fucking owns bones)

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They’ll be the easiest way to tell if you fuck with it short of reading the books yourself or watching a live play or actual play type beat

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Also the W5 core rule book is…well, it’s not bad but it’s not the best in its current lineup

lucid cape
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W5 core?

pure mauve
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So, is Pentex entirely tip-to-toe evil always? Or are there grunts who either don't know or can't afford to care about the harm their job is doing because it's the only job they can get?

tough pebble
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But yeah. WtA. Try to reverse that which has already begun. Fight rampant unfettered ecological exploitation. Give respects to the aspects of the world behind the veil of the Umbra. Die horribly. Die Proudly. Perhaps change things, a little bit at a time.

marble sorrel
rapid glacier
# lucid cape W5 core?

Werewolf the Apocalypse fifth edition is abbreviated W5, because it’s got a lot of changes from the other two rulesets, 20th anniversary and Chronicles of Darkness’ Werewolf the Forsaken

craggy coyote
rapid glacier
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All the fifth edition rulesets do that, so vampire is V5 and Hunter is H5, mage will be M5 etc etc

lucid cape
craggy coyote
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general rule of thumb

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anyone with actual power at pentex is a bastard

rapid glacier
craggy coyote
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and even if they're a spy, they've probably done bastard things to keep their cover

lucid cape
pure mauve
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Alright, fair. There's just something... not fun, but realistic and interesting about a story where the people you can hurt the most are also those who are least culpable.

rapid glacier
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I mean, unless you’re adversaries don’t have fire or silver sure

orchid void
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hiiii werewolf v5 is what i will definitely call a Good Game something im not willing to say about previous editions of apocalypse

rapid glacier
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Or a wood chipper, that also works

orchid void
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but may i pitch up forsaken 2e bc~

lucid cape
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Well that sucks

rapid glacier
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But anything short of fire and silver won’t kill a werewolf permanent

orchid void
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i love me some forsaken

lucid cape
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What can I do with Werewolf the Forsaken?

olive citrus
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You can skip the weird declaring what you're doing your turn thing right?

tough pebble
# lucid cape Can I make the dying part optional? Yknow, as a DM atleast

your call. I was just listing out the fundamental themes of the game. WtA is not really a game that assumes you'll make the big success and live to tell the tale happily ever after. Sooner or later, your enemies will catch with you, or you'll do something stupid, and the Garou will be one less.

rapid glacier
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I’ll defer to Delilah on Forsaken, I didn’t vibe with Chronicles except their take on Hunter

lucid cape
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What's up with Hunter's vibes in Chronicles and WoD

tough pebble
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you may be a living tank but even tanks have weaknesses. big ones.

craggy coyote
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yeah a big thing of wta is that wereolves are uh. shit at long term planning. many die young or choose to die in combat.

the question of how to survive and adapting to a world where raw power isn't always the win it once was (if it ever was, pentex wasn't exactly swimming in wereolves but their sheer economic might means they're winning), so while you don't need characters to die having them confront mortality is a good idea

orchid void
# lucid cape What can I do with Werewolf the Forsaken?

What if, long ago, your ancestors did the unthinkable, and sundered paradise with an act of patricide? What if the mother of your people forgave you, but only so long as you carry on your father's work? To keep the balance twixt Flesh and Spirit? The Wolf Must Hunt. You Must Hunt. You must keep the Balance and you are Forsaken. You are a divine predator shaped to chase down rogue gods, shards of demon-princes long slain, and stranger, worse things that threaten the sacred duty of your people. What if you were a monster that stalked through the human herd, to sniff out whose skin has been stolen?

tough pebble
# lucid cape What's up with Hunter's vibes in Chronicles and WoD

Old WoD: Sent gifts by mysterious benefactors on the eve of every apocalypse. Get caught between fighting monsters and trying to understand why you were even chosen. Stuff like that.

Hunters Hunted, Chronicles, 5th Edition WoD: Relatively normal people trying to kill monsters.

At least I think this is correct?

craggy coyote
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more or less

valid merlin
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For Vigil it akso kinda depends

marble sorrel
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Vigil has normal people but it's also got shit like Alexander Fucking Anderson and Demonblooded Sorcerers

valid merlin
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If you're with a Conspiracy, things are more wacky than independent or with a Compact

orchid void
lucid cape
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Radical

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What kind of stories is it meant to tell?

orchid void
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Violence (and what it does to the world/yourself), stories about "The Pack" as a concept usually heavily drawing on Gang stories for inspiration, weird action-horror where you deal with flesh-snatching spirits or mutating ratmen that ganw at the wall between worlds

rapid glacier
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I mean, if we’re using power rangers analogies, if Apocalypse is Power Rangers, then Forsaken is more like Guyver or something

valid merlin
rapid glacier
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The best parts I liked of Forsaken are in W5 in many places, especially the bits about dealing with Spirits

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The older editions don’t always emphasize the custodial work Werewolves are supposed to be doing when they aren’t destroying engines of ecological destruction

orchid void
rapid glacier
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W5 has a smaller focus on local territories, too; they learned some good lessons from the best of both the previous editions imo

marble sorrel
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Forsaken has less 'I'm off to Say Hi To The Sun'

orchid void
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mostly bc uncle helios fucking hates you.

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and his helions are little better

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anyway that's not important.

tough pebble
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Yeah, Apocalypse is the game where the spirit of entropy itself has become insane and is trying to rot the world. It's very cosmic.

orchid void
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Forsaken is my preferred Werewolf for its localized scope and focus on the way actions react and ripple out, and how shepherding an environment is fucking hard and requires work that maybe! werewolves are kind of bad at! because they're semi-divine murder-hulks optimized for the neolithic period!

rapid glacier
marble sorrel
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And no two splats will agree on what that spirit is.

Mages call it Entropy, Werewolves call it the Wyrm, Changelings call it the Fomorians etc.

orchid void
rapid glacier
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Yep spirits can be real pricks if they want to be, and they frequently do want to be for strange and alien reasons

marble sorrel
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I had 'fun' with a spirit in the most recent session with Aininur. Aininur called up a spirit of Purification because we found a Baali Ritual Site. The GM got an evil grin and went 'Hey, you know what purifies? Fire. Everyone, roll Rötschreck' XD

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||I 100% knew this was going to go badly but it's fun to give the GM rope to fuck with us and it got everyone on the same page.||

orchid void
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giving your gm knives is the core of playing world of darkness

rapid glacier
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My players get to meet their potential pack patron next game, the spirit of Tomohawk

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One of them will undoubtedly try to smoke weed out of it

orchid void
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when voy and i was banging shit together we had a pack patron who was a Spirit of Sacrifice

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Black Philip, the Beckoning Beast, an old spirit created through scapegoat rituals and other animal sacrifices

rapid glacier
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That’s hard as fuck

marble sorrel
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Aininur's a spirit mage vampire, which is 90% an excuse for ID to Throw Horrible Shit At Us. I was looking over the various paths and went 'No, I think this will cause the most shenanigans when I inevitably fuck something up'

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It was the Main Deciding Factor on choice of magic. XD

orchid void
rapid glacier
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Oh that’s the good stuff right there

marble sorrel
rapid glacier
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The tomohawk ban is the pack ‘must take care of their tools and must accept hospitality when offered’

orchid void
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knowing a spirits ban should be a Big Deal

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so keep it fucking safe

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(but also, you should be able to infer the ban thru long-term interaction)

marble sorrel
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You don't wanna get Cu'd, stuck between 'Must accept hospitality' and 'Can't eat dog meat'

rapid glacier
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I mean violating the ban is a thing, there’s consequences

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Have you seen Wildfire’s ban, @orchid void ?

orchid void
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Nyo nyo~

rapid glacier
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If any member of the pack douses a fire for any reason the entire pack loses the Wolf

marble sorrel
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Hahahah

orchid void
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Oh yes, a classic Fire-Spirit ban

rapid glacier
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And it reduces all damage from fire by your Honor rating

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So like

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You can just be immune to fire

orchid void
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its shown up a couple of times in Forsaken as a ban for Fire-Touched packs bc Fuck The Pure Over

rapid glacier
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But uh

marble sorrel
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Better get real good at backburning (I've actually been part of backburning before! It's fucking terrifying.)

rapid glacier
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Well I mean mortals and normies probably don’t know that and if they put you out that counts

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Also prepare to be naked A LOT

orchid void
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Rite Of Pants!

rapid glacier
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Anyways yeah Werewolf fuckin rules

marble sorrel
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Aininur's really wanting to learn Path of Fire Koldunic Sorcery because it's really hard to be a Zoastranism practicing Vampire.

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'Oh god, so many Rötschreck checks'

pure mauve
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I ought to sleep but… one thing I think I’ve noticed is that in WoD, you suddenly awaken to the losing side of a war against a force that actively wants to make the world worse, while in CoD there is no war because that force (if there was one) already won long before you were born.

lucid cape
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Sorry, was on a ride back home, what kind of story is Forsaken is made for?

marble sorrel
lucid cape
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So jjk?

orchid void
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Yeah kinda!!

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Only instead of a sorcerer you’re a werewolf, a semi-divine monster made by a Mad Moon Goddess

lucid cape
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That sounds like it fucks

orchid void
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forsaken fucks immensely

clear delta
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Yeah

lucid cape
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How's Mages?

clear delta
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Okay so
In Awakening
You awaken as a mage, you touch the Truth that was suppressed and separated from Reality
The world once was whole, but it was twisted by the takeover of the Exarchs, god-symbols of tyranny. Reality is now a prison
Truth can still be reached, it's terrifying yet wondrous. Mysteries abound, and though you are still a prisoner, you have become freer. Yet there's danger in your new state

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With power, you can do bad. Whether out of temptation or unexpected consequences

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Mysteries draw you in, and you may bring harm upon yourself and others in pursueing them

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Paradox is part of the curse upon this prison
To weaken Truth, the Exarchs called forth the unreality of the Abyss, which seeps into the world, and can seep into spells if you push them too much beyond your capacity, producing easy holes to come in
The abyss dwells in every sleeper, reacting to when they notice magic and squirming, damaging their memory and souls

valid merlin
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The Gate is the Exarch connected to the Abyss, but the other Exarchs don't like them either and tell the Seers not to listen to the Gate

clear delta
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Yes

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But the abyss is an important component of the scheme

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Thus "regilate tge abyss"

valid merlin
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the Abyss is a threat to the Exarchs too, because if the world becomes abyss corrupted they have nothing to rule over anymore

velvet sparrow
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Oh, wait, Curseborne is out?

pure mauve
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Thinking about the horror of things getting worse versus the horror of things staying the same.

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I think that's about the crux of the difference between WoD and CoD? WoD says the world has decayed, and you have to fight to slow its decay; CoD says the world already massively sucks exactly as it is and your biggest enemy is the status quo.

chilly vault
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I would say the critical difference is more a storytelling philosophy one: OWoD cares a lot more for specifics and details and making things knowable.

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NWoD/CofD does its level best not to answer critical questions.

orchid void
# lucid cape How's Mages?

The Empty Thrones of Heaven have been claimed by cruel and proud men, who have built around them a prison, and staffed it with servants who see betrayal of everyone else as worth saving their skin. There is a secret war for the souls of all mankind, and there is wonder and mystery hidden where human eyes do not linger. This is the central political/philosophical conflict of Mage, between the neoplatonic (and odder paradigm) Pentacle Orders and the Seers of the Throne who serve as Archons to the 12 Demiurges known as the Exarchs

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The cosmic conflict is that there is a Gulf of Non-Reality, Anti-Thought, and Putrid Destinties that Can Never Be. This is the Abyss and it seperates the Fallen World (ours) from the Supernal World (The realm of Truth)

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Silently the war is fought, with spell and thrust of dagger and parry of letter and mystery of cults and intelligence agencies blending together, of Mysteries that beg to be discovered by the Wise- who are ever tempted to be un-wise in the pursuit of temporal power

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awakening is my personal favorite, as much as people go to bat for ascension and i understand why they do that but also, uuuuuuhhhhh the metaplot of oWoD was very dumb in some places and no where was it dumber than in the importance-fights between the mage line-devs and Every Other Line

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which often end up curdling th books, there's also like. boy. Ascension really wants you to be familiar with Chaos Magic as an idea and Illuminatus! as a concept

clear delta
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Illuminatus!

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What is that?

nimble gale
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it's a novel series that's very, uh

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very weird?

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it's supposed to be though

mighty zephyr
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Vampire pbp game wanted a quote
"See when I died and got to Heaven Above, the Lord Himself sat me down and said 'Son', he says, 'I gave man hands all for you to wring Sabbat necks and stake Sabbat hearts. I made gunpowder blow all for your gun to end Sabbat lives, and I slapped Caine with that curse all to give you an eternity to go about your work.' And I told him 'Lord I knew this, in my heart and soul I knew this, why tell me now?' and he looks me dead in the eye and says 'Because if you're jawing at me that means you're laying down on the job! Get at it!' so I stood right up and got back to killin'."

craggy coyote
hybrid dock
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I love this

mighty zephyr
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I wanted to embody the energy of Total Corpo Death

orchid void
# clear delta Illuminatus!

its a series of novels written by dirtbag wizards that ran penthouse's letter department, making fun of the american fascist society (the John Birch Society) and accidentally on-purpose causing the current cultic milieu currently running roughshod over the american psyche

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its worse than true, its what happened

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Operation Mindfuck is something that one should look at, yaknow?

lucid cape
orchid void
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A Neonoir of Sorcery

mighty zephyr
orchid void
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i won't lie to you a lot of why i think of Mage the Awakening the way i do is because i play the Inquisitors/Secret Police of the Pentacle Orders when given the opportunity

LucyHeadshot.png
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everyone say Hi Lucy

lucid cape
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Hi Lucy!

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Also, hold on on the mages talk for a sec

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How the fuck am I supposed to run forsaken, I'm kinda stumped what kinda story I wanna tell with it

orchid void
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Ah~! Well see, you read the book and it'll tell yah~!

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Usually, as with most WoD books you gotta cram it in there two or three times

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at least for me.

hybrid dock
mighty zephyr
orchid void
#

you read the corebook two or three times and then you get to cookin

lucid cape
orchid void
#

honestly the most basic werewolf the forsaken you can run is you need to kill wal mart

lucid cape
#

Kill billionares, got it

orchid void
# lucid cape Kill billionares, got it

wrong~!
A new big-box store has opened in the pack's territory. This has completely fucked the local spirit ecology as the big-box store's spirit outcompetes and devours the spirits of local stores. It is draining the territory of Essence. Kill Wal-Mart.

#

The Wolf Must Hunt

#

The Wolf Must Hunt

lucid cape
#

We fw bodegas I guess

high current
#

an easy shortcut answer to 'how do the PCs know each other/why are they working together' is
'you all belonged to either the same pack(s) or packs with neighboring territory; they've mutually decided to put you together and give you a chunk of territory knowing that the territory has an issue, and they want to see how you solve it'

#

what that issue will be is up to you as the ST though, one game i ran using the Kraken Wakes setting thing from the core book(?) had them start out dealing with a pack of Gull bloodline vampires that was killing people in their new territory

orchid void
#

Issues might be

  • Wal Mart's Spirit is eating too much and starving out eveerything but its brood of Consumption and Want spirits which in turn are starting to drive people insane
  • Oh No There Are Rats. The Rats Are Eating the Wall Between Worlds and Humans
  • Oh Fuck A Spider Ate A Dude's Brain and is now thickening the walls between worlds
  • Local Arson Spirit Decides To Go Ham
lucid cape
#

Mm, thriller, my favorite

radiant marsh
#
  • So one of those guys you've been told are monstrous psychopathic spirit-fundamentalists showed up, but this one's actually well-spoken and persuasive, and it turns out some of the other packs are listening to him. You should probably do something about this before his less well-spoken and persuasive, but quite a bit more violent buddies show up.
#
  • Oh, yeah. And that recent arson spate that burned a bunch of people alive? It turns out they're doing the exact opposite of what you're convinced your holy purpose is, worshipping a fire spirit and trying to feed it.
#

(The Pure are fun antagonists)

#

Granted the lion's (wolf's?) share of the details on them is 1e stuff, but IMO it translates pretty well.

short quiver
#

https://bsky.app/profile/jachilli.bsky.social/post/3m4duivzfhs2k

🦇 💀 justin achilli 💀 🦇 (@jachilli.bsky.social)

-# ↩ 🦇 💀 justin achilli 💀 🦇 (@jachilli.bsky.social)
It's also one of my favorite Mage-isms that Mage — a game about the perils of hubris — has players who demand that every other game's cosmology adhere to the lens through which Mages perceive reality. "They're non-Paradox accumulating reality deviants" no they just don't care about your paradigm

Bluesky ·
lucid cape
nimble gale
#

Speaking as a mage the ascension fan, there's nothing worse than a mage the ascension fan

#

We ruined mage

tough pebble
#

"why is space fake" ask any average person without a wonder for the universe where their space education ended and it probably amounts to "9. no wait, 8 planets orbit the sun, right?" and don't know how orbital physics work. the Umbra is simply showing you this idealed view of space. you fell for it.

craggy coyote
#

the umbra does reflect what people believe at times...

tough pebble
#

honestly just the average education of the common human just does not function with how Consensus seems to work? unless I don't know how Consensus functions?

marble sorrel
craggy coyote
#

hence the technocracy

marble sorrel
#

And to be fair: Changlings are not entirely wrong. The world is shaped by what people believe/paradims are imposing their belief on the world around them.

#

It's just Changelings see basicly everything through terms of belief and dreams.

craggy coyote
#

science isn't "fake" but because you believe the scientists know what they're talking about it becomes real

#

this has unfortunate implications

tough pebble
craggy coyote
#

or don't trust them at all

marble sorrel
#

Technocracy systems immediately fail if you enter Mullumbimby, a town with a less than 50% vaccination rate here in Aus.

craggy coyote
#

it's noted with consensus that this kind of resistance makes it harder for the more.... benign technocrats to introduce their tech to the masses

#

conversely irl it's horrifying because people are just ignoring empirically real science

marble sorrel
lucid cape
#

The whats

marble sorrel
#

Basicly: Technocrats are not just keeping technology static. They want to improve it...but push back against science/anti-science belief structures actively make it harder because Consensus requires...Concensus.

#

So a lot of shinier tech is stalling on becoming mainstream/normal reality stuff

craggy coyote
#

in setting this creates an odd dynamic of whether the technocracy should be over thrown and what magics role in the world should be

tough pebble
#

TBH if I ever ran a WoD game I'd just have Mages be wrong

Not only because it basically tries to overexplain the nature of the universe, but also because I'm more of a fan of science and magic working together in pulpy ways

#

Also not really a fan of the entirety of science being a conspiratorial veil put over True Reality, you know?

lucid cape
#

Sciences rules yes

craggy coyote
#

Its a good game setting

short quiver
#

yeah but it does kinda hit different these days

marble sorrel
#

It's a chunk of why as time went on they made the Technocracy more playable.

tough pebble
#

Please let me teleport someone to Tau Ceti A. The sun there, I mean. It would be funny.

marble sorrel
#

As playing the Cool Superscience Guys is something they realized has a lot of appeal.

#

And it's also why CoD mage sorta avoids the topic entirely. There is no 'magic controls what is technology'

orchid void
#

“Magic Blossoms In Mystery” is what Awakening goes for

#

A physicist and a priest are both likely to end up Obrimos

tough pebble
marble sorrel
#

I also like how the Nockers, one of the Changeling groups do it. They do form technology out of dreams but notably - This isn't saying that the technology can't exist. Things have to be dreams before they can become reality.

So they're less 'inventing impossible tech' and more 'dreaming a prototype into reality'.

#

A Nocker's Power Armour is a dream but it's a dream of something that some day could be created by a human, potentially.

pure mauve
#

...I feel like at this point someone has to bring up the fan-made non-canonical Genius: the Transgression.

#

Because science isn't a set of beliefs so much as it is an epistomological framework, you know? It's a method of understanding.

#

And Genius, as I understand it, looks at that and says "okay, but what would it actually mean if science didn't work on things".

#

Does anyone have thoughts or opinions about Genius?

clear delta
#

I don't have much interest in it tbh

pure mauve
#

that's fair

clear delta
#

Least it's not pathogen the infected

pure mauve
#

I haven't even heard of that one

clear delta
#

It is low quality

pure mauve
#

the only fangames I've heard of are Genius, Princess, and... I think there might have been a dragon one and a siren one maybe??

clear delta
#

There's leviathan too

clear delta
# clear delta It is low quality

The splats are based on symptons
But one stands out as being dissonant because it turns you into a kid instead of being about common disease symptoms
Plus not good writing or themes
And the extra chapter, "the truth", which is a bunch of nonsense meant to be funny and mysterious, I guess

pure mauve
#

...weird.

clear delta
#

Leviathan is good

#

Princess had schisms leading to three versions currently

#

Siren seems cool

pure mauve
tough pebble
violet sigil
#

shits wild

pure mauve
#

Like, I know nothing about the situation, but I know these schisms were not due to differences of game design opinion. Like this has to have gotten ugly and personal.

violet sigil
#

I think some of them might have that as a factor (IIRC the deal with Dream vs Vocation is that one is more combat-focused as opposed to being about leading humanity?), probably correct that it's not just that though

clear delta
clear delta
short quiver
# orchid void “Magic Blossoms In Mystery” is what Awakening goes for

Awakening did have some "the Pyramid deals with the dingy material truths of the Fallen world, the Diamond sets their eyes on the Truth beyond" in its culture/backstory
so the Seers figured the Nameless Orders, who were all about finding the Truth in science and culture, would be eager to sign on

tough pebble
#

No, seriously, is Siren still developing or not? I did find that one kind of interesting to read, at least.

lucid cape
#

Forsaken got me like

what-even-is-act-iii-v0-i8tnl510jgce1.jpg
#

I guess this goes for every WoD I've read so far

somber scarab
#

(Plous a half-dozen oWoD ones)

orchid void
#

Neoteny is a real thing, we did it to dogs!

lucid cape
#

Hosts seems like a good choice for a main evil guy

orchid void
lucid cape
#

Hosts are bodysnatchers right?

#

Aight yeah

radiant marsh
#

And they come in so many fucked up flavors

vast blaze
#

My Tremere tried to do the "vampire rising from a coffin" schtick

#

He immediately smacked his head on a chandelier and took a Bruised level lmfao

velvet sparrow
#

You should raise that chandelier before someone gets hurt

lucid cape
#

I remember there is a skit that is just like that

dusky ledge
#

Our coterie is adopting the child of a Mage and a Hunter, who died while she was little and now haunt her as wraiths, raising her to follow in their footsteps

mighty zephyr
#

Ethical Hellscape

dusky ledge
#

Also, my Tremere is about to have their first scene with our new Tzimisce member, who is genuinely harmless. But they're a deeply paranoid individual, and this new lick is about to see exactly how scary the Mirror Witch can be.

#

(Specifically, presenting the choice of subjecting themselves to Truth of Blood, or refusing. Either way, it says a lot about them)

marble sorrel
#

It's likely going to result in a lot of 'no, who the hell are you?'

#

Vampires tend to not like 'YOU CANNOT LIE TO ME'

dusky ledge
#

Oh probably

#

But they're more interested in whether or not they accept

#

But this is also the Kindred equivalent of a wet cat who finally has somewhere to belong, there's every possibility they accept just to be allowed to stay (especially if they don't have anything to hide)

lucid cape
#

How does one abbreviate Werewolf: The Forsaken

tough pebble
#

WtF, of course

lucid cape
#

Hilarious

tough pebble
#

(the real answer is probably Forsaken)

#

Of Noun: The Verb, Verb is always unique between WoD and CofD so it's a good shorthand if the Noun isn't unique

marble sorrel
#

The Tremere in my current game had the Entirely Tremere and Definetly Not Going To Bite Her Later decision that 'Hey, this Demon is clearly trying to tempt me with initial power so it can manipulate me later. Jokes on them, I'll take the power and just refuse to be manipulated later'.

dusky ledge
#

This is why I love the Tremere lmao

#

Mine is still pretty convinced that power (magickal, political, social, whatever) is the best way to stay safe and I just. Pull your head out your ass I BEG you

lucid cape
#

So, trying to think of a storyline for Forsaken that doesn't feel like just a monster of the week feel, cuz that's kind of the vibe I'm getting from forsaken

worthy sundial
#

forsaken is big into territory politics iirc

lucid cape
#

Like the protectorate stuff?

marble sorrel
#

Cassia, that Tremere, right now has Necromancy, Thaumaturgy and Abyss Mysticism (Though Necomancy and Abyss Mysticism are only very low right now) because she refuses to find an evil sorcery and let it go unstuddied.

#

While two of the characters were 'killing every single person involved' and Aininur was 'summoning spirits of fire to cleanse this unholy place' with a Baali Ritual Site, Cassia was Actively Looting Their Documents the entire time.

worthy sundial
tough pebble
# lucid cape Like the protectorate stuff?

I don't remember where I read up a copy of WtF (or if I even still have one somewhere) but my general read of stuff is like

  • Someone else is trying to take over your territory. Usually for the wrong reasons.

  • New spirit in town is going wild fucking shit up and needs to be taught a lesson.

  • You pissed off a big, dangerous spirit and now you got to deal with it.

  • Something is pretending to be human. Again.

lucid cape
#

Cool

worthy sundial
#

'you find the aftermath of a first change' is probly a good starter hook

lucid cape
#

'Someone went into rage and that somehow opened the floodgates' type shit?

orchid void
#

Yeah, now find them before the Pure do

#

honestly one of the more overarching campaign-structures that forsaken offers is to go to War agains the Pure

lucid cape
#

Pretty cool

#

Probably good for a shorter story

#

The finding the guy part

#

Not the whole war part

clear delta
clear delta
clear delta
orchid void
#

i mean, i just wanted to give the context i had? yeah the whole thing felt dissonant, i never disagreed with you there?

#

extra info~!

clear delta
#

Oh I see, I misunderstood

orchid void
#

also my roomie yelled at me for describing Werewolf the Forsaken as Furry Jujutsu Kaisen 🫶

worthy sundial
#

forsaken as supernatural battle shonen would kinda go crazy

#

uratha battle tournament,,

fair tapir
#

Furjutsu Kaisen...

orchid void
#

it kinda fuckin already is

fair tapir
#

Fursuitsu 🤔

orchid void
#

i think exorcist manga as a vibe are a great way to parse the kind of action-horror forsaken wants you to do

worthy sundial
#

yea def

mighty zephyr
#

What it's like to get Siskur Dahed

clear delta
orchid void
#

SOLKIS-UR IS WATCHING. THE WOLF MUST HUNT.

clear delta
#

Just compress a bunch of screaming spirits into an attack

patent talon
#

Pure being like "if we get rid of all humans, until there's only werewolves, the world will be in harmony"

clear delta
#

As a desperation move, she can consume her own flesh to attack
Since she is a hive claimed who used a secret to be in control

#

You just see faces in her flesh scream out as she uses herself

patent talon
#

That's sick as hell

clear delta
#

She does it the first time as her phase change
Find an excuse to shield players, and let the fromtliners get wrecked by the beam

patent talon
#

Speaking of Geto, how difficult is it to ||body swap|| as Mage?

clear delta
#

Her nimbus makes the sky bleed red

clear delta
patent talon
#

Damn, for real?

clear delta
#

DaveB had it pop up in the soul cage
And said he saw it in a book?
Basically, the conflict between free council and diamond, before their alliance, had been rather ugly

patent talon
#

Huh, interesting!

#

I guess a rote isn't necessarily easy or not elaborate, it's just codified

clear delta
#

In the plot ||the astral lich Koschei steals Hadrian's body, but unexpectedly his soul is now wandering the astral realm of the Parliament of the Needle||

patent talon
clear delta
#

||No, it's koschei's daimon that got swapped with persephone's||

patent talon
#

||Right right. Man that was good stuff||

mighty zephyr
orchid void
radiant marsh
#

I also love that the Predator Kings are, intentionally from a writing standpoint, colossal hypocrites.

#

In that they will loudly proclaim that they're following their nature and carrying on Father Wolf's legacy by being the ultimate predators, and thus being everything an Uratha should be.

#

But half the shit they get up to is stuff that fucks with their Harmony

#

Like "It is an involuate rule of our condition that eating human or wolf flesh is Very Very Bad because it's spiritually corrosive"

marble sorrel
#

'OMM NOMM NOMM'

radiant marsh
#

And the PK will both happily ignore this, and insist that by eating people they're the ones actually being Uratha the right way

clear delta
#

Predator kings also often engage in human society or use human made stuff

radiant marsh
#

Oh yeah

lucid cape
#

Yall know any automated character sheets for forsaken?

radiant marsh
#

Their Tribal ban is 'Honor Nothing of Human Craft'

marble sorrel
#

Jack-The-Ripper Ass Werewolfs

radiant marsh
#

But one of the statted NPCs in the pure book is a Predator King who's a CEO

marble sorrel
radiant marsh
#

Who deals with the spiritual dissonance by having a few of her lessers disappear in the wilderness every month

#

And the incidents of doing this are both becoming more egregious and closer together

barren vortex
#

predator king immediately falling down and throwing up the moment they realize they took a staircase (human craft)

clear delta
#

Another npc predator king goes to high class parties I think. From the night horrors book I think

radiant marsh
#

Use nothing made by humans

#

Do not participate in human society

#

Their tribal totem is said to experience pain by even running across a fallow field.

barren vortex
#

using human technology but complaining the entire time

radiant marsh
#

Meanwhile the Ivory Claws are "What if we took the Silver Fangs from Apocalypse, but actually had them knowingly and wholeheartedly dive right into the fucked up familial and racial assumptions of 'Blood Purity' and power by heredity"

patent talon
radiant marsh
#

Fire Touched are "Faith, the idea of Faith as Disease, Faith as Literal Disease, and also worshipping Disease for good measure."

patent talon
radiant marsh
#

Exactly

#

Because you don't become an Ivory Claw unless you have pedigree

#

And so any other Pure that tries to take over the pack isn't worthy

#

Because they're nto Ivory Claws or they don't ahve the right bloodline

marble sorrel
#

Are they 'They Pugged Themselves' level inbred like the Silver Fangs?

radiant marsh
#

In some cases, yes

#

Fire Touched are the opposite, and also the largest Werewolf Tribe period because they will take literally anybody who's willing to convert.

patent talon
radiant marsh
#

Newbies who have no idea what they're doing? Sure. Guys who have gotten kicked out of the other tribes? That works. They can atone. Former Forsaken? Are you kidding, that's the best kind of convert!

#

Predator Kings are more the classic "Survive the intentionally brutal initiation and you're in."

patent talon
#

Grandma runs the Tribe cause she was married to the old pack leader, and though she talks about stepping aside when one of the grandkids has their Change, she sure seems dead set on them understanding that Granny Knows Best

lucid cape
#

Ok so, the wall between worlds thinning is a bad thing, and it thickening is also a bad thing right?

radiant marsh
#

Yes

patent talon
#

Yep

radiant marsh
#

The one is spirits influencing everything very easy and also just randomly manifesting in the physical world

#

The other is the world getting cut off from its spiritual half and turning into endless grey stagnation

lucid cape
#

Aight

patent talon
#

Forsaken want a nicely pruned Gauntlet

lucid cape
#

This game really likes balance

radiant marsh
#

The Beshilu are all-in on the spiritual concept of infestation, so they want to chew holes in the gauntlet and let the rest of them and a bunch of unrelated hostile spirits through

#

The Azlu want the opposite because if somebody's so dead inside they refuse to acknowledge the fact of anything weird or supernatural, they're very easy to pick off

#

And you can reform at your leisure because nobody even considered that they should try to stop you

#

I do love the theory that Uratha are basically just hosts perfected.

#

Spiritual essence in a physical body

#

which is doubly fucky because Wolf Hosts are also a thing that exists

marble sorrel
#

Are Forsaken as inherantly 'kill the vampires' as Garou tend to be? Without the whole 'they're creatures of the Wyrm' aspect.

radiant marsh
#

Vampires are an out of context problem that will frequently fuck with the spiritual balance

#

But there's no like inherent 'Werewolves hate vampires because ancient enemy'

marble sorrel
#

'Too much human here. Vampires eat humans. We're cool, for now'

radiant marsh
#

Werewolves on Vampires are generally 'do not fuck with because they have a lot of temporal power, and we don't know what they're capable of.'

#

Vampires on Werewolves are generally 'do not fuck with because it's a rage monster that hunts in packs can apparently pop out of thin air, and we don't know what else they're capable of.'

#

CofD doesn't tend to have one gameline being the ancestral enemy of another gameline like WoD does

#

But they are generally very big on "OUT OF CONTEXT PROBLEM, MESSING WITH IS BAD IDEA"

lucid cape
#

What would be a good character to be an antagonist for an overarching story? Like a Kenjaku of sorts

marble sorrel
#

Mages: "Fuck with both of them because we are very smart and it won't go badly...hey, why'd I just get dinged for Hubris?"

pure mauve
#

I'm trying to remember how werewolves feel about Bound, because like... the Bound are an out of context problem but it's reasonable to assume they aren't if you say "well, Geists are basically like spirits" (they aren't).

radiant marsh
#

Mummies: "So I broke into this basement and there was A TON of crazy magical shit, so I took it and I think I'll...Hold on, is that a cloud of locusts?"

marble sorrel
#

Considering the focus Geists also have on balance I could see a lot of ways it could go depending on how much the groups find out about each other.

pure mauve
#

Weirdly, in the game Geist: the Sin-Eaters, you do not play as a Geist. You play as a Sin-Eater, which is a specific semi-factional description for a class of being generally known as a Bound.

marble sorrel
#

Oh yeah, they're connected to the Geist. They're a person who died and the geist found them and they came back.

#

Though the nature of that link/what geists are changes a bit between 1e and 2e

patent talon
#

Prometheans probably do something bad to the Gauntlet

marble sorrel
#

I like Promethean conceptually but it really doesn't mesh well with my GMing style.

pure mauve
#

In 2e:

A ghost which drinks from one of the rivers of the underworld becomes a Geist. Geists lose most memories of their life, but are able to return to the world of the living more freely. If a geist sees someone at the moment they die, and feels like they're a good fit, they can offer that dead person the Bargain. If the Bargain is accepted, the two completely fuse into a Bound, who is brought back to life. If that Bound then decides to help the worlds of the living and dead, they're a Sin-Eater. Some Bound do not do this, and may or may not in fact tyrannize their Geist.

marble sorrel
#

As my GMing style tends to focus on set locations and 'face' NPCs the players will interact with a lot/become part of the common cast of characters and Prometheans staying in places and dealing with the same people too often starts to build up the Bad Shit Happening.

pure mauve
#

Sin-Eaters usually like balance, but they aren't beholden to any kind of higher power that enforces balance, and are usually fine with tipping the scales one way or the other if it helps someone in that moment. Some Bound do really like balance; they're called Gatekeepers, and the Sin-Eaters hate them because they're more interested in preserving the status quo of how the underworld works rather than actually helping people.

mighty zephyr
pure mauve
#

Demons are in a weird place, because they're so meta about everything.

marble sorrel
#

It's very funny in Geist 1e their morality track accidentily lacked 'Intentional Murder'. Geists got dinged for killing someone by accident and serial killing but as long as you went 'Yep, this is premeditated assassination', Synergy didn't mind.

#

That was likely not intended.

pure mauve
#

It's extra funny that demons don't have a morality track. They have a "pretending to be normal and moral" track.

marble sorrel
#

'Yes, this is my Humanity(???) track. You can trust me.'

#

I kinda liked the Fallen morality track. Where it deliberately went the opposite direction to other ones.

#

Since it's 'how defined you are by your pain and torment'

#

It went down as you became more well adjusted and healthy.

pure mauve
#

Oh, interesting.

#

...how similar are the Gauntlet and the Hedge? The same thing with different names? The same thing but on different frequencies of Twilight? Just a similar concept?

mighty zephyr
#

They are different

#

The hedge is the distance between the real world and Arcadia, you can walk from the hedge to Arcadia (dont)

#

The gauntlet is what separates the worlds

hybrid dock
#

the gauntlet is the barrier between the worlds yeah, and mostly is relevant in how it affects a dice roll

marble sorrel
#

It also hooked into their powers. Where each power was 2: High Torment and Low Torment. The High Torment version was generally more powerful but much less precise and would cause a lot of collateral damage.

You could choose to use either but A) If you voluntarily used the high torment version, you'd increase your torment as you need to actively dwell on your pain and hate to draw on it. B) If you were already high torment, you had a chance to use the high torment version even if you were trying to use the low torment one.

#

Which was fun

hybrid dock
#

the hedge is an actual location

#

a "world"

mighty zephyr
#

And is either made by mages or Father Wolf's final howl

hybrid dock
pure mauve
#

...does it make sense to describe "twilight frequency" as a fourth spatial dimension, I wonder?

radiant marsh
#

In 1e it was standard 1 is very bad, 10 is very good

#

In 2e 1 is bad, 10 is bad, 5 and 6 is perfect

#

It's just 1 and 10 are different kinds of bad with different consequences

marble sorrel
#

That's nice. It's Exalted rather than WoD but I really like the Alchemical version of limit for being a much more Interesting Morality Track than most exalts get.

#

Where 1 is 'All About Emotion' and 10 is 'All about Emotionless Logic' but neither is 'Doing it Wrong', they're just different aspects an Alch can have.

#

I like when White Wolf games do something interesting with the morality track.

#

Humanity kinda works for vampire but is very basic and not something every splat needs to emulate

pure mauve
#

I think Geist 2e conflates the morality track and power stat into a single Synergy rating?

lucid cape
#

What would be a good character for a main villain like Kenjaku?

marble sorrel
#

Where Morality and Power were the same thing.

lucid cape
pure mauve
#

And unless a Demon was involved, nobody would know what an angel is, or even that it exists.

#

Mages could also be up to heinous levels of scheming, presumably. But... a lot of villains in CofD are mostly interested in maintaining the status quo exactly as it already is.

marble sorrel
#

Silly idea for a V5 Plot: Second Inquisition groups in America starts faltering because some DOGE intern saw their budget and didn't know what it was, so they cancelled it and the SI can't exactly complain on the news about it.

lucid cape
#

Hmm

#

Does the rats have some sort of intelligence?

pure mauve
#

As I understand it this is notably untrue for Werewolf, where the protagonists are the ones trying to preserve the status quo in some ways? But I know it's true for Mage, and it's pretty true for Geist, and it's arguably true for Changeling insofar as the Fae even have larger goals (they mostly just want to collect people that interest them, and don't actively want to hurt people on the whole but also don't care even the slightest amount about not hurting people?)

#

Uh... I don't know enough about Deviant but I could imagine some antagonist from one of those having larger plans. They wouldn't be operating on a cosmic level, though, probably, so it's likely they'd only get the interest of Deviants, maybe Sin-Eaters since they help the living too, and maybe one other splat depending on the methods they use?

nimble gale
lucid cape
#

Hmm, no particular devious factions

pure mauve
#

It's complicated because there aren't many factions that are trying to make things worse because, to a large extent, they don't need to. Most of the biggest evils are people who have to some extent or another discovered that the current system is profoundly flawed, but still work hard to preserve it in all its awful majesty because they personally can benefit from it. The Fae... might have some kind of plans, but I think they mostly just don't see humans as people who are worth respecting to any extent, and so they hurt tons of people and don't even care.

#

like, see this paragraph about Reapers from the wiki about Geist:

Reapers are driven to hunt ghosts, and begin to feel unwell if they've gone too long without it. Even if they don't exactly like how the Underworld currently functions, they've all rationalized why it's necessary to maintain the status quo. The dead belong with the dead, and Reapers are just trying to maintain the natural order of things. Sin-Eaters are interlopers, outsiders, trying to do too much and too fast, and even if their ideals are noble, their methods are too dangerous to tolerate.

marble sorrel
pure mauve
#

Reapers, for context, are ghosts who put on a Deathmask, giving them bonus powers and the ability to exist outside the underworld without gradually fading away, but also a compulsion to drag ghosts back to the Underworld. And then they look at the big power boost it gives them, and how it makes them feel, and go "yeah, I guess this is ultimately a good thing".

#

As mentioned, Gatekeepers are Bound who similarly really enjoy the idea that the Underworld should function the way it "naturally" does, never mind that this actually sucks for a lot of ghosts.

marble sorrel
#

On a scale of 1-oWoD Wraith, how bad is the CoD underworld?

pure mauve
#

I don't know OWoD Wraith but fundamentally it's broken. It used to all be one big ocean that souls could gradually dissolve into, but then for some reason it drained. Now there's a big empty cavern, with rivers crossing it, and the ocean's only at the very bottom. Also individual sections of the Underworld are ruled over by beings called Kerberoi, enforcing strange and alien Old Laws.

lucid cape
#

Alr, fuck it, I'm just gonna make my players kill walmart.... how does one kill the spirit of walmart

pure mauve
#

Oh, wait, no, it's not "some reason". It is, apparently, broken because Father Wolf died.

mighty zephyr
#

I dont think thats entirely true

pure mauve
#

Relevant section from the wiki:

Before the Sundering, the Underworld was a single vast ocean, in which the various souls of people lingered, either floating adrift or sinking below into what was believed to be the "true" afterlife. In following millennia, the waters receded, first giving rise to small islands, until entire cave systems were created in the sluiced down matter of the realm, and all that remained of the waters were Rivers that continued to flow downwards.

The servants of the God-Machine have declared this realm "beyond repair". If it had another function once, no trace of it remains. No Angel travels farther than Tartarus, perhaps even fearing what lurks beneath, as the occult physics under the purview of their creator give way to the Old Laws.

short quiver
mighty zephyr
#

This doesnt say the sundering causes it

#

Just that the only timeline people have is the sundering

#

Because cave man times

marble sorrel
#

The average afterlife for an oWoD Wraith is to be worked to the point you nearly die a second time, then soulforged into a still capable of thought object for a more powerful wraith.

pure mauve
#

Ah. I assumed from that phrasing it was the cause. And, I mean, it might have been? Separating Flesh and Shadow may very well have also broken what was supposed to be a transitional space between life and death (or beween one life and the next).

mighty zephyr
#

Maybe but I dont think Geist mentions mother wolf once

marble sorrel
#

There's a reason oWoD wraith has multiple full on revolutionary armies roaming about it's afterlife with the spirits of people like John Brown and Joan of Arc trying to raze it to the ground.

pure mauve
#

Yeah, CofD's Underworld isn't tyrannical per se. (Well, an individual Dead Dominion totaly might be, and frequently is.) But it is fundamentally Not Working Right.

#

It's not broken on purpose by anyone. And it broke long, long ago. It's just... broken, and nobody can fix it, and the best you can do is try to help ghosts manage it until they can pass on properly. And then some people like it exactly the way it is and insist against any attempt to change it.

nimble gale
#

yeah, old wraith isn't... good, pretty much anywhere. It used to be, but pretty much every extant Dark Kingdom has turned into a shithole in part because the leaders want to make sure no one goes to Oblivion nad makes it stronger, and figures a soul forged into soulsteel or white jade can't go to oblivion, and in part, explicitly by the text, because it makes old, rich wraiths older and richer.

pure mauve
#

Also related:

Within each Dominion, the Old Laws are arcane, arbitrary, and often hidden. These qualities, though, do not prevent the Kerberoi from enforcing them tirelessly and with abandon. Often, a Sin-Eater’s first trip to one of the Lower Mysteries becomes an exercise in fleeing the associated Kerberos, as it is all too easy to inadvertently break one of the Old Laws and thereby attract the unwanted notice of the Kerberos. Fighting a Kerberos is one of the most foolish things a Sin-Eater can attempt to do.
So the fundamental experience of the deeper parts of the Underworld is "getting harshly punished for breaking laws you had no possible way of knowing about".

nimble gale
#

This isn't even a case of 'the underworld is broken by design and there is no better way', the actual textual thing is 'there could be a better way, but powerful assholes are stopping you from achieving it'

#

'but this way does work... on the bones and souls of billions of broken dead.'

pure mauve
#

Ah. Yeah, that's worse.

#

CofD Underworld isn't broken by design, and there probably is a better way somewhere, but it's just... accidentally completely fucked and nobody knows how to fix it 🙃

#

Like, even the God-Machine says "whoops, this is broken 🤷"

marble sorrel
#

For an example of 'old rich ghosts' in Wraith, there is Qin Shi Huang. The First Emperor of China and ruler of one of the underworld nations because...it fucking turns out you can take it with you when you die, if you've got enough court sorcerers and alchemists working under you and a near pathological obsession with immortality.

Someone who was powerful in life is powerful in death because it turns out, the afterlife isn't an even playing field or fair.

nimble gale
#

Yep.

#

He showed up to the disparate east asian underworlds with the entire terracotta army and proceeded to Colonialism all over them, uniting them into the Dark Kingdom of Jade

pure mauve
#

That's probably worse. It's really kind of a philosophical question, though; would you prefer a world that's broken because of the cruelty of the rich and powerful, or a world that's broken for no reason?

marble sorrel
#

Yeah. It's a different sort of broken.

nimble gale
#

The big thing with wraith's underworld is that it's not supposed to be broken. Wraiths can leave. They can learn to let go of their fetters and transcend, going to... well, no one knows. A better place, though, almsot certainly. And for a long time, that was what Stygia was designed to be, a stopping poitn on the road through the Underworld to Transcendence.

marble sorrel
#

oWoD Wraith is more 'the afterlife is shit because it's FULL OF DAMN HUMANS'

nimble gale
#

but then old, powerful wraiths started to forgo their duties and break their oaths in the name of temporal power and the pleasures avaliable to the dead.

marble sorrel
#

While it seems like CoD underworld is broken for much more esoteric reasons.

pure mauve
#

Like... maybe it was always slowly draining, and it just took time for anyone to notice because it was once an ocean? Maybe Father Wolf broke it as an entirely accidental side effect of the Sundering? But there's nobody really clearly to blame, and nobody who's really clearly benefitting.

#

And normally you would blame that kind of pointless suffering on the God-Machine, but even it thinks the Underworld is not only broken, but beyond repair!

marble sorrel
#

'Beep Boop, don't look at me'

pure mauve
#

Which arguably makes the Gatekeepers even worse, because there's no good reason for them to defend the current state of things. It's literally only because this is "natural". They're not even selfishly rationalizing personal benefit like the Reapers are.

#

...it's Gideon Ofnir energy.

#

I could totally see a Werewolf getting convinced by a Gatekeeper krewe that keeping the realms of the living and the dead separate is still a good idea, though.

#

(Most Sin-Eaters, meanwhile, want to intentionally blur that line in order to ease passage.)

marble sorrel
#

Yeah, to give oWoD Wraith some credit in the 'not everything entirely sucks'. The closest thing to the Gatekeepers are the Ferrymen and they are one of the most unambiguous forces of good in Wraith. Terrifying? Yes. Complicated? Yes Good? Also yes.

They are wraiths who've taken on the role of guiding other wraiths to trancendence. To help them let go of their various pains and regrets so they can move onto whatever comes next.

#

Encountering a Ferryman is like if Hercules came tearing through an entire squad of terracotta soldiers before putting on his glasses and saying he's your new therapist.

pure mauve
#

The non-Sin Eater krewe types, besides Gatekeepers, are Thanatologists (who study death academically, treating it as an intellectual curiosity which doesn't really affect them, and are more interested in learning than in helping), Bonepickers (who as far as I can tell are entirely just self-centered mercenaries who use their various cool powers just to get stuff for themselves), and Elysians (who actually suck immensely, and who basically think the only problem with the tyranical Dead Domains of the Underworld is that they're not in charge of one).

#

Thanatologists are apparently usually loners, and barely even communicate with their own Geist. So they're mostly not even evil, so much as just... not doing good.

marble sorrel
#

Not evil, just an asshole. Got it

pure mauve
#

Note that Mourners are a Sin-Eater krewe type who also really like learning about the Underworld and death, but usually from a community-centric perspective. They're what academia is supposed to be. (And sometimes also what it's not, and they can get petty or competitive or secretive... but they at least approach it from an angle of "this understanding is to help people" rather than "I didn't believe in ghosts, but apparently they're real, so I need to intellectualize everything about this to reclaim some semblence of control".)

#

Like, if there's a necromancer around, all of the Sin-Eater krewe types would to some extent be pissed, Thanatologists would say "huh, necromancers exist... not really my problem" and move on, Bonepickers would say "hey necromancer would you care to hire the expertise of a ghost expert?", Gatekeepers would... probably also be pissed actutally, and Elysians would say "no, we should get to control ghosts".

clear delta
#

Undertakers also deal with understanding of death
But focus more on perspective, and having influence on media

#

Pilgrims see death as a journey to understand and then guide others through

pure mauve
#

Yeah. Mourners are in the sciences and Undertakers are in the humanities. ...I'm joking but I think that might actually be a reasonable, if pithy, understanding of it?

clear delta
#

Undertakers want to defeat the fear of death and bad coping mechanisms around it, seeing this a way to make it easier to move on and also weaken the force of the underworld

pure mauve
#

Yeah, especially because there are mythological underworlds in the Underworld and they fade away as faith is lost, so clearly myth influences the Underworld somehow and that maybe theoretically could become a lever with which to try to fix it.

clear delta
#

I saw an explanation by a freelancer on the forums

#

Okay so

#

The underworld is where a bunch of memory infused plasm goes

#

People's beliefs have a heavy influence

#

And will obviously affect a lot the memoria
I mean, you already seen how flexible and influenced by krewes ceremonies are

#

These memories are blended up then coalesced into dead dominions, which end up as bizarro versions of afterlives

pure mauve
#

I just feel like that has to be an oversimplification, or else it'd have already been figured out.

#

I don't think it's wrong per se, but the situation is definitely complicated.

strong bronze
#

The situation we settled in was

The sire was murdered.

The fledgeling however,since he was VERY lucky with the nosferatu disfigurement and can pass as a human with a lot more ease than normal,he was considered a pretty valuable asset and taken in as a private spy and bloodbonded to a local leader

Probably mistakes with this story but it's what we are running with

marble sorrel
#

Christ, I forgot how ghastly Qin Shi Huang is with the most simple of things. Recording Information.

Objects don't naturally form in the afterlife, only arriving as relics, reflections of emotionally linked objects a ghost may have. The average person doesn't exactly go to the afterlife feeling great about a pile of blank paper.

#

So Qin Shi Huang improvised a strategy. Having some less useful wraith's souls flayed until they lost all parts of themselves but their ability to memorize and repeat what they have memorized. They are mass produced in his empire.

#

'Here is a human soul. I use it like a notepad'

#

The simple reason he did this? You can't run an empire without information. Limitations on ability to record information, store it and spread it makes getting an organization big enough to be a real Empire in the afterlife impossible without some clever tricks.

#

And he's more than willing to toss any number of souls into the furnace to keep his empire going.

pure mauve
#

...I wonder if the CofD afterlife broke because people became human enough to conceptualize death as more than a state of non-being, or to fear it.

clear delta
#

Apparently

pure mauve
#

That the idea of an afterlife is what broke the afterlife. It took what was supposed to be a transitory state, and turned it into a location, and made everything worse in the process.

clear delta
#

Back in the neolithic

#

The underworld was flooded, with lil islands ghosts could safely be on
The waters receded over time

pure mauve
#

I mean originally originally there weren't even islands. You were supposed to either float around for a while, or sink to the bottom. And then the islands formed when cavemen thought "dead people have to be somewhere, so that means... uh, my parents, I guess?" and that's not much space. And as time went on, the idea of how many dead people there were grew, and so did the space to contain them.

mighty zephyr
#

Keep in mind

#

The big difference is souls dont go to the Underworld

#

Ghosts do

pure mauve
#

That's fair. Plenty of people don't become ghosts at all. But arguably even "being safely on islands" was not ideal because you were supposed to just be in the water directly.

#

But then someone pulled the plug.

orchid void
#

And the Underworld isn’t Stygia. Though Stygia is less about death as a state of being so much as an inevitable state of matter (and therefore the soul)

#

From basal to enlightened, lead to gold, a change, a cut, a death of one thing changes the context of all other things

#

Still not helpful in understanding the hereafter

#

But ain’t that fun~?

marble sorrel
#

Pondering: For people playing in a vampire game, how does Frenzy manifest for your vampire?

Characters in frenzy are not themselves — or, more accurately, reveal more of themselves than they normally would. The character might feel remorse and guilt later, but while the frenzy occurs, nothing matters save the immediate gratification of the character’s desires.

What bits of themselves that they prefer to keep down and hidden get revealed when they've lost control of the beast?

lucid cape
#

Yall know what are some pre-written campaigns I could get?

dusky ledge
lucid cape
#

I think JJK is not a good comparison now

#

I think its more like Jojo part 4

#

For Forsaken i mean

mighty zephyr
#

I don't see how it isnt

#

Jojo Part 4 also applies with its increasing orbit of supporting characters all helping to deal with supernatural weirdness

radiant marsh
#

welp.

#

Boredom and lack of relevant media caused me to pull the trigger, even though I otherwise tend to be the most edition warring person who ever edition warred regarding it.

#

Gonna give Book of Hungry Names a try

#

(Granted I was and still am decidedly unsold on V5 as well, and Night Road was fucking excellent.)

#

So let's see how it is!

pure mauve
#

Is it weird that I think a Geist video game should be almost like Disco Elysium with your manifestations working like that game's skills to represent the geist whispering in your ear?

radiant marsh
#

Sort of? You only really have the one geist though.

pure mauve
#

Yeah, which is the fundamental difference.

#

It would have been funny to do it with 1e Geist so that not only would you have an excuse for Not Johnny Silverhand, but like 80% of the major NPCs you encounter also have one of their own. But 2e geists would, I think, have to act more like an opinionated narrator.

lucid cape
radiant marsh
#

We will have to find out.

radiant marsh
#

The Stanley Parable

pure mauve
#

Honestly that's plausible. Except your geist is supposed to like you, since that's both your morality and your power stat. Or, rather, you're supposed to work closely together rather than fighting. It's possible in 2e to break your Geist's worldly anchors and take control of them, but this is explicitly not an option for player characters, only antagonists.

pure mauve
#

dangit now I really want to play my ex-cop Sin-Eater concept.

tough pebble
# radiant marsh Gonna give Book of Hungry Names a try

BoHN isn't... exactly W5? Voy has explained it in more details, but it was literally caught halfway through W5's production and shows some lore discrepancies because of it. Plus some mechanics are 5th-20th blends or are entirely designed for the game.

I still highly recommend it, though. Not using storyteller mode your first time through is a wild ride given the game has no savescumming.

radiant marsh
#

So it's like the other one

#

...The one I remember everything about except the name

mighty zephyr
#

It is, vibe wise W5

#

But not exactly W5

#

Heart of the forest

#

Is the other one

tough pebble
#

It is definitely all the right vibes

worthy sundial
#

working on npc statblocks for my v5 game
how many dots to spread across disciplines would yall say best fits a seasoned ancilla

craggy coyote
#

no one ever suspects the brujah to have obfuscate

#

or auspex

#

auspex in particular is very funny for them

marble sorrel
#

Auspex is also one of the single most common disciplines about too/there's no vampire that doesn't get use out of it, so it requires exactly zero justification for 'why did he learn that'.

craggy coyote
#

"I had a fling with a rose back in the 90s, next question"

worthy sundial
#

bumping up the celerity from 1 to 3

marble sorrel
#

I think I'd generally always have a 'Survival' discipline at a solid level if they're seasoned.

#

Could be Fortitude, could be Obfuscate, could be whatever

#

But a 'how does this guy handle things going to shit' is a good question for 'how did they survive long enough'

worthy sundial
#

fair

#

obfuscate might be better actually - i only landed on celerity for jumpscare speed reasons

marble sorrel
#

Doesn't mean they're all walking tanks. Turning invisible and pissbolting is always a solid survival plan 😛

marble sorrel
# marble sorrel Pondering: For people playing in a vampire game, how does Frenzy manifest for yo...

Pondering my own question: Aininur, for all her morals and all her playing at being above the stupidity of people around her - She enjoys being able to hurt things. She doesn't like that she likes hurting things but it's what drove her to start fights as a human when she could have talked people down. Oh sure, she made sure she was only starting fights with 'bad' people but that doesn't change the underlying emotional aspect.

Bringing that to the fore, I think Aininur's frenzies tend more towards revelling in that enjoyment of violence. Of the spray of blood and crunch of bone. She's not just interested in blood and killing, she's interested in hurting things for that blood. She likely comes across less 'Animalistic' and more 'Grinning Killer' in a Frenzy.

nimble gale
#

Aininur:Aininur In Frenzy::Raiden Metalgearrising:Jack the Ripper, basically

marble sorrel
#

Okay, yes but shut up XD

patent talon
nimble gale
#

I'm gonna make that setite you took as an enemy quote sundowner at her

#

'Children are cruel, Aininur. And I am very in touch with my inner child.'

marble sorrel
#

Got it, slightly less subtle than usual Settite

nimble gale
#

she joined the Warrior cult what do you want from her

high current
#

rooF no M5 news still, today's month of darkness announcement is just another LA LARP event next year

lucid cape
#

Reading character creation rules, what is a totem

#

Is it a spirit representing the collective concept of the pack? Or is it an actual physical totem

high current
#

patron spirit of your pack

lucid cape
#

Ok, cool

#

This is really weird formatting

#

Add up the total number of dots that pack members have in the Totem Merit.

What dots am I supposed to add up? All of Attribute, Skills, Merits?

nimble gale
#

the dots they have in the totem merit/background.

#

it's a specific merit/background.

clear delta
#

If you talking forsaken
Totems are patron spirits
The merit is for pack totem
But each tribe has a firstborn totem, and lodges often have totems

marble sorrel
#

...I forgot the term that Glass Walkers use for spirit-imbued computer programs is 'Softwere'.

#

The Weaver was a mistake

lucid cape
#

Why does this not mention doing the totem merit first then doing the totem points

nimble gale
#

god I love the glass walkers so much, gotta be one of my favorite tribes

lucid cape
heady kestrel
#

Mages have a similar mechanic for their cabals iirc

clear delta
#

Mages have cabal theme

high current
#

"Why is [mechanic] listed and explained before the bit where it actually tells you about the merit that gives you points for the mechanic?"
welcome to CofD/Onyx Path book formatting vvvSip

#

WoD5 has been better about it i think? iirc at least it goes through all of the PC creation stuff including mentioning you can donate advantage dots toward your coterie before it talks about coterie creation

clear delta
#

Mages do not usually bond themselves to entities above rank 2
Worship and some loyalty are fine, but going too far is seen as surrendering yourself to a alien entity, and may bring distrust upon you

#

There's both a reasonable distrust and probably an arrogance that dislikes mages submitting too much

pure mauve
#

Meanwhile, I think Geists default to rank 3?

high current
#

rank 3 is the minimum to become a Geist, yeah

pure mauve
#

Is it, or does drinking from a river of the underworld boost you to rank 3 if you're lower?

high current
#

iirc drinking from a river raises your rank and erases some of your memories, and rank 3 is the minimum to be able to bond with someone and make a sin-eater(or otherwise one of the Bound)

pure mauve
#

Ah, makes sense.

strong bronze
#

If you were a person in the world of darkness who Suddendly became aware of it

Would you find the existence of dominate or obfuscate more upsetting

nimble gale
#

Auspex tbh

dusky ledge
#

Or Presence for that matter

rapid glacier
#

Dominate, I expect someone to do some silly invisible shit, but losing free will or being manipulated to do shit and magically rationalizing it afterwards is full on nightmare territory

strong bronze
#

Idk like

The knowledge that there can be someone in my room with me 24/7 and I would never have any way to know until they wanted me to know would ruin my psyche

nimble gale
#

I own a smartphone

#

At least the vampires doing it for his own sick reasons and not for corporate info selling

marble sorrel
simple valley
#

tbh, if you said I could never be tracked by electronic means ever again, but I'd have to let The Sinister Blood Man be able to do it instead via dark magic, I'd weigh the pros and cons for at least a bit

strong bronze
nimble gale
#

Yeah but it's not microamametazonsoft. I guess it might be pentex sometimes

#

Anyway I support small local vampire business over big megacorps

lucid cape
#

Yall know any resources for Forsaken?

mighty zephyr
#

Like what?

high current
#

comedy ap feat. Alfabusa, SpeakerD, PeachyPixel8, and ThunderPsyker(and run by Josh/Jersh of Strange Adventures)
considered posting it in #1216227286177808584 but it isn't actually HtP related aside from 2 players

mighty zephyr
#

Well, 3

lucid cape
#

And a cheat sheet if available

mighty zephyr
lucid cape
#

K

mighty zephyr
#

One stop shop

lucid cape
#

Any vtts that support the system?

mighty zephyr
#

Foundry does i know that

#

Idk if roll20 does

strong bronze
#

....something that I was thinking about for a while

The internet has long been considered a death blow to the masquerade

But in modern day,with generative ai,it probably got a LOT easier to cover up when a nosferatu gets caught on camera eating someone or something

worthy sundial
#

posting vampire feeding footage on facebook subtitled 'look at the power of sora 2'

marble sorrel
#

The truth: Second Inquisition groups are constantly trying to break the masquerade but they just get downvoted on reddit with 'Hire a real artist, don't use AI'.

worthy sundial
#

this is why the new pope is on abt ai

#

the second inquisition is real & so r vampires #wakeupsheeple

high current
mighty zephyr
vast blaze
#

FUCKING TOGO!!!!!!!!!!!!

frank atlas
#

everywhere i go

#

he's there

mighty zephyr
#

Hes there to remind you Togo to the polls

high current
#

but i voted by mail rooD

timber talon
#

I voted early

hybrid dock
#

i voted too

pure mauve
#

Sudden idea: a former Thanatologist joining a Sin-Eater krewe after they realize, yes, the afterlife is real, and trying to constantly intellectualize everything about it isn't helpful for others or for themself.

orchid void
#

hi a friend is thinking about running forsaken so im cooking a little

#

pitch of "small town highschoolers have their First Change, Go" so

#

what if i made a mean girl irraka wouldn't that be fun lets make a social scout

orchid void
#

heheheehehe

image.png
marble sorrel
#

"How many of you have ever felt personally victimized by the Werewolf?"

#

"This spirit is the nastiest skank bitch I've ever met! Do not trust her! She is a fugly slut!!"

pure mauve
#

my character who I most want to make is an ex-cop Kindly Sin-Eater but of course it depends on which campaign I get into if any.

rapid glacier
lucid cape
clear delta
lucid cape
#

Does forsaken usually use a map?

rapid glacier
#

I don’t think any white wolf product line really uses a map unless it’s of a local area, what kinds of map are we talking here?

high current
#

its possible to use a map but all of wod/cofd generally assume theater of the mind afaik

marble sorrel
#

I like to use maps ala Legends of the Wulin/Age of Sigmar Soulbound.

#

Where you have maps but you don't have precise distances

#

You've got zones/locations so you can tell where people are relative to each other/you can figure out who can see whom.

#

So you might have like:

           Roofs 
     /      |         \
Teahouse - Street - Gun Store
            |
          Sewer
#

Where you know the various locations people are in and how they link into each other.

#

Someone can't go straight from Sewer to Gun Store.

#

But you don't have 'Oh yeah, he's 20m away from you and 15m from you'

lucid cape
rapid glacier
#

I’d look at Ikiryo’s post above, that’s the only real battle map type deal you’d need and mostly because one wolf is usually enough for an areas’ threats, so fights can get spread out

#

At least in WtA, maybe Forsaken has different vibes or aims for its combat

mighty zephyr
#

Forsaken does give you like

#

Meters of movement

#

5th also does also use the zone system

orchid void
# lucid cape Battle ones

World of Darkness as a whole tends towards theater of the mind, it isn't really built to handle tactical movement n nitty-gritty details that battle maps (like you'd do for D&D or Lancer) tend towards

lucid cape
#

Cool

vast blaze
#

Boutta fight some Shovelheads, wish me luck

#

...little do they know, my Mage has disguised himself to look like he's not wearing armor, when in fact he is a fucking armored juggernaut

#

God I love Forces

strong bronze
#

Wasn't there a story where Cain was almost bested and killed,but god smited the enemy down before he could die

vast blaze
#

That sounds like something God would do

#

"YOUR CURSE IS OVER WHEN I SAY SO"

mighty zephyr
strong bronze
#

i remember someone mentioning someone somehow bypassed all of his curses and defenses and would get to kill him if god itself didnt step in to destroy them

mighty zephyr
#

I don't recall this

#

sounds like some Gehenna Scenario nonsense

worthy sundial
#

that does sound apocalypse-oriented yea

high current
#

i'm reminded of Exalted 2e and the Unconquered Sun, and how many power gamers were so smug that they could build a character that, at character creation with no xp, could one-shot the big man

#

(he has 4 arms, each wielding a different weapon/one has a shield, each one associated with a different Virtue; the shield gives him perfect defenses, so in order to be able to damage him at all you have to convince him to suppress the associated Virtue--i think it was Compassion, cause i remember people making a big deal about 'just tell him if he doesnt drop the shield then you'll kill everyone in Creation', other weapons were also let him basically auto-succeed whatever they represented, so it was a big game of 'making him suppress all of his emotions until you can actually get in and kill him'; this doenst actually accomplish anything, he's not an antagonist, he is in fact the one responsible for the kind of demigod the build wants you to play getting their powers)

radiant marsh
#

TBF it's also peak Great Curse to be so consumed with hubris you think taking on your creator is a good idea.

mighty zephyr
#

I do think every Solar instinctively thinks "I could take him though"

#

I think that's part of being a solar

high current
mighty zephyr
#

Yes

high current
#

(i reminded myself of him and Luna having Ride specialties for each other)

mighty zephyr
#

Solars think Sex and Fighting is the same thing

high current
#

hey now, those are different charm trees

#

fuckin Ex3 and the Performance(Sex) charms

craggy coyote
worthy sundial
mighty zephyr
#

The goon sessions are tournament arcs

orchid void
#

awful statement thank you voy

worthy sundial
#

a solar, still within her temple
gooning for 1 thousand years

mighty zephyr
hybrid dock
#

what

#

oh delightful gif

#

very sparkly

#

im taking that

worthy sundial
#

surprised u havent seen it b4 karen

mighty zephyr
#

Yeah this is a sleeper meme

hybrid dock
#

i havent!

worthy sundial
#

6 sessions into my v5 game so far & i have only just now picked up the storytellers toolkit
this is an amazing npc archetype im stealing it

image0.jpg
heady kestrel
#

powerful aura

worthy sundial
#

ill be real im not playing v5 to have The Raid style fights

image0.jpg
#

hunter tho,,,

rapid glacier
#

I think they’re referring to quick bouts of intense violence with that, as opposed to extended fight scenes

#

Anyways I’m making a chores board for my WtA pack, with Bawn, Hunt, and Upkeep tasks to help them manage things; has anyone ever done anything like this on roll20 and if so, what worked for your group? Looking for inspiration, not necessarily problems to solve, just curious to see what anyone else has tried

worthy sundial
orchid void
#

yeah that's kind of the recurring theme in all of those listed films

lucid cape
#

Gotta be my favorite line in the book so far

Screenshot_20251104_143212.jpg
radiant marsh
#

I'd say The Raid is basically Dredd, but I'm pretty sure The Raid was first.

#

But it's basically the exact same setup

#

Protagonists are stuck in a big highrise building full of people who want to kill them

dusky ledge
#

Bored so I'm jonesing for ideas

There's almost no canon info, especially for v5, so what would Dallas by Night look like to you?

#

What sect is in power? What are the main struggles or points of intrigue?

worthy sundial
#

i mean the big thing of v5 is that everythings in disarray right

#

camarillas technically top dog but thats tenable

dusky ledge
#

That's kind of in line with what I was considering. Like it's not the Free States, but it's no Prague or even Chicago

worthy sundial
#

imo easiest place to start is to think abt the time
what year is it & what version of dallas was living in that year

dusky ledge
#

Maybe there's a Baron gathering a large following, and a Prince desperately clinging to power, threatening to bring down the SI as a result

dusky ledge
worthy sundial
#

cities dont stay the same across years

#

dallas now can differ from dallas ten years ago, twenty years ago

#

not to mention the ambient state & national climate of that point in time

#

& from there u can kinda reflect that into the vampire society within dallas

dusky ledge
#

So even just thinking about geography, Dallas has a LOT of natural spaces for a city of its size. Probably leading to an increased Gangrel population, maybe some Garou? I could see a Koldun or two as well, but I love them so I may just be biased

worthy sundial
#

could def see garou yea

dusky ledge
#

So they'd be an active risk to the local Kindred, and something to keep in mind when designing the population

#

What clans should the local leaders be? I really don't wanna just do a bog-standard Ventrue Prince, but I'd be more tempted to have one as a Baron. The table I play with glazes the Anarchs a little too hard, and I wanna make it clear to them that they're not that different from the Cam

rapid glacier
#

Night Road had a Gangrel Prince of Tuscon, AZ; make it the last Brujah Prince of the cam or something, go really hard on “the Rebels aren’t really any more right or just than anyone else”

#

Double points for making their sheriff a Ventrue who has their shit together and somehow lucks into a conspiracy involving said Brujah, really flip the tables on the stereotypes

dusky ledge
#

I'm also figuring out the baronies, and their territories. So far I've got Oak Lawn and Downtown as appropriate chunks of the city, but I'd like to have at least one more

dusky ledge
#

I was also considering having the Sheriff be Banu Haqim, and the local Tremere are outraged at effectively being replaced, causing most of them to pivot to the Anarchs

#

Expanding on the core idea of the chronicle (because this would fly REALLY well with this table), I think it may be something like "revolution must be done with care, and the rebuilding after is even more important than tearing down the old order"

dusky ledge
#

Think I'm getting somewhere

Screenshot_2025-11-04-02-38-57-60_a1b1bbe5f63d5b96c1a0f87c197ebfae.jpg Screenshot_2025-11-04-02-39-09-25_a1b1bbe5f63d5b96c1a0f87c197ebfae.jpg
#

Names are mostly placeholders

rapid glacier
dusky ledge
#

Oh that shit is devious

craggy coyote
#

(plus imo the brujah hat is less rebel than it is extremely strong and annoying opinions)

dusky ledge
#

Agreed on at least the last point (tired now and can't be bothered to dig up lore). Toreador are obsession, Brujah are passion

clear delta
clear delta
marble sorrel
#

One of these days I'm really tempted to play a Syndicate mage playing up the 'Economics is the science behind my magic's enlightened science'. Go full 'I knew that would happen, so I paid for X'.

#

Need a guy at long range handled? Oh hey, I just Had A Sniper In Position, that's how the werewolf ate a forces 4 blast.

#

Need to get somewhere? Everyone has a price, if you pay them enough they'll do anything you want! (Mind sphere in use)

#

Enemy hypertech starts failing? 'Guess you shouldn't have gone for the lowest bidder in parts'

#

Playing a full on Lex Luthor 'Oh yes, I can just pay for that to work how I want' would be very funny.

rapid glacier
#

Ah the elusive 6th dot of Resources

nimble gale
#

Iirc convention book syndicate had rules for up to ten. Might be reprinted in a rich bastard's guide to magic

marble sorrel
#

For when 5 dots is 'Mere Multi-millionaire'

image.png
#

Since the Syndicate version of prime can treat companies like nodes they expressly say you should look real damn hard at anyone wanting 8+ resources.

#

It means if you're Bruce Wayne Rich you can use Wayne Enterprises as a node.

#

The downside to this is that A) It's your company B) Drawing resources for your hypereconomics leaves it much less able to engage in Normal Economics.

#

You can destroy your own node (And the linked company) if you overdraw from it.

mighty zephyr
#

Im wondering what mechanics I would bring from Requiem to V5 if I were to run it

high current
#

the only mechanics i can think of off the top of my head that havent already been carried over/translated are clash of wills and the predatory aura stuff rooISee2

mighty zephyr
#

I think itd be

  1. Vampire senses such as smelling blood and hearing heartbeats scaling with blood potency
  2. Being able to communicate through the blood with your sire and childe
  3. Turning some merits into sect specific loresheets
high current
clear delta
#

Maybe the ability to feel out clan members through blood ties?

mighty zephyr
#

Thats a merit actually

worthy sundial
#

cuz iirc v5 has a thing for that

#

but its a ritual

clear delta
#

I also like the tendency requiem vampires have of mutation

mighty zephyr
#

Like in Requiem you know automatically if your sire or childe is killed

#

Or frenzies

worthy sundial
#

ahh ok ok that i get more

#

i thought u meant like telepathy

mighty zephyr
#

Its like

#

Soft telepathy

#

Its like how the Beckoning works

#

Just from sire to childe

worthy sundial
#

yea thats fair

#

i was thinking like actual conversation type shit

#

since i think thatd be bad for 'finding my sire' type threads

mighty zephyr
#

Its not both ways

clear delta
#

Blood is chains upon kindred
They are bound by their thirst to it, and by their cursed bloodlines

mighty zephyr
#

The elder calls to the younger

#

This IS a thing in VTM, consistently

#

But theres no mechanics for it

#

Unless you just assume every elder+ has auspex at like 4+

worthy sundial
#

thats probly not a bad assumption the older they get

#

but that is weird yeag

mighty zephyr
#

I mean I think assuming every older vampire has every discipline is a bit lame

marble sorrel
#

There's a BH ritual back in v20 for sire and childe to communicate telepathically.

mighty zephyr
#

Well yeah theres also one in V5 as previously said

#

Im saying it should be inherent that sires be able to send omens through the blood

#

Like it is in Requiem

high current
#

less 'direct communication' more 'vibes'

#

vs the ritual which is direct communication iirc

mighty zephyr
#

Yeah

#

Also seeing in the dark by default

#

Fuck Masquerade all my vampires can see in the dark

marble sorrel
#

Dark Ages is very funny there as Aininur is jumping through hoops to get to Spirit Manipulation 4 and make a Fetish that is...able to provide non-fire light. Because she's sick of 'if someone drops a torch, everyone rolls red fear'.

#

As it's not really an era with a lot of non-fire light sources.

high current
#

rooThink im just remembering, i was hoping for an M5 announcement last week and since it didnt happen my fallback is maybe running Legend in the Mist but that depends on if i get the setting/campaign book from the KS tomorrow, and i was considering V5/W5/H5 if i don't
but like, I could also just do what I've suggested I want to do to my friends several times, and run oMage lore with nMage mechanics, which from what we know may work as a stop-gap equivalent for M5 vvvSip

clear delta
#

Even without darkvision
Could have vampires do things like
Make heavy use of lantern/lamp designs. Like the famous lamps of genie stories.
Use bioluminiscent life such as fireflies or certain mushrooms

rapid glacier
#

Voy's nicer than I was, I made them use flashlights because nobody wanted Protean

#

or was it Animalism that gives you red spooky eyes

#

whatever, one of them was a Caitiff with Favored Blood and he was the first to get the eyes so everyone had it after a while anyways

mighty zephyr
worthy sundial
sour zephyr
vast blaze
#

Lethal damage takes longer to heal right

#

For Mage

orchid void
#

Eh? Mage heals like humans

high current
#

lethal takes longer to heal for everyone iirc

marble sorrel
clear delta
#

I read ghouled house

nimble gale
#

No that's what the Tzimisce do

dusky ledge
#

Update on Dallas by Night

#

I've decided to have the local chantry be an independent faction unto themselves, after outrage at the Prince more or less fully replacing them with Banu Haqim in all roles of the Court

#

The large population of clan Gangrel makes up the majority of the local Anarch forces, and is the explanation both for the Camarilla being on the back foot and for the rapid rise in status of the local Banu Haqim

vast blaze
#

Speaking of independent Chantries

#

How much hot water would my Anarch Tremere be in if he tried to start an Anarch Chantry

#

He is part of a broader Anarch organization that's somehow managed to take over a city, and he is in territory governed by a pact of non-aggression

mighty zephyr
#

Well you're in V20 so you'd automatically die

vast blaze
#

Is there some curse that would auto-kill him?

rapid glacier
#

For a Tremere? Yeah probably

#

Or their location would be leaked to SI

#

Or to Garou, or a local hunter, etc etc; Tremere didn’t get their reputation unfairly

marble sorrel
#

And since you are tremere, they're very much able to use blood magic to track you.

vast blaze
#

I assume that having Embraced Without The Cup won't change the tracking thing

rapid glacier
#

As I understand it (at least before V5) being a Tremere Anarch comes with the necessity of wards against scrying and hiding your location from ghouls and kindred alike, not just mortals

#

Even more so than usual

craggy coyote
# vast blaze Is there some curse that would auto-kill him?

pre v5 the writers made it so the tremere somehow managed anear complete strangelhold on their blood magic monopoly by scry and die tactics using blood samples, among other things (I am not a fan of this, and prefer the v5 take where the tremre have factionalized).

An anarch tremre would be keeping their head down low, and likely making a deal with someone strong enough to keep them safe from that wrath

vast blaze
#

Makes sense

#

Probably worth discussing it with the Baron...

#

I'm sure he wouldn't mind a Tremere Chantry under his command

#

And a bunch of little 9th gen Tremerelings

marble sorrel
#

Like a smart Anarch tremere would likely want a non-tremere to be the face of any blood magic. Or at least lie a lot about the clans involved.

vast blaze
#

Cause my guy is 8th gen, so whoever he sires is going to have ludicrously pure blood

marble sorrel
#

As the anarchs do have ritualists.

#

They're a bit hacked together but the anarchs don't entirely lack blood sorcery

#

But it being Tremere blood sorcery/an open chantry is a political threat to the tremere.

vast blaze
#

Aye

#

It'd defo need to be on the down low

#

He does have a mansion on an island so that's at least a great spot for it

#

Nice and secluded and in an easily defensible area

marble sorrel
#

As like on the independent front: As an independent clan with a history of blood magic, it wouldn't be out of place for a BH guy to be the main sorcerer for an anarch baron.

#

But he'd likely not be training more sorcerers for the baron, just providing services.

rapid glacier
#

Yeah if I was a Tremere Anarch preV5 I’d be keeping that tidbit on lockdown, lest a chantry upstate fill my brain with explosions or something

#

But running a chantry that’s hiding as a thin blood or BH sanctuary, now that might be doable if you get enough powerful people in on it

marble sorrel
#

Nosferatu are another option. They've had plenty of blood sorcerers in the past, including some big name ones.

#

They don't have a BH or Tremere level training program but they've had some.

#

Likewise Settites.

#

Basicly: There's a lot of clans that can provide magic to anarchs, it's really the 'tremere' part that is the Big Problem.

rapid glacier
#

It’s not impossible, too, Carna managed it

#

Not a knock against her either, it’s just a Herculean task that many powerful Kindred actively take steps to stop

marble sorrel
#

Meanwhile in the Dark Ages: "Hello, I have blood sorcery and we are not yet a giant political power who can leverage exclusive access. Who wants to trade?"

vast blaze
#

There any supernaturals that wouldn't wanna kill a vampire on sight?