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

I hope it doesn't try and dodge the fact that the KKK would be crawling with Beasts.

>What Dark Eras would you like to see?
Would've been nice to see a legit attempt at an Asian world of Darkness setting. Some that might be interesting:

> Japan after the Meiji Restoration
> India during the movement for independence from the British Empire
> China in the 20th century, dealing with corrupt Communist government, the oppression of Tibet, or something to do with Hong Kong
> Persia in a semi-mythical fashion, á la the Neolithic Dark Era

It's a shame non-Western settings don't get much serious attention in the World of Darkness.

>It's a shame non-Western settings don't get much serious attention in the World of Darkness.
That's what you get with a predominantly western audience. Japanese people don't go crazy over Poland, either.

Tokyo is in every 2e core book and there are two Asian dark eras :V

They love France, though.

They also have a specific form of depression around their uninformed love of Paris.

> Japan after the Meiji Restoration

All of my yes.

There's also that people still burn with incandescent levels of triggering over fucking everything remotely sensitive on the topic, like that one guy who was absolutely buttdevastated that there was a Holocaust book for Wraith, despite that it was a jewish guy who wrote it...

Just best to steer clear.

There's a guy buttdevistated over the Shoals of Europe? Aha, fuck man why, it's a game about death.

Yes. The dude shut himself up, and possibly committed suicide once he found out the guy writing about the Ghostocaust was jewish,, as he hasn't been back, unlike the guy who is still upset about the fucking Ravnos.

I kinda guess being bootybothered by the Ravnos since they where just, "Lul gypsies' for awhile... Or still are, I guess.

I don't think so. It seems much more like Hero turf, where they grow powerful based off of society's fears of the other. Of course, there might be Beasts there, but the intersection would lead to constant bloodshed until one group won out, and I think it would be Heroes.

I do like how the Ravnos have been mostly improved in V20. Always liked them, even if I wasn't a huge fan of some of their presentation in previous editions, so it's nice. Chimestry is probably my favorite Discipline, even though I just stick to playing Ventrue or Brujah types.

It helps that the Ravnos have the undisputed best official theme.

Isn't bullying and terrorizing people because they need to be taught a lesson the very essence of Beast, to the extent of drinking blood and keeping it secret the essence of Vampire?

Yeah I'm sure beasts would love scaring the shit out of blacks or the fear of someone getting lynched.

I would love to play a Geist / Werewolf cross-over, where both groups are trying to maintain a balance between the human world they love and the restless realm of spirits / ghosts in a Japan undergoing all the upheaval of the end of the Samurai era and finding its place on the world stage.

You know, it's funny but I don't think I've ever seen the Ken-sama copypasta turned around to be about a Japanese Francaboo.

>Shoals of Europe

I know you mean the Shoah, but I'm imagining ghost sand banks and it's great.

Oh shit you're right, i'd love to see that.

Yes! That's what I meant, sorry, I have only a passing understanding of Wraith an all that. Waiting for 20th edition to come out before I dive in hard.

It could use a reference to the Pokemon region that's like a super classy and idealized vision of France.

As written, Beasts are the KKK. As the writers envision them, Beasts are noble misguided souls who prey on the KKK to teach them that fearmongering and hate are bad, mmkay.

Right, but there aren't any genuine lessons one could teach as part of the KKK.

Untrue.

Good thing Beasts don't need to teach lessons, ay?

/pol/ is thataway.

Any Beasts who did join would still be crowded out by the Heroes.

>It's a shame non-Western settings don't get much serious attention in the World of Darkness.
Some people get upset if they're not spot on accurate.
Others get upset if they're too accurate and not anime enough.

So there's no way to win.

Nah atamajakki is still around.

>/pol/ is thataway.
You don't need to visit /pol/ to see the lessons hate groups teach, especially for Beasts. Social conformity, fear of the other, sticking to your own kind, minding the rules, etc., etc.

Are those "positive" lessons? Depends on your perspective. But Beasts aren't positive things.

>genuine lessons

All forms of inflicting terror are about teaching people lessons. Generally, its some mix of telling outsiders to stay out and telling people you view as your lessers to stay down, sometimes both at once, and both are 100% relevant to the old timey Klan (carpetbaggers vs emancipated slaves).

Virtually any terrorist group is absolutely perfect inspiration for a Beast character and they tend to have motives that mix perfectly with the theme of Beast (ie you have transgressed, now you need to be taught a lesson). "The tall nail gets hammered down" is probably the phrase that best summarizes Beast.

Beasts are supposed to teach spiritually valid lessons. One of the reasons they're running around to begin with is irrelevant social fears clogging humanity's connection to the Primordial Dream, and racism is definitely one of those.

There is nothing in Beast I saw that talks about "spiritually valid" lessons or "irrelevant social fears".

Besides, racism is one of the oldest human fears. It's rooted in tribal antagonism.

That's not racism, that's xenophobia. Racism is treating or thinking of someone in a negative fashion because of their perceived race.

Xenophobia is the fear of the other.

Well, they -can- teach lessons if it makes them feel better about themselves.

The book makes it clear that "spiritually valid" is, at best, a social construct among Beasts. The Horror doesn't really care what it feeds on or what kind of lesson that it imparts, only that the victim feels the fear it's aligned its Hunger to.

At best, Beasts are Carpetbaggers. At worst, they're the KKK. Just the kind of splat you want to play.

>crowded out by the Heroes.
>Heroes
>in the KKK
>a group that operates communally and in the shadows, with little to no ability to take singular, ego-stroking credit, let alone be lavished in praise

Potato, potato.

Two words for the same basic thing. The KKK sees blacks as inferior and the other. Xenophobia and racism are always together, barring some weird self-hating racist thing.

"Don't defy your betters" is definitely a spiritually resonant message for Beasts, since Beasts are all about solidarity with other night creatures so they can keep their collective boot on the faces of humanity for all time. Basically, they are the Bizarro Hunters, out to unite the strong against the weak and the powerful against the powerless.

If you prefer, they could be nice Klansmen who clarify "Oh, we're not beating y'all because you're black, I really apologize for that dang durn misconception, we're hanging him because you're trying to reach above your station, HUGE difference. Think more the King of Tyre, Icarus, and that sort of thing. You may now return to your regularly scheduled mortal terror for your lives and all that."

But Beasts are the Other.

>And others about Beasts being in the KKK.
Other than a pretty overinflated impression of "Beasts are bastards", why on earth would they be in the KKK?

The KKK is a group that hates everything the Beasts are, and more than that it demonizes and rallies against The Other. You know, that thing Beasts are. It's a religious terrorist organization that hates blacks, Jews, and Catholics. While an individual Beast could find terrorizing and lynching people a perfectly fine way to feed his Horror, by and large, Beasts are not going to feel at home there. They're not going to terrorize and harass the dispossessed and downtrodden, they're going to make the powerful feel powerless. In fact, it's been a while, but I don't even think Beasts *can* feed on something so weaksauce as "make the scared person scared" outside of the very lowest levels. You don't become the baddest dragon by chewing on mice.

More than that, the KKK is everything that Heroes are. They're a group with more power trying to convince everyone that they should be afraid of the Other. They're the people who tell the Southerners to look to them for protection, because it's a dangerous world where Mandingo is going to rape their women. And that's basically where Racism in America started: convincing poor whites that poor blacks were going to steal and kill and take their jobs, so they should fight for the Confederacy to keep the purity of the nation. WEB Dubois called it the psychological wage of whiteness, because poor white Southerners were told those poor black Southerners were evil monsters, and that simply by being white they were on the winning team.

Beasts aren't the KKK. They're the Mandingo. They're the ones who rape the white women and threaten the former plantation owners. Not the ones burning crosses.

Cont. This is a way to make Beasts in the KKK work.
Although frankly Beasts don't really work in ANY organization larger than a bar full of vampires.

>Other than a pretty overinflated impression of "Beasts are bastards", why on earth would they be in the KKK?
It would depend on the Beast in question. I'm not saying Beasts would be in the KKK, I'm saying Beasts are the KKK. They occupy the same narrative space.

>More than that, the KKK is everything that Heroes are. They're a group with more power trying to convince everyone that they should be afraid of the Other

That's not what Heroes are, user. Heroes are the ones without power being tormented by people with greater might than they who torment people to teach them lessons.

Heroes aren't white supremacists. They're more like Django.

Beasts never get to be a working metaphor for the Other because Beasts are actually harmful, dangerous monsters pushed to sadism and societal deterioration. Beasts are the 1%, the KKK, the Nazis, whatever. Heroes are victims who fight back.

Man this all sounds like some kinda Marxist SJW oppressor/opresse thing to me. I thought they got that out of beast.

>Beasts aren't the KKK. They're the Mandingo. They're the ones who rape the white women and threaten the former plantation owners. Not the ones burning crosses.
Sure thing, cracker.
For blacks, the KKK are Beast.

Even if your reading of Beasts as the Other is correct (I don't think it is, Beast suffers from the X-Men problem when it comes to whatever slim metaphor it has) that makes the game even worse. Instead of being the KKK, Beasts are now the Freemen in Birth of a Nation, and that's just as disgusting and distasteful as Beasts being part of the KKK. Why would I want to play a character whose method of feeding is potentially proving a bunch of racists right?

>why on earth would they be in the KKK?

Same reason a vampire would get involved with a night club where everyone is dead sexy, cosplays as a vampire, drinks people's blood, and is as discrete as possible?

>And that's basically where Racism in America started

I'd assume racism in America predates the country by a long shot, via the preexisting racist social conditions of A) slavery and B) the sad cycle of indian raiders did something->I can't fucking tell which kind of indian is responsible and I might not even understand how different in morality and culture these different tribes all are->better blame them all.

They didn't get it out of Beast at all. They did, last I checked, remove the explicit Gamergate reference, but the example Heros still involve a fedora'd neckbeard and a girl in a coma, and they're the real bad guys, not Miss Terrorizes Schoolchildren or Mr. Beats His Family.

Beast is just badly done, and the Beasts being intended as misunderstood victims and social progressives violating bad social norms but actually being the horrible monsters that justify all persecution is one part of that.

>I'm saying Beasts are the KKK. They occupy the same narrative space.
I literally just spent an entire post pointing out how that's wrong.
Also, that is not what Heroes are. Read the book. Beasts are also no more actively harmful than Batman. Even then, Heroes are also actively harmful. The things you're saying were barely true in the first draft and aren't true at all in the final draft.

Read the fucking book.

Why would I read something I don't find interesting? Fuck off Aspel.

>I literally just spent an entire post pointing out how that's wrong.
Yes, I know what your post attempted to do. Your post was completely incorrect.

>Also, that is not what Heroes are. Read the book. Beasts are also no more actively harmful than Batman. Even then, Heroes are also actively harmful. The things you're saying were barely true in the first draft and aren't true at all in the final draft.

This is completely false, and you need to read the book. Beast hungers are harmful, and even the nicest Beast is simply deciding how to harm the fewest people, rather than harm no people. Heroes, meanwhile, do not cause harm by existing- the worst they might do is cause collateral damage while hunting a Beast, but that is acceptable. You don't take out extremely potent supernatural monsters quietly and with no fuss.

>Beasts are also no more actively harmful than Batman.

Even the book doesn't agree with you, the largest antagonist besides Heroes are Beasts themselves, who have a nasty tendency to let their Hungers control them. There's also the end game where they transform into actively destructive amoral creatures. This is part of the inner conflict, the very idea of teaching lessons is a social rule setup for the splat's own survival, not any sort of cosmic mandate.

Please stop going to bat for a game you don't even like.

The section on Heroes itself is MUCH more sympathetic, and likely written by a different author, to Heroes. For example, its not clear that Girl In Coma is a fundamentally bad person or a gamergate metaphor or what not at all. She was just victimized horribly by a Beast, and now dedicates her life to stopping them because she thinks they're all horrible, cruel freaks (she's only mostly true, #NotAllBeasts).

Oh look it's Aspel who is literally autistic, an asshole and always wrong.

Why the fuck are you in every discussion on Beast here? By now we get your opinion and you should realize people don't fucking care what you think. So please stop and do something productive with your time.

Sure there are. Maybe not from our point of view, but in that time and place you could talk about how black people didn't know there place anymore and needed to be taught a lesson in public and people would agree with you. The only Collectors would find it even a little bit difficult to feed as a member of the KKK, but even then, they could do it if they started collecting body parts or something.

>For example, its not clear that Girl In Coma is a fundamentally bad person or a gamergate metaphor or what not at all.

Coma girl was never the gooblygremlin MRA. That was, obviously, Sir Fedora.

And because if she kills enough beasts she'll get to have her life again and might even stop hunting beasts.

I don't know about full blown autist, but he's totally on the spectrum.

>Beasts are now the Freemen in Birth of a Nation
Can be, yeah, that's what I was just getting at. They're people who sneak into your house and wreck your shit and go "ABOOGABOOGA BE AFRAID WHITEY!"

Beasts literally would find it easier to feed from a member of the KKK than any of the KKK's victims. Stealing candy from a baby doesn't feed the Horror.
Also, it's the specific racism of America I'm talking about. Tim Wise gave a good speech on it.

But you're wrong. You're missing the point so hard that it literally frustrates me to read. The game has enough problems without people inflating this bullshit.

Then shut up about it since you clearly don't know anything about the game?

My post isn't incorrect. Heroes are harmful. More so than Beasts, even. Their entire schtick is whipping people into a frenzy. Yes, Beasts are bastards who need to spook people, but acting like they're all fucking child molester rapist SJW parodies is so fucking stupidly off the mark.

I know. But that's also my point, its an indicator that Heroes who are genuinely victims now lashing out at their oppressors fit just as well as Sir Katana.

>But you're wrong. You're missing the point so hard that it literally frustrates me to read. The game has enough problems without people inflating this bullshit.

No, you are wrong, on all counts.

>My post isn't incorrect. Heroes are harmful. More so than Beasts, even. Their entire schtick is whipping people into a frenzy. Yes, Beasts are bastards who need to spook people, but acting like they're all fucking child molester rapist SJW parodies is so fucking stupidly off the mark.

No, you are wrong, on all counts.

Well pretty much every Hero is a genuine victim, and all of them are genuine heroes.

I would like to see late Qing era China.

Could it be that you're the one missing the point?

As Oliver Cromwell once said "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken."

>No, you are wrong, on all counts.
Then fucking quote something from the books that proves me wrong.

>Heroes are harmful. More so than Beasts, even. Their entire schtick is whipping people into a frenzy.

...against beasts, and they only arise as the result of beasts doing stuff that justifies their response. Note also that beasts *don't* ever have to hurt a soul, they can be creepy voyeurs, so they really don't have an excuse.

If there's a hero, its, straight up, a beast's fault: the beast drove some poor bastard fucking insane with trauma, and now he can't ever be normal again.

What will that do? They've done it before and you just ignore it for your own idiotic narrative.

Just stop, you're a fucking discussion quagmire.

>Read the fucking book.
I did, nothing in it says Beasts can't be racist hatemongers or just join them to feast on fear.

>Beasts literally would find it easier to feed from a member of the KKK than any of the KKK's victims.
Not really.
> Stealing candy from a baby doesn't feed the Horror.
No, but burning crosses on peoples front yards and coming downhill on horseback in white cowls does.

There is no supernatural boot on the face of humanity, barring the Exarchs and the Seers of the Throne, and I doubt either would get along with Beasts.

>Then fucking quote something from the books that proves me wrong.
You have quoted nothing and thus require no quotes to contradict.

However, I will direct you to the Hunger section and the example Beasts, which include a man who torments his family, a school official who torments children, and a couple who torment (and possibly murder, is the implication I got) divers in a lake lured there by stories of sunken treasure that the Beasts themselves spread.

Then note that if these people didn't do these things, their nightmarish monster oversoul would rampage around the dreamscape and mentally and emotionally torture innocent people, to possible lifelong consequence.

Beasts are not the Other. Beasts are not a stand-in for the disenfranchised or the transgressive. Beasts have more power than everyone around them, including Heroes, and wield that power to bully, frighten, coerce, and physically wound to satisfy their own urges.

You can never make those the good guys. And you can never make the people who risk it all to take them out the bad ones, no matter the cost.

>They're people who sneak into your house and wreck your shit and go "ABOOGABOOGA BE AFRAID WHITEY!"

They're also the people that go into Black People's houses, brutally torture them and go "aboogabooga be afraid Blacky"

oh yeah, heres your fucking quote dicklord.

>oh yeah, aspel is fucking faggot, and he should kill himself like the gaylord faggot he is

sit the fuck down

Beasts are supernaturally good at getting along with and posing as, well, supernaturals of the non demon variety.

Also... vampires? The Pure? The dominant powers of the three major splats all apply just fine.

If humans were the underdogs in WoD, humans would be hiding from vampires.

Not really. "The supernatural is hidden" is just part of the setting, you accept it for aesthetic purposes. If push came to shove, mankind can't do anything against vampires.

The reason vampires hide isn't that they're the underdogs, it's that hiding is easier and more profitable long-term. Why wage a war or run an empire when the mortals will do that themselves and you can, with relatively little effort, leech off it like the happy little parasite you are?

Parasites don't want to kill the host organism, even if they can.

See: Billie Piper's speech in the most recent Penny Dreadful episode.

>The reason vampires hide isn't that they're the underdogs, it's that hiding is easier and more profitable long-term. Why wage a war or run an empire when the mortals will do that themselves and you can, with relatively little effort, leech off it like the happy little parasite you are?
No, the reason vampires hide is because individually they're weak and humanity can take advantage of that.

If a vampire outs themselves, they'll get killed.

>Belief does not come into it. People can believe in the supernatural.
They can even believe in vampires. Knowledge is the key. So long as
the paranoid man does not suspect the bartender, the one he tells all
his crazy theories to, is Kindred, his beliefs do not matter.

and then eget everyone else killed

>they only arise as the result of beasts doing stuff that justifies their response
>If there's a hero, its, straight up, a beast's fault: the beast drove some poor bastard fucking insane with trauma, and now he can't ever be normal again.
No, they don't. Heroes are born that way, just like Beasts. Positive Heroes work to heal the Primordial Dream. Negative ones focus their hate and self-loathing on Beasts and encourage people to stroke their ego. In fact, "Beasts create Heroes!" was only true in the first draft, and something that was borderline impossible to accomplish. One way was dramatically failing a particular power, the other was dramatically failing (or was it exceptionally succeeding?) a roll of the Horror lashing out due to not being fed long enough, which is also basically impossible due to how the roll worked in the first place.

Never said they couldn't. In fact, I said they could, but that it would be unlikely.

I didn't say Beasts are good noble souls who do nothing wrong. Beast is literally "let's make a game where you play the monster" because apparently Matt forgot Vampire the Masquerade was a thing. But Heroes are the people who hunt for monsters to slay and create them when they aren't. They're the Hunter stereotype of the Hunter who goes too far. They're the Paladin that kills the good Orcs. Or at least the bad Heroes are. #NotAllHeroes is actually true now.

They can be, but like I said, you feed the Horror better when you knock down the king as opposed to the pauper.

>If push came to shove, mankind can't do anything against vampires.
They really could, easily.

Are you confusing Masquerade for Requiem or something?

>supernaturally good at getting along
They might have powers that synergise with other Supernaturals, but their entire schtick pisses off Prometheans and Changelings, Werewolves and Vampires would get pissy about them muscling in on their terrtiory/herd, and Mages would only probably care about them because of their Novelty, Mysteries, and ability to boost Supernal Magic.

Er... vampires use up, kill, enslave, rob, experiment upon, sacrifice, and occasionally mongle humans 24/7. The one thing that could be used as an example of humans oppressing vampires (The Cheiron Group) was foisted off as ayyylmaos. Humans largely can't do anything about it, because they don't even know vampires exist. They are definitely the underdogs in that respect.

Also, its less "hide" and more "camouflage," except in the case of yonder sewer dwelling nosferatu and so forth (yes, they still exist).

>They can be, but like I said, you feed the Horror better when you knock down the king as opposed to the pauper.
You don't, actually.
With multiple instances you get a +2 bonus, with one unique example you get +1. It even goes through this in the book, it's better to have a wide community to terrorize

>No, the reason vampires hide is because individually they're weak and humanity can take advantage of that.
That's not true, though. An individual vampire is terrifically powerful.

If a vampire outs themselves, they'll be killed, sure - by other vampires who don't want them to ruin a good gig.

>But Heroes are the people who hunt for monsters to slay and create them when they aren't. They're the Hunter stereotype of the Hunter who goes too far. They're the Paladin that kills the good Orcs. Or at least the bad Heroes are. #NotAllHeroes is actually true now.

Except there's no such thing as a good orc when it comes to Beasts.

Nope. Vampires outclass mortals in every way. Mortal society has no way to endure an actual effort on the vampire's end to destroy it.

>Er... vampires use up, kill, enslave, rob, experiment upon, sacrifice, and occasionally mongle humans 24/7.
12/7

Do you guys all play Twilight or something?

>That's not true, though. An individual vampire is terrifically powerful.
Not when they're in their magically enforced sleep
>If a vampire outs themselves, they'll be killed, sure - by other vampires who don't want them to ruin a good gig.
No, by humans who find vampires fantastically crippled during the daytime.

>Nope. Vampires outclass mortals in every way. Mortal society has no way to endure an actual effort on the vampire's end to destroy it.
Wait until daytime, set fire to their home.

Well, no, individually vampires are much stronger than individual humans. Numerically, vampires can mind control, ghoul, or turn an almost unlimited number of humans, with the only iron clad limit being how much you want to fucking irritate the ST and everyone else at the table. Remember, vampires can have any number of Manchurian Candidates who don't even have knowledge of ever having met the vampire.

>"Hey guys, out back near this pile of corpses"
>"There's a werewolf giving out free babies"
>"Are they like, Werewolf babies?"
>"Nah man, regular ones."

>Not when they're in their magically enforced sleep
They can wake up, not sleep to begin with, sleep under solid concrete that no one knows about, sleep while hidden, there are a thousand and one ways to address that trivially.

>No, by humans who find vampires fantastically crippled during the daytime.

Nah. Mano e mano, even a sluggish vampire will annihilate a mortal, even a small group of mortals.

The threat of humanity lies in the ability of civilization to come together and mobilize against them in some great coordinated effort. The reason this is not actually a threat is that the most powerful abilities Vampires have are abilities to hide themselves and subvert other people.

There can be no resistance to the vampire menace when any member of the resistance can be made a slave by force at literally any moment entirely unbeknownst to the rest of the resistance. The military can't act. Governments can't act.

All you can do is have guerrilla cells with little to no contact with one another who operate independently. But then they've lost all institutional power.

My home can't be located, or is fire-proof, or doesn't exist because I wanted to wage war on humans and thus snagged Protean 1.

>Can be, yeah, that's what I was just getting at. They're people who sneak into your house and wreck your shit and go "ABOOGABOOGA BE AFRAID WHITEY!"

And would ultimately lead to the furthering of horrific abuses against the post-Civil War black community, for no real purpose. I'm not sure how this is supposed to be any better than them being members of the KKK, or how doing this means that joining something like the KKK is verboten. It's almost like doing a metaphor about the marginalized fused with the tropes and ideas of a horror game is an idea rife with bad executions unless your name is Avery McDaldno or Clive Barker.

You don't have to be awake at the time to be making use of people, debatably.

Then you only have to worry about the vampire's virtually unlimited stables of human+ guys, legions of manchurian candidates, and weirder things.

You're sort of conflating mechanics and fluff in your first bit there, they don't always see eye to eye.

I'm more inclined to see the fluff pieces and actual descriptions of how things work as the intended feel and world instead of the mechanics.

Example: The book tells us Melanie (coma girl) was assaulted and turned into a Hero. This is impossible, according to you.

THe book also gave us the teenager choked with a plastic bag that turned into a Hero later. Impossible according to you.

Another example that's sadly been removed from the rpg.net database:
In the developers own Actual Play thread there was a human brutalized and burned by a Beast. Matt decided to turn him into a Hero after the session. Impossible, according to you.

I'm much, MUCH more inclined to see the actual line designers playthrough as canon than whatever you think you know.

This guy gets it. The only thing stopping Vampires from utterly curbstomping and enslaving all of humanity is:

1. Setting Conceits
2. Potentially other supernaturals getting involved (Mages would kick Vampire ass, nuke the world, and then rewind time and stop the vampire ascension)
3. Sheer lack of desire. It doesn't profit vampires to do this. They CAN, but there's no point.