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

Right right. Scenarios or start ups is what I mean. Been thinking of even mining creepy pasta for ideas. Just never used the system dont wanna go too off the rails and not know what the hell is going on.

Reposting this for the person who keeps asking about Thyrsus Wolfblooded:

Each of the Hounds of God is born with a wolf pelt, and throughout their lives they care for it and keep it around them. They don't need to always have it, but not having it tends to cause them discomfort, and can trigger insanity. Wearing the wolf pelt grants them the powers of the werewolves of legend, and allows them to transform into a great wolf. By wearing the pelt and willing it, they can take the Urshul form. This functions as the Second Skin Tell.

Persistent: In addition to the drawbacks of the Second Skin Tell, the Hound of God must have the wolf pelt within Humanity yards of themselves at all times, or they find themselves unable to focus and keep it together, imposing a -2 penalty to all mental or social rolls, including Breaking Point rolls. Many keep it stashed away in their house, or carry it in a bag of some sort, but some take the drastic measure of cutting their Second Skin to size and wearing it like a thick belt around their torso. If one of the Theissians is without their second skin for too long, it tends to cause drastic issues.
Beat: Carrying around a wolf's skin is unusual at best. Transforming into a wolf more so. When the truth causes other characters to react with fear or suspicion (including causing Lunacy to an ally), take a beat.

Severe: Whenever the Theissian is without their pelt for too long and suffers emotional trauma, she reacts the way that any of the moon-marked would. Failing a Paradox roll or Breaking Point causes the Hound of God to immediately enter Wasu-Im and take on the Dalu form. The Wasu-Im lasts for five minutes per dot of Blessing the character has.

Other than the pelt, Hounds of God tend to be grizzled and somewhat animalistic, even if they're otherwise friendly and polite. Both men and women tend to have at least sideburns, and are rarely if ever without body hair that feels soft and fur-like, instead of the coarseness of usual human body hair. They count as Wolfblooded and are able to talk all Wolfblooded Merits, as well as Sleepwalker and Supernatural Merits.

Parent Path: Thyrsus
Blessings (Life, Prime, Spirit): Life — Speak with Beasts (•), Web of Life (•), Body Control (••), Transform Life (•••), Knit (•••), Prime — Pierce Deceptions (•), Sacred Geometry (•)*, Word of Command (•)*, Words of Truth (••), Ephemeral Enchantment (•••), Spirit — Exorcist's Eye (•), Invoke Bane (•), Know Spirit (•), Cap the Well (••), Channel Essence (••), Ephemeral Shield (••), Place of Power (•••)

* I'm considering these to be the "Add Spirit •" versions. If you want to be less lenient, add one dot to each and remove Words of Truth

Haunted house is always a good start.

That is the Free RPG day one right? might have to read over it thank ya sir/ma'am

Oh, I just meant "run some kind of haunted house game". I didn't even know there was a Free RPG Day promo for Chronicles.

The guy who suggested Prime here, I've created my own up with the Curse he suggested. I need to write up the flavor before I post it, but I need to get some sleep. I really like yours and the one I created goes in a different direction. It's about gathering information and protective magic, although it does break away from that a bit with it's Spirit magic.

Oh shit well i guess it would be a good template. How did your first game go? Same question to any other kindly anons

What's the Curse he suggested? I don't think I saw one.

I ran a Geist game where the characters were all high school students who went to the same school and all died within six months of each other, but you really shouldn't think too hard about that, and the reconstruction on the school was causing the ghost of a murdered nerd from the 70s to show up. It was a little bit of a murder mystery as they tried to put the ghost to rest by finding his killer. They interrogated a few people and then their teacher committed suicide in guilt.

That said, I did make a bunch of sample characters for a game on F-list that I never ran that was meant to teach people how to play. They were going to be members of some after school club or whatever exploring a haunted house that they'd then get trapped in. It was going to be a bit of a high school version of the Call of Cthulhu quickstart.

...

...

Tried to cover a lot of character types while not completely shoehorning people to take certain roles.

The idea was to have a ton of sample characters, but only run for like three or four players.

Ultimately I was too lazy to plan out what to do. Planning is my bane.

This is the last one.

Just never got around to using all this then? Seems like a lot of effort ya put in. Like the school club ghost adventures idea though nice set up.

Ahh the planning see thats my favorite part as a player of GM/story teller.

Suffer the effects of Wasu-Im if the character fails a Paradox roll or hasn't gone on a Sacred Hunt recently. Here's how I wrote it up:

Curse
Persistent: Must take part in a Sacred Hunt at least once a lunar cycle.

Severe: Whenever _____ suffers a Paradox, they fall into Wasu-Im for 15 minutes, but they don't transform unless they have a Tell that activates do to entering Wasu-Im, such as Anger Issues.

If a ____'s Curse is triggered by failing to participate in a Sacred Hunt within the last lunar cycle, they fall into Wasu-Im from sunset to sunrise until they do.

I can't really tell how balanced the Tell is. The idea is that it permanently binds them to Werewolves because Mages can't do anything about their Curse other than lock them up every night. I think it adds an interesting story dynamic and makes for interesting crossover fodder.

I might as well throw in their magic too:

Blessings (Life, Prime, Spirit): Life - Analyze Life (o), Web of Life (o), Heightened Senses (Life oo) Lure and Repel (oo), Prime - Pierce Deception (o), Supernal Vision (o), Supernal Veil (oo), Wards and Signs (oo), Spirit - Exorcist's Eye (o), Know Spirit (o), Channel Essence (oo), Ephemeral Shield (oo), Gossamar Touch (oo), Opener of the Way (oo), Shadow Walk (oo), Bolster Spirit (ooo), Reaching (ooo),

The cliffnotes version of their backstory is they think they once had a different Curse and a slightly different list of Blessings, but they and their masters pissed of a great wolf spirit by fucking up the Shadow. The Nameless Order they were bound too was destroyed and they were cursed/blessed to run with Werewolves for all eternity. I haven't decided if they've always been Wolf-Blooded or not though, and they probably don't know either. For the most part the family thinks it was Father Wolf that cursed them, but evidence seems to point towards the event being post-Sundering. I haven't bothered to name them yet, but it's going to be in First Tongue.

My first CofD game:
3 kids.
Parents poor as hell.
While they work 24\7 we play outside
One day we find colorful markers and imagine they are magical
Start to draw beautiful land of fairy tales on the old church wall.
Got beaten by bullies.
Find out that our drawing were erased by them.
Renew it and add 3 magical fairies to protect picture from bullies.
One day bullies disappear.
Day after fairies from the picture start talking.
They invite us to their magical kingdom of adventure.
1 of 3 kid agrees to follow them.
Plants on the wall become alive and thorny, grab that kid and drag him into the painting.
Other 2 run away and tell police man about fey and stuff.
Nobody believe them.
Game ends.

On F-list I have like 20 WoD characters, most of which have fully written up sheets, and before I stopped using it, my Dalines account had five pages of sheets.

I'm good with the broad strokes. The individual stuff is hard for me, and creating a game that would only be one session is super hard. Most of my sessions accomplish nothing. Plus, I haven't actually run a game in aaaages.

My first session was the prelude for a Geist game, where the characters died, came back, and dealt with their first encounter with a ghost.

It was a pretty mediocre scenario and we only played that one session before shelving the game. Everyone was just kinda uninspired to keep going. Then, almost sixth months later, we decided to revive the game on a whim, and it ended up being the best campaign any of us had ever played.

So, in summary: it's a total crapshoot. The most you can do is try to have fun with it.

I do think, though, that Chronicles of Darkness is best for games that are longer than a single session, so you have space to dig into some real characterization, interpersonal relationships with NPCs, and stuff like that. Although it might look like a game about monsters, it's really a game about human issues, and those kinds of stories always work best when they have time to build on themselves.

>TFW Innocents is the best Changeling prologue game

That sounds like a prelude to changeling what happened where it ended so quick? Or was that just to get your feet wet?

Awesome advise. So just try and wring in the players the best I can and let them run off to find a theme that interests them basically?

How did you handle them all dying in the same place and time but not having the same Threshold?

Do you still play in them then? I have always played D20 based games and have made a goal of trying out all these damn other systems ive bought and not done shit with.

We have hunter\changeling crossover game after 20 years.
2 kids that left become hunters out of all that stress, they were working for some user benefactor who supply them with money and tools in exchange for supernatural blood, bones etc.
Changeling guy crawl out of arcadia being teenager and meet his childhood friends when they storm freegold for that pricey changeling blood.

Yes! Definitely.

So the session actually started with three quick scenes, one for each of them, playing out the lead-up to / aftermath of their character's death. Circumstances drew them all together after that.

I may not be very good at planning out plots, but I'd like to think I'm fairly decent at coming up with interesting characters and roleplaying them in entertaining ways—hence my advice above, that the game works well when its carried by the strength of the players engagement with the supporting cast. So I think I managed to keep each of the opening scenes interesting enough for those watching, even though only one of the three players were physically involved at any time.

My ghost story was pretty shitty, though.

That has to be the most fluid crossover I have ever heard!

Whats the ghost story?

Are there any Prime based legacies with Death secondary that aren't evil as shit?

I haven't really played in a game in years either. None of the people who I'd want to play with run things I'd want to play.

Ah, I did a similar thing. Gave everyone a death scene. It was really fun. Great to write out the way they experienced Twilight getting stained with their death mark.

Hmm. Moros legacies going Prime first, Death secondary?
Eh. Not as far as I know. What would they do?

So here's my current issue. Whenever I try to write anything, I've found my ideas are waaaaay better when I can hash them out with a good buddy of mine, who's also very invested in WoD. Neither of us have the attention span or creativity to come up with anything interesting on our own, it's not like we can both ST, and what's the fun of playing a character if you know everything already? What do we do?

No, there's only like three prime legacies anyways

Cut out the sugar and caffeine and have one of you ST.

Or find another friend who can ST.

What does writing anything have to do with it?

Go on a board full of faceless goons that share interest on the subject. Whats the plan boss?

Writing up interesting NPCs, and the webs in which they connect, for the players to interact with.
While we have friends who want to play, none of them have the rule knowledge to carry anything.
Hey, that's pretty good advice.

I dunno, it's nice to have someone to flesh out the shitty parts of your story/characters, but that ruins it from a player's perspective.

Mage 2e question:

Do rotes and praxes cost 1 Experience per dot of the spell, or just one flat Experience always?

>While we have friends who want to play, none of them have the rule knowledge to carry anything.
give them your books

So. Ok. Have I gotten Mage Sight right here:
>You are an Obrimos with Prime 2, Forces 2, Matter 1, Mind 1, and a Gnosis of 2.
>A psychic nearby uses Telepathy to read the mind of a hot girl.
>You sense that he is using a power, with Peripheral Mage Sight
>You want to know what he is doing, so you turn on Active Mage Sight, with your two ruling Arcana
>You don't see shit about the Psychic. He looks just like a normal dude.
>You figure he probably doesn't use a Matter power, so you add Mind to the Mage Sight with 1 Mana.
>You can now see THAT he does something, but not WHAT he does.
>You turn on Focused Mage sight to see what he is doing.
>You attempt a Revelation, but you get a chance die, because his Opacity is 7 or 8, and you have a dice pool of 3.
>Next turn the psychic isn't using the power any more, so you can't try Scrutiny.

Is this correct? Mage Sight seems like it has gotten a HUGE nerf, and all the good parts have been given to Changelings instead.

per dot of the spell

One of the characters was a college professor, and the game started during finals week of their fall semester. He was hanging around his office when a girl showed up in just her pajamas babbling about needing to hand in her term paper. Turns out it was the ghost of a nice but deeply depressed honors student with a really shitty abusive boyfriend, and they had to figure out what would make her pass on (and teach a lesson to the son-of-a-bitch who was still living).

They were trying to deal with this, their first baby steps into being involved with the world of the dead, in the middle of being courted by the two rival krewes that ran the city, which made things a little more interesting.

There wasn't much to it, though. It had a few good ideas—again, coming up with characters that are entertaining to interact with seems to be my strong suit—but I just don't think it made for a super compelling narrative. It was pretty simple, and there wasn't a whole lot of emotional investment.

The later sessions of the game, once we revived it, were much more personal: one guy's clueless best friend being haunted by a totally immoral specter, another character's landlord getting his shitty life out of a rut after having the opportunity to communicate with his dead wife, etc. And those stories were actually very good. You can learn so much about a person by how they relate to the things they've lost, and Geist gives you some great ways to reveal really personal information to the players that deeply affect how they see established NPCs.

It definitely felt like the right way to start the game. Throwing a bunch of players right into their death scenes is a sure way to shake them up, at least.

I believe Praxes are a flat one dot , but Rotes are one dot per level of spell.

It's not very clear, but on pp. 80-81, it states Praxes aren't graded by dots, but you have dots to distribute for Rotes.

Bunchacrunch?

Mage Sight is an Instant action, so the power would be over before the Obrimos could see anything, anyhow.

The book is pretty clear that it's one xp per praxis/rote. It's in the last paragraph for both praxis and rote under spell casting in chapter four.

Fuck yes to the bunchacrunch

Nice is geist as much like digimon as I read it to be?

Ha ha, what do you mean by that?

>Digimon
wut

You have a natural affinity for ghostly stuff. Then you die and get a boon companion that cant speak and has magical powers. Maybe more shaman king I guess.

But in both Shaman King and Geist your Geist can talk.

So, is the cost of one dot per level of spell in a rote just used for the six free dots of rotes during character creation?

Well that shores up the idea that Geist is grim dark shaman king!

It's 1 xp, flat.

That's not at all what Geist is. Geist is you die, and then a powerful ghost makes a deal with you; you live, but it becomes a permanent resident of your body, and you gain magical powers as a result. The Geist can speak to you, too.

>Page 112

Shit, I accidentally made a mess of that post.
Page 112 is the source for the snippets in the picture, completely unrelated to the Geist explanation.

Yes

yeah that sounds like shaman king

So do you guys think it would be acceptable to make some sort of "signal spell" attainment for Forces? You encode the spell on a particular bit of energy and it goes off when received. So for instance you could do a radio transmission that lights the first few radios to receive it on fire. Basically intending it as an alternative long range casting trick for Obrimos.

Sure, I guess so. Geists CAN communicate, though. I think a lot of folks roleplay the Geists as being fairly talky, in fact, although they don't always have to be able to SPEAK per se.

One of my player characters was a woman who had committed suicide, and her Geist was a dead librarian who communicated by rearranging the letters of writing or signs that the character was looking at. The Geist was fairly uncooperative, too, which got her pretty fed up with the whole situation. One of the best scenes of the game had the character standing on the roof of her apartment threatening a Snickers wrapper that she would commit suicide again.

Honestly, I might be more inclined to compare it to something like Bakemonogatari or Mushishi (though really, either of those shows could be great inspiration for pretty much any WoD gameline).

Seems that would still require Space.

Also, I'd rather see Explosive Runes. Prime to encode a spell and when it's read it goes off. You can make a Charm in Exalted (2e at least) that turns a poster into a murder weapon.

Mushishi and Bakemonogatari are more werewolf (spirits)
Shaman King is all ghosts

Though your confusion is understandable considering geist rips off a lot of werewolf stuff

Wait, isn't that Ghost Writer?
Like, literally Ghost Writer?

I know, but the tone of those two shows and how they treat the supernatural is much closer, I think, than Shaman King. Not that there's any reason you couldn't run Geist (or any WoD line) as a shonen anime, either.

Fuck Yeah weeb Geist!

Is it a thing already? I've never heard of Ghost Writer. I swear I thought the idea was pretty neat when I came up with it.

>You can make a Charm in Exalted (2e at least) that turns a poster into a murder weapon.
So you reach into a Modern Shard, grab an incredibly obese man with 'orrible 'ygiene and a neckbeard and bludgeon your opponent to death with him?

>I know, but the tone of those two shows and how they treat the supernatural is much closer, I think, than Shaman King.
no way
bakemonogatari and mushishi are sedate, you can probably use them as white noise when you're going to sleep
geist is all about fun and joking around and being all serious for a bit then going back to fun

Ghost Writer was a 90s kids show about a group of kids who worked with a ghost to solve mysteries.

Said ghost was, iirc, their school's library, and it communicated with them by switching letters around, or picking up markers n shit when they were alone to write stuff down(iirc).
You can find episodes of it on Youtube.

Explosive Runes would require Fate 2 for Conditional Duration(When read), and possibly Forces 3 or 4, if you want it to be an actual explosion.

Whoo boy you better bone up on your PBS senpai

Hue.
It's been ages, and I only did a little Exalted, but the combo was:
The power that turns someone into a Creature of Darkness
The power that lets you do Presence damage at CoD
Letter Within A Letter Technique

Someone looks at the poster or reads the letter and a holy spear blows their face off.

youtu.be/cS_lD9_Ur3g
Show from the early 90s about a ghost-thing that rearranged letters and helped SOLVE MYSTERIES.

>Ghostwriter's identity[edit]
>Ghostwriter producer and writer Kermit Frazier revealed in a 2010 interview that Ghostwriter was the ghost of a runaway slave during the American Civil War. He taught other slaves how to read and write and was killed by slave catchers and their dogs. His soul was kept in the book that Jamal first discovered in the pilot episode, and when Jamal opened the book he was freed.[10]
Huh.

>their school's library
old librarian*

Fuck, I need to stop making all these typos.

FUCK
FUCKING GOOEY GUS
THAT SHIT GAVE ME NIGHTMARES AS A KID

>geist is all about fun and joking around and being all serious for a bit then going back to fun
Very true. I may have been cherry-picking the parts of those shows that I liked, but my Geist game did have a distinctly chill jazz vibe to it in between the scenes of the characters either joking around or dealing with very serious issues. I was never huge on the Marti Gras vibe the book encourages you to go with.

This is hilarious. I can't believe I accidentally ripped of a 90's kids show I've never seen. Thank god my players had never seen it, either!

Anyone else ran a good crossover? Most of what I read says it ends up loony.

My werewolf pack was mixed with and receiving help from a pure pack. Mostly because they were all teenagers and what teenager can't agree that 'parents just don't understand.'?

We've had 2.5 really awesome vampire/werewolf crossovers. It was rough at first, balancing out the nocturnalness and the spirit guardian stuff. As we learned more about the system we learned to balance out the vampire stuff and that spirit police isn't actually a requirement of werewolf.

Now our games are mostly like Hap and Leonard or Rizzoli and Isles or Moonlighting or some other fun buddy story.

>tfw listening to your chronicle soundtrack for the first time in ages
Man, now I just wanna run Geist again.

dropbox.com/sh/ppuzsjl2c2hazj3/AABwkuv82DSH8l9gAjxhuNGRa?dl=0

Anyone else use music to enhance their WoD games? What kind of stuff is on your chronicle soundtrack?

Anytime my players and I think about music in vampire. We just assume they listen to industrial type shit. Also the club scene from blade gets brought up often. 90'searly 2000 train with no breaks?

I couldn't see an Invictus meeting playing anything but chamber music, like any upscale society party or large company gathering.

And of course the Lancea probably some ghoul chorus singing from the hymnal.

That makes sense guess it would depend on clan and coven eh?

youtube.com/watch?v=zzeNAUOp17c
Ordo Dracul, that is all.

I imagine the Ordo would want really experimental music, synthesia type stuff.

I thiought the lyrics fitted, but that is just me.

Are ley line taps still a thing in Mage 2e? Can I still use magic to power the appliances in my Hallow?

Hope those with The Pack are enjoying it! Drivethrurpg seems to have recovered from whatever happened to it when the pdf initially released.

dunno if that merit is in there but you could just convert it

nobody wants your furry wank book

I too wouldn't want a furry wank book. Fortunately for everyone involved, I haven't written one.

fantastic book, mate, cheers