World Of Darkness General (VtM, WtO, MtA, etc.)

[MaxPayne]

Finally caught up, glad to see a WoD thread!

Currently doing a read through the Changeling the Lost 1e & 2e Books. I definitely prefer this to Dreaming (Love me some Hedge Wizard Ogres!).

Speaking of different editions, does anybody mix the different settings (between CoD and WoD) into your home game's canon? i.e. If I was running a Vampire the Masquerade game in WoD, I would try and integrate CoL's world into my WoD game instead of from Changeling The Dreaming.

I use the new world of darkness core rulebook for all sorts of games, but ignore the lore and create my own. The last campaign we did was one set in the wild west using a lot of the call of cthulu dark trails for inspiration, and it worked out great. I think the d10 dice pool system is incredibly intuitive and able to be modified with ease, and is my go to for most things non fantasy. I just wish white wolf would have focused on applying the system to different settings and genres rather than a shit load of splat books detailing the monsters political meta plot that I dont care about.

 

[Corn Flakes]

And this is why Mage feels so outdated: by the standards of the World of Darkness's writers today, the people championing the sexual mutilation of children are the good guys.

To quote myself earlier in the thread,
You can't fight the Paradigm if you are an agent of that same Paradigm.

Mage the Ascencion should be the ultimate expression of counter-culture and exoticism. It's the one splat that completely breaks down when it's sanitized to fit Current Year standards. Even the "stuffy" Traditions like the Hermetics and the Chorus are defined by strict dedication to the method (Hermetics) and unshakeable faith and loyalty (Chorus), two things Current Year culture hates. The Virtual Adepts would collapse in paroxysms of rage if they saw how tightly-controlled the Internet is now, how anyone making a baseless accusation can completely shut someone else down. Fuck, even the Cult of Ecstasy would find the escapism of Current Year vapid and meaningless. No one is trying to expand their boundaries and experience oneness with the world, they're just drugging themselves up to their eyeballs in order to dull their senses to the world around them.

Really, the only interpretation of Mage the Ascension that would actually work in 2021 would be the Mages losing the war so hard the setting is downright post-apocalyptic.

I use the new world of darkness core rulebook for all sorts of games, but ignore the lore and create my own. The last campaign we did was one set in the wild west using a lot of the call of cthulu dark trails for inspiration, and it worked out great. I think the d10 dice pool system is incredibly intuitive and able to be modified with ease, and is my go to for most things non fantasy. I just wish white wolf would have focused on applying the system to different settings and genres rather than a shit load of splat books detailing the monsters political meta plot that I dont care about.

The nWoD/CoD system also works for fantasy settings, if you want a setting that's more dangerous than your average D&D "the action economy is the true enemy" world. I've played a couple of one-shots someone in my WoD group hosted to test his tweaks to the system. The magic system needs to work more like Thaumaturgy/Disciplines than Spheres, but that aside it worked great.

Just don't go for very combat-heavy chronicles. Between the system being shallow and characters being relatively squishy, it's best to restrict combat scenes to important narrative moments and treat things like a well-equipped party clearing a house full of zombies and other trivial enemies as a skill check or a puzzle as opposed to a combat encounter (failure incurs one damage). I think he also tweaked the armor rules slightly since CoD mistakengly assumes it's incredibly hard to move in armor (news flash: it isn't), but I don't remember the details.

 

[Mola Ram]

Mage the Ascencion should be the ultimate expression of counter-culture and exoticism. It's the one splat that completely breaks down when it's sanitized to fit Current Year standards. Even the "stuffy" Traditions like the Hermetics and the Chorus are defined by strict dedication to the method (Hermetics) and unshakeable faith and loyalty (Chorus), two things Current Year culture hates. The Virtual Adepts would collapse in paroxysms of rage if they saw how tightly-controlled the Internet is now, how anyone making a baseless accusation can completely shut someone else down. Fuck, even the Cult of Ecstasy would find the escapism of Current Year vapid and meaningless. No one is trying to expand their boundaries and experience oneness with the world, they're just drugging themselves up to their eyeballs in order to dull their senses to the world around them.

I think I finally understand why Brucato pushed the Disparate Alliance so hard in Mage 20. He can't stand the Traditions anymore because any depiction of them that fit established lore would cast them as shitlord retrogressives. So, poof! He just pulled a new main faction out of his ass.

 

[Morethanabitfoolish]

To quote myself earlier in the thread,
You can't fight the Paradigm if you are an agent of that same Paradigm.

Mage the Ascencion should be the ultimate expression of counter-culture and exoticism. It's the one splat that completely breaks down when it's sanitized to fit Current Year standards. Even the "stuffy" Traditions like the Hermetics and the Chorus are defined by strict dedication to the method (Hermetics) and unshakeable faith and loyalty (Chorus), two things Current Year culture hates. The Virtual Adepts would collapse in paroxysms of rage if they saw how tightly-controlled the Internet is now, how anyone making a baseless accusation can completely shut someone else down. Fuck, even the Cult of Ecstasy would find the escapism of Current Year vapid and meaningless. No one is trying to expand their boundaries and experience oneness with the world, they're just drugging themselves up to their eyeballs in order to dull their senses to the world around them.

Really, the only interpretation of Mage the Ascension that would actually work in 2021 would be the Mages losing the war so hard the setting is downright post-apocalyptic.

And this is why Mage feels so outdated: by the standards of the World of Darkness's writers today, the people championing the sexual mutilation of children are the good guys.

Pretty much. The amount of behaviour this thread (and the Farms as a whole) document that the Technocracy would be split between approval and horror that humanity has started to do this to themselves is almost comical how well it would fit into a game.

What were the Threat Null version of the Syndicate, is this the sort of nonsense they did?

 

[Bass]

And as much as nu-Wolf has tried to sell this meme about 'Le Pyramid' and 'misogyny is hard-coded into the Tremere', other than Thaumaturgy, what unites the Tremere is that there isn't much they won't do short of spreading their ass-cheeks for demons to gain power and keep it

Thing is, isn't Meerlinda reagent of everything that actually matters in the Tremere? Or did they get rid of her somehow?

 

[Pentex]

Thing is, isn't Meerlinda reagent of everything that actually matters in the Tremere? Or did they get rid of her somehow?

Meerlinda was included in the Second Inquisition 'LOL Drone Strike' in Vienna because it's not as though the members of the Council of Seven could or would use astral projection to meet. nu-Wolf needed the extremely paranoid, calculating Tremere to suffer a sudden and fatal outbreak of retardation at the exact moment that the Five Eyes got competent enough to exterminate vampires without warning or recourse.

 

[Snekposter]

I use the new world of darkness core rulebook for all sorts of games, but ignore the lore and create my own. The last campaign we did was one set in the wild west using a lot of the call of cthulu dark trails for inspiration, and it worked out great. I think the d10 dice pool system is incredibly intuitive and able to be modified with ease, and is my go to for most things non fantasy. I just wish white wolf would have focused on applying the system to different settings and genres rather than a shit load of splat books detailing the monsters political meta plot that I dont care about.

Can confirm. The GM I mentioned in the more general thread with my murder-doctor character also runs a more typical fantasy game and that runs pretty well on the D10 dice pool system. We use 6+ as the standard measure of success so someone who's got basic proficiency in a thing will probably pull it off. Will it be quick or good enough? Maybe, maybe not. A poor thief can pick a lock, but a good thief can take all those successes and make a noisy lock that would take 10 minutes of effort open up in 1 with nary a peep.

 

[Adamska]

Did a stream recently on the Night Horrors book the Wicked Dead from a basically blind angle on my end. Pretty fun book given some of the alternate bloodsucker ideas they had for them.

The two parasite ideas are particularly gruesome too. Also you can unironically use Dhampir from that book as a guided missile in both Old and New World pretty easily. Their take on Draugr as potentially functional is pretty sweet too; basically they can go all rabid or go quietly mad and disguise themselves as a low Humanity vampire.

Legit fun book to go through.

 

[Emperor Julian]

I think I finally understand why Brucato pushed the Disparate Alliance so hard in Mage 20. He can't stand the Traditions anymore because any depiction of them that fit established lore would cast them as shitlord retrogressives. So, poof! He just pulled a new main faction out of his ass.

He really fucked it up then because the Disparate Alliance is full of religious conservitives, elitest cliques and ethno puritans. The traditions and union are closer to modern cosmepolitan woo than Tafitani could ever manage. Nice one goatfucker.

 

[Mola Ram]

He really fucked it up then because the Disparate Alliance is full of religious conservitives, elitest cliques and ethno puritans. The traditions and union are closer to modern cosmepolitan woo than Tafitani could ever manage. Nice one goatfucker.

I'm kind of disappointed that the Disparates book was apparently nixed by Onyx Path; the mental contortions ol' Phil would have had to go through to justify the Sisters of Hippolyta allowing trans members would have been hilarious.

Also, considering how awful the Mage 20 releases have been to date, can you imagine the disaster the Disparates proposal must have been for them to say no? (Another shame -- I think Brucato could have managed a very good Mage 20 if he had been told no more often.)

 

[Morethanabitfoolish]

Also, considering how awful the Mage 20 releases have been to date, can you imagine the disaster the Disparates proposal must have been for them to say no? (Another shame -- I think Brucato could have managed a very good Mage 20 if he had been told no more often.)

For me Mage 20 was Deadpool 2. It wasn't bad but it clearly was riding high on the "look how much funding we got!" and as a result the steadying hand that was appropriate oversight was able to be ignored. It's not awful but that same hand could have made it so much better and the resulting product actually shows why the hand is needed.

 

[XYZpdq]

I use the new world of darkness core rulebook for all sorts of games, but ignore the lore and create my own. The last campaign we did was one set in the wild west using a lot of the call of cthulu dark trails for inspiration, and it worked out great. I think the d10 dice pool system is incredibly intuitive and able to be modified with ease, and is my go to for most things non fantasy. I just wish white wolf would have focused on applying the system to different settings and genres rather than a shit load of splat books detailing the monsters political meta plot that I dont care about.

dunno so much the post 2000 stuff but I recall Storyteller System being a pretty good catch-all, but there's some issues you run into when your dice pools get stupid huge (other than the physical logistics of rolling 14d10) but realistically that shouldn't be a thing player characters have to worry about and would only be a decent way to handicap boss battles in their favor

 

[Emperor Julian]

I'm kind of disappointed that the Disparates book was apparently nixed by Onyx Path; the mental contortions ol' Phil would have had to go through to justify the Sisters of Hippolyta allowing trans members would have been hilarious.

Not to mention at least three crafts explicitly want an ethno state.
The weird part is mage makes trans idenity is largely redundant. You need life 3 and you're bassically sorted, transgender people can't really exist in mage since you can just become biologically your prefered gender and if you're good at time and entropy you can re-con the universe so know one even knows.

 

[Mola Ram]

Not to mention at least three crafts explicitly want an ethno state.
The weird part is mage makes trans idenity is largely redundant. You need life 3 and you're bassically sorted, transgender people can't really exist in mage since you can just become biologically your prefered gender and if you're good at time and entropy you can re-con the universe so know one even knows.

Kinda raises the question of why the Technocratic version of that rote that's been approved for the Sleepers is such a horrifying abomination.

 

[Corn Flakes]

Kinda raises the question of why the Technocratic version of that rote that's been approved for the Sleepers is such a horrifying abomination.

That's the point. SRS as we know it wouldn't be a Technocratic procedure. It isn't Enlightened Science, and not everything mortals do is approved and engineered by the Union. In places they have lost control of the Paradigm. The Progenitors in particular would be appalled at how the Paradigm in that field being pushed. The New World Order would be in a panic about how effective seemingly random memes are at shaping public opinion, even without their interference.

This could be an interesting idea for a Technocracy chronicle, actually. An Amalgam of low-level Agents trying to uncover whether therese anomalies in the Paradigm somehow arose naturally, or if they're the outcome of a scheme by the Traditions/Nephandi/Marauders/someone other entity attempting to weaken Technocratic control over society by all means necessary.

 

[Emperor Julian]

Yeah their was always an IC fallacy that some of the factions (pentex, the carmarilla, The deathlords) are running the show. They where closer to superpowers than anything-each one an empire with borders, the union isnt in charge of the medical world anymore than the Lasombra run spain. The Union eventually admit as such in revised, they probably don't really have any issues with trans people but it's unlikely they're that interested outside of a larger framework of general social trends.
It's also important to comment that irl trans or lgbt doesnt really reflect net culture so the factions approach would be completly out of our or rpgnet's frame of referance.

 

[Mola Ram]

Yeah their was always an IC fallacy that some of the factions (pentex, the carmarilla, The deathlords) are running the show. They where closer to superpowers than anything-each one an empire with borders, the union isnt in charge of the medical world anymore than the Lasombra run spain. The Union eventually admit as such in revised, they probably don't really have any issues with trans people but it's unlikely they're that interested outside of a larger framework of general social trends.
It's also important to comment that irl trans or lgbt doesnt really reflect net culture so the factions approach would be completly out of our or rpgnet's frame of referance.

True, but it was always kind of fun to try to match up the real world with various factions to see who was responsible for what. Really, I think one of the major blows to the World of Darkness was 9/11, because there were numerous factions that might have tried such a thing, and who wanted to deal with how uncomfortable that would be, especially when the wound was fresh?

If you really want to shake things up to have Mage reflect Current Year, have the Void Engineers ditch the Union (Elon Musk in Space, anyone?) ... at the same time the Virtual Adepts rejoin their old buddies. The VAs in an alliance with the New World Order would explain an awful lot about the state of the internet since the rise of social media.

 

[Pentex]

In case anyone was wondering what the Swedecucks are doing to shit all over WOD while not coming out with Bloodlines 2:

When your product is shit, sell it cheap or with a gimmick. And rainbow-washing is the cheapest, most overused gimmick on Earth right now.

 

[Mola Ram]

In case anyone was wondering what the Swedecucks are doing to shit all over WOD while not coming out with Bloodlines 2:
Wyświetl załącznik 2070579
When your product is shit, sell it cheap or with a gimmick. And rainbow-washing is the cheapest, most overused gimmick on Earth right now.

Vampires use sexuality opportunistically. They are not sexy creatures of the night. They are predators, feeding on the living to extend their selfish, unnatural hungers.

So, perfect LGBTQ+ rep?

 

[Pentex]

Vampires use sexuality opportunistically. They are not sexy creatures of the night. They are predators, feeding on the living to extend their selfish, unnatural hungers.

So, perfect LGBTQ+ rep?

I was racking my brain for this particular character from Montreal by Night:

Sebastian Goulet, 7th generation City Gangrel Antitribu
Member of an all-gay Sabbat pack, the Mattachine
Uses Dominate 5 and Presence 4 to 'seduce' straight men