/cofd/&/wodg/ Chronicles of Darkness and World of Darkness General

May 4th. As in May the 4th be with you.

That's because Bloodborne's primary aesthetic is Victorian horror.

But the lamps and the weird growth thing. Like for realsies

May The Fourth be with you.

Innistrad and Bloodborne are both Gothic Horror. The most recent Innistrad block is bringing in Lovecraftian Horror, with mechanics like Madness and Delirium, angels going insane, and cultists and zombies being driven to create strange twisted rock formations that seem to be summoning something.

Possibly this giant reality devouring otherworldly horror from the Blind Eternities, the chaotic and maddening realm outside of reality. Note it's fingerly tendrils and the things on the Bearer of Overwhelming Truth's neck and shoulder.

Either that or Wizards is introducing Lovecraftian Horror but NOT their terrifying madness inspiring Lovecraftian Elder Gods.

I don't know when the artwork was commissioned; it's possible that's an intentional inspiration, but it's probably just that they're drawing on the same sources of both Gothic Horror and Lovecraft.
I have a cardboard prop of one of those lanterns that I took from a friend who went to the prerelease.

what kind of enemies would Victorian and lovecraftian horror be?
A lot of weird changlings and shapeshifters I guess

He's never played MtG either.

But he watches Lets Plays.

So does this mean Beast backers already have MtA2e?

Magic The Gathering has lets plays?

Yeah

It's a bit of a letdown desu

youtube.com/watch?v=6sJCQ_BUksM
A Fetch finally encounters their Changeling?

Victorian/gothic horror is basically all the old standbys - werewolves, vampires, mad scientists. Look at 1920s Universal Horror pictures.
Lovecraftian horror enemies are usually things beyond mortal ken - not necessarily Cthulhu, but creatures that are just entirely outside human experience like living colors from space, or giant ectoplasmic infants growing under the basement of a house and making everyone in that house sick, or a family so isolated and inbred they've mutated over many generations into cannibal monkey-mole people. Mad cults devoted to alien gods are also popular.

Innistrad is filled with vampires, werewolves, geists (spirits of the dead), Demon cultists, elemental horrors, and Angels, lead by one created by the Vampire Planeswalker to keep vampires (and other monsters) from killing all the humans in their hedonistic bloodlust and running out of food.

Currently, the vampire planeswalker's ex is pissed off and wrecking shit because he threw her in a magical silver prison filled with demons for a couple thousand years, and when she finally got out she learned that her D&D on steroids home plane was getting wrecked by Lovecraftian horrors that they locked away back before their breakup. She's also possibly being driven mad by someTHING. And she's driving others mad as well.

The head angel is also bugfuck insane, and the angels are purging humanity through inquisitions. And, uh. Daddy had to kill his little girl. We're not to that part in the weekly stories, but it's on one of the cards. Current theory is that the last of the three Lovecraftian Horrors (big H) is causing the Lovecraftian horror (little h) on the plane.

If you want to see what kind of things go on in the setting, though, here's the card gallery
magiccards.info/query?q=++e:soi/en&v=scan&s=issue

Basically, I'm thinking of running a Mage game in a setting similar to this and Bloodborne, with that whole mix of Gothic and Cosmic Horror.

It does, actually. It was actually on ESPN way back in the late 90s, but didn't catch on. Now that World Series Poker and all that introduced cams that show the hands and they've got stuff to show the audience the cards, it's caught on on Youtube.
youtu.be/Ibn5E82t77o?list=PL7atuZxmT954tuse5BmPzrVwPDogUKaxi
I don't actually watch it, though.

Sorta. Some people stream themselves playing Magic Online.

why is poker way more cooler then MTG?
MtG is only slightly Tolerable because of Josh Barnett

They also show the Pro-Tours online. My friend Top 8s a lot of local events and his Chrome start up page is nothing but porn and Magic matches.

Man, I didn't mean to derail the thread, though...

I just wanted to get people's opinion on whether this kind of thing would fit with Mage, and get ideas on how to do it. I don't know whether Proximi or Mage would be more appropriate for the players to play as. Proximi don't really get the full Mage experience, like Creative Thaumaturgy, but I'm also less likely to get something from out of left field that completely wrecks any plans I had.

Even more than most games, I question my ability to run Mage (or Demon) because of the sheer power of the powers...

Hey, Dave, if you're still around, any suggestions on that front? How do I run Mage without getting tripped up when a character decides to do something like teleport to a different city, or create a nuke?

Poker isn't for nerds.
Well, it is, but most people don't realize that.

it's more werewolf/hunter but you can do mage

mages aren't the "roll in and kick ass" type, they're investigators

>mages aren't the "roll in and kick ass" type
Well you say that

I'm talking about investigation stuff.

The original idea was going to be a Halloween one shot where the players were monster hunters on their way to some OTHER thing and the town they were staying at for the night had a vicious murder.

man I really need to read more Lovecraft the guy was a fucking genius. He really had a way of words that made everything unsettling and even when there wasnt a huge payoff to his stories it always made you a bit uneasy.

For me Lovecraft is like Alice in Wonderland.

I think the original is shit, but I love what other people have done with the idea.

>Hating original lovecraft
>Hating original Alice

lots of plebs on /wodg/

they grew up on anime and sjw

Lovecraft was a rambling racist who's stories go nowhere and involve arbitrary madness. They were churned out in the same cheap rags that published detective stories, westerns, and the proto-superhero stories for rent money.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was written by a pedophile trying to woo his friend's daughter and who hated new math because he couldn't understand it.

Just because you read something in English Lit doesn't mean it's actually good.

And just because modern plebsites say they're bad doesn't mean it's true.

Lovecraft's stories had a very distinct lead up to a climax. They don't involve "arbitrary madness."

>Lovecraft was a rambling racist
>Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was written by a pedophile trying to woo his friend's daughter
Relevant literally how

>They were churned out in the same cheap rags that published detective stories, westerns, and the proto-superhero stories
So what? Stephen King churns out books sometimes once a night and he has written some of the best horror fiction of all time. (I also happen to dig pulp stories)

Also bringing up racism when talking about Lovecraft is kind of silly too. The guy was born over 100 years ago. Yeah no shit his world view is not the same as people today.

>Lovecraft was a rambling racist
lol, look at this hand-wringing faggot. shouldn't you be over on the rpg.net forum effort posting about snowflake genders?

I've read (well, attempted to read) both. I was unimpressed.

Lovecraft was actually exceptionally racist even for the time period. It made his friends a bit uncomfortable. Also his Jewish wife. It also clearly creeps into his writing quite a bit.

I'm sure it will come as no surprise that I also don't care for Stephen King. The only books of his that I cared to finish were Eyes of the Dragon and book one of The Dark Tower.

You're focusing on the racist complaint, and considering how fervent he was about it and how much it coloured his writing, it's a valid one. But you seem to miss the rambling part.
Lovecraft spends half a page describing how indescribable something is.

>don't care for Stephen King.
Ok you just have shit taste in literature. I will stop responding now.

People can like different things, user. The world won't end if someone doesn't like Popular Thing.

Free Council pls

Talk about cucking

I love how everyone says "oh he was racist", completely ignoring that his marriage actually made him apologetic for his racism later in life.
It makes you all look like a bunch of judgemental pricks who can't get over a flaw, which is a shitty attitude when everyone is flawed.

Like judgemental pricks.

Because everyone knows a bad thing never goes away.

Stephen King is uneven as FUCK.
Almost all pro writers have a system to write by. King doesn't. He just goes and lets things happen.
That's how a book can have all the plot in the final third.
But thanks to lots of training and innate talent, it's also how we've gotten stories like The Shining.

...

The only way this picture could even be more cuck is if the girl was kissing a black guy.

>But thanks to lots of training and innate talent, it's also how we've gotten stories like The Shining.
And Cigarettes.

>The narrators in "The Street," "Herbert West: Reanimator," "He," "The Call of Cthulhu," "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," "The Horror at Red Hook," and many other tales express sentiments which could be considered hostile towards Jews. Lovecraft married a woman of Ukrainian Jewish ancestry, Sonia Greene, who later said she had to repeatedly remind Lovecraft of her background when he made anti-Semitic remarks. "Whenever we found ourselves in the racially mixed crowds which characterize New York," Greene wrote after her divorce from Lovecraft, "Howard would become livid with rage. He seemed almost to lose his mind."[11]
>Lovecraft's racism has been a continued focus of scholarly and interpretive interest. S.T. Joshi, one of the foremost Lovecraft scholars, notes that "There is no denying the reality of Lovecraft's racism, nor can it merely be passed off as "typical of his time," for it appears that Lovecraft expressed his views more pronouncedly (although usually not for publication) than many others of his era. It is also foolish to deny that racism enters into his fiction."[3] In his book "H.P. Lovecraft: Against The World, Against Life," Michel Houellebecq argues that "racial hatred" provided the emotional force and inspiration for much of Lovecraft's greatest works.
>Some have interpreted Lovecraft's racial attitude as being more cultural than brutally biological: Lovecraft showed sympathy to others who were pacifically assimilated into Western culture, to the extent of even marrying a Jewish woman whom he viewed as "well assimilated".
I have never seen evidence that he changed his views, and all of his books where written at a time when he was severely racist.

Is the age old "anyone who says Lovecraft was shit needs to be browbeaten" argument what we're going to do today?

Lovecraft was super racist, but his stuff's still good. Doesn't really matter.

pretty much. MJ probably still molested those kids but fuck you if you dont groove to Billy Jean anymore.

So in light of the approaching Mage release, how do you make someone gay? Mind or Life? How many dots? How do you make it permanent?

It depends if its a mental thing or a genetic thing. probably both. Secondly why the hell would you want to?

Name a fantasy / horror author from that time period who wasn't. It's not like Robert E. Howard was some proto-socjus.

His stories are actually good, people say he's boring but then suck off the ponderous shit of hacks like Moorcock or Lieber.

Yeah, but Lovecraft was notably batshit insanely racist even for his time. Contemporaries commented on it and everything.

>mention social justice issue
>writer appears

Disgraceful

I think John Milius and Paul Voorhovan are kind of crazy but I still watch the fuck out of Red Dawn and Robocop

>Contemporaries commented on it and everything.

[citation needed]

Milius is more just a sad case now post-stroke. Which is a shame, because he was a big part of why HBO's ROME was such a success.

Lovecraft wrote more about miscegenation than Jackson sang about Macauley Culkin's asshole. Still good.

Hey, Dave. A question if I may: Have Mage demographics changed in 2e, compared to how you envisioned it in 1e?

Beast backers aren't getting the PDF before anyone else by a significant margin, they're just getting it as part of their KS reward. The only reason it might be before Mage purchasers is because they're just getting a link to a comp PDF the moment Mage 2e goes live, meaning they skip the whole "browse and purchase" part.

>Big Mage announcement
>Aspel starts a Lovecraft argument and a bunch of people take the bait

Yeah, this is pretty much what I expected.

>Yeah, this is pretty much what I expected.
Oh come on. That announcement wasn't going to make more than the occasional "yay". Otherwise the only thing it does is remove every reason people have to say "mage is never coming out".

Mind to make someone horny, Life to cause an erection.

Going off that, both would probably work, but Life would create a republican gay.(One who still marries and has sex with a woman, never tells anybody that he kinda wants to suck a dick, etc)

It doesn't really depend. Magic is symbolic, not scientific.

See

>why
Mages have no sense of right and wrong. Converting straight guys is a major fetish/trope.

Sounds like Mind is more valuable, then. Dave's already confirmed that Life is the Mage mpreg button, so both would be ideal.

Am I the only one that finds human horror more intense then supernatural horror? I mean Vampires are sociopathic living corpses, werewolves are fleshy engines of destruction and Changelings can be warped mockery of innocant stories at best and beings of pure "It should not be" at worst.
But Human foes are terrifying for whatever reason. It makes my skin crawl way more then anything else. Demons are a close second simply because Bio-Organic robots.
Oh and Spooky/rundown houses/buildings

I can honestly take or leave Lovecraft. But I will fire the next writer to misuse "Non-Euclidean" because they read it in one of his stories and think it means "spooky".

Into the sun.

>Converting straight guys is a major fetish
>Permitting the Magical Realm in your game

>Not looking a word up before using it in something you expect to be published
Terrible

>Not letting people have fun
I wouldn't consider it Magical Realm unless they were obviously jerking off or storing it in the spank bank. Doing silly/weird shit like that is fine, as long as you don't act weird about it and it doesn't happen too frequently.

>But I will fire the next writer

Ooh Dave, I love it when you get your boss on

those trips are straight up autocthonous

Well you did specifically say you wanted to do it because its a fetish

>One of my favorite bands, who have a lot of songs I associate with Mage, released a new song last night
>The day before Mage 2e is confirmed for releasing within the week
>The song is actually Mage-appropriate

youtube.com/watch?v=WiYoajAqoeQ
>An Obrimos Awakens

Wasn't me, to be fair
I only just joined in on the conversation to make that() post

Ok, but what about "gossamer"? That means "spooky", right?

WoD music time?

youtube.com/watch?v=3jV6TnBC2nk

youtube.com/watch?v=_7otchKcH-0

This band can get pretty Magey.

Already posted it in the thread, but I think Bastards Gonna Hit Me by They Might Be Giants works quite well...for something...maybe its a Changeling finally finding his Fetch, but told from the perspective of the Fetch in question, I'm not 100% percent sure.
youtube.com/watch?v=6sJCQ_BUksM

WoD music? Gotta post this, it's the law: youtu.be/fYeURUzAY88

>Slipknot
If we are going for metal this is definitely a changeling song.
youtube.com/watch?v=qg7hnvQrHMw
Are there any True Fae metalheads?

youtube.com/watch?v=dLrdSC9MVb4
>A 1e Darkling Durance
Alternatively
>A very strange Thyrsus Awakening

youtube.com/watch?v=6366dxFf-Os
>A Mastigos Awakening with some hints of Forces shit going on

They get it pretty soon, I believe. They get sent a backer link as soon as it's ready. The rest of us have to wait.

I don't imagine it'll cut into their sales, but I am not sure how delaying the sale date acts as a beneficial business practice.

Mind you, I'm pissy because it goes on sale the day my work picks up again, so I'm biased towards grumping.

They get a download link when it goes up on the store. It goes up on the store on Wednesday, the same day it goes up on the blog.

You'll be waiting, at most, a couple of hours longer than the Beast backers, and that's if you aren't already F5ing the Onyx Path DriveThruRPG page on Wednesday waiting for Mage 2e to pop up

youtube.com/watch?v=n3QVYGUf7J0
This works really well for the Ministry of Panopticon.

youtube.com/watch?v=-pRROs8oerU
Seers or Slashers, take your pick.

youtube.com/watch?v=ZOyKXFgnD2k
I don't really know, Demon?

"As soon as it's ready" will almost certainly be "Wednesday around noon", when it opens to the rest of the public. You have to remember, Rich also uses the Monday Meeting Comments to troll.

>Slashers
>Not this
youtube.com/watch?v=dJ6fjGS1lRg

That wasn't how it's worked for Kickstarter stuff in the past.

Kickstarter stuff in the past has never been "You get a download link for this book when it comes out on the store for everyone", which is explicitly what Mage 2e is according to Rich on the MMN a week or two ago.

That's because they were Kickstarter rewards for the project being funded. Mage 2e is an optional add-on that not every Beast backer selected. It won't get the same kind of priority.

>If you were a Brujah of the 70s you will remember this:)
youtube.com/watch?v=muJCXvvdlBU

"You’ll get a link before it goes on sale as an Advance PDF."

Rich to a Beast backer two weeks ago.

Always felt that this song was pretty Vampire: youtu.be/z7RknLL4WkU

>The only reason it might be before Mage purchasers is because they're just getting a link to a comp PDF the moment Mage 2e goes live, meaning they skip the whole "browse and purchase" part.
kickstarter backers get their things the moment its available, kickstarter shit isn't wednesday onlies

>reading questionable content
For shame, Dave, for shame.

And the PDF doesn't go up until Wednesday, because it's not a Kickstarter project and will go on sale for everyone. It will at most be an hour or two before it goes on sale, perhaps to ease DTRPG's servers.

Rich is being intentionally vague, because he likes to troll in the comments.

youtube.com/watch?v=rY0WxgSXdEE
>TFV as they raid a Vampire Safe House

Which is true, for actual KS projects. This is an optional add-on to a KS project.

And your reason for believing this is...?

youtube.com/watch?v=SFSen7DRQWU
Could I just be a Kung Fu mage?

It doesn't really matter, I guess, since no one here backed Beast.

Tony Stark's parents were killed by the Winter Soldier and Captain America dies.

Except Amy.

>Tony Stark's parents were killed by the Winter Soldier and Captain America dies.

No shit

youtube.com/watch?v=LWx6csgGkg4
This is pretty Mage Tier
Not sure what kind exactly. Whats magic like in Nashville?