/CofD/&/WoDg/ Chronicles of Darkness & World of Darkness General

Like anyone actually plays level 20 games without dipping into Epic.

>better than mages
>any edition of D&D
Caster supremacy is unavoidable.

Question for the Werewolf The Forsaken players. I'm creating my first character for a game and I want to go with a Cahalith who is potentially interested in lore of old that exists in the Apocalypse setting. She wants to uncover details on the genocide of the other werefolk (Ratkin, Bastet, Gurahl, all that furry shit). As far as I know, these aren't really covered in current editions so I want to know if they're still considered canon. I'd like my character to dig into these histories and turn up some of the buried history there just as a character trait, nothing to hijack the game. I know acknowledging a little of Changing Breeds is ultimately up to the GM and I know it's kind of universally hated in some circles. Is there official word on whether or not this stuff has been retconned out of the World of Darkness setting? Apologies for any ignorance on my part, still learning the ins and outs of the game.

Apocalypse is entire different game line.

But there are other were like the werewolves. So you could still explore that line of thought.

Forsaken and Apocalypse are entirely 100% unconnected
They're entirely separate games, worlds, universes, etc
It's not a retcon, because oWoD(Apocalypse) ended, and they rebooted the entire gameline into nWoD(Forsaken); now known as CofD.

That said, if your ST is having there be any sort of connection between them at all, that's fine, but we can't exactly tell you how to do things in such a scenario unless we know the specifics

Sidenote: Cahalith is more 'proclaimer of lore, scary beast'; if you want a character specialized in researching shit, I'd go with an Ithaeur, or at least join the Bone Shadows

Dark Eras has shapeshifters other than Werewolves, no?

Eh, the Aztec Era has Skinchangers, if that's what you ask about.

No they had a Bastetfrom Changing Breeds, surely it had mechanics for them

Damn, okay thanks for letting me know.

I'll have to ask him about it. I'd don't have much else I can tell you except that there will be one other werewolf and a mage in our group. In my charter creation, I was considering history a part of lore so I was going in the direction uncovering and preserving stories/history no matter how unpleasant they may be.

I'll have to dig into that as well.

Really? Where were they? Because I thought I had read through the entire book.

You're thinking of how a Bastet shows up in the Beast Fiction Anthology. The only non-Werewolf shifters in Dark Eras are a passing mention of the Gudthabak bull-shifters in The Sundered World.

Yeah, the old World of Darkness and the new World of Darkness/Chronicles are Darkness are completely unrelated settings. It's also worth nothing that non-Werewolf shifters aren't considered canon by default, and one of the two nWoD/CofD books that deals with them (Changing Breeds) is universally loathed.

>two werewolves and a mage

Abandon ship, user. Crossover games are awful 99% of the time, and mages do not play nice with other splats. If that mage player makes a Thyrsus, he'll flat-out be better at spirit stuff than you two.

Can a freelancer share what they wrote on their cover letter? Knowing what to write there is even more confusing than knowing what to write for the actual submission. Most of the stories I've heard have been "I knew another writer and they told me to submit something".

Tell them you're a bisexual mixed-race non-binary single parent from Azerbaijan with a PhD in Azerbaijani culture and were made a paraplegic when you were fighting a tige to save a baby from being eaten.

That's pretty fucking diverse, as is their mandate

New to Mage. How do I make it so my character has to be singing a song to cast spells?

It's hardly a mandate. The only mention of them wanting diversity, I'm pretty sure, was the writers' call for Hunter.
Otherwise?
>Ian Watson, white man
>Chris Allen, white man
>David Brookshaw, white man
>Matthew MacFarland, white man
>Richard Thomas, white man
>Rich Dansky, white man
>etc

Hey, quick question out of curiosity:

Did "The Pack" sell well enough? Or will OPP scrap the W:tF because nobody plays it except bunch of autists like myself?

There's at least 1 trap at OPP team. He writes good stuff, nice input on forums

"Okay, we'll put you on writing a Nakchivan setting. We really want you to pull deep from the culture to create some interesting monsters and occult situations for Hunters in that area to deal with.'

There's a transsexual on the team, and she writes good stuff.
Actually there's more than one.

it's one of the three core gamelines. I very much doubt it's going to be scrapped, unless the entire Chronicles line gets scrapped. I wouldn't worry about it.

The pack is fantastic, did you not read it?

How would you describe a Fairest Blightbent?

Is Mage 2e out yet?

No, Dave was killed whilst on holiday and they suspended release

Mages only need to be able to think straight/focus in order to cast a spell. However, you could use singing as a yantra in a couple of ways:
You could take the Shadow Name merit and construct your shadow persona around singing and music, or you could take the High Speech merit and characterize your mantras as singing.

The argument of temporal sympathy has restarted on the forums.

forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/main-category/main-forum/the-new-world-of-darkness/mage-the-awakening/902581-questions-about-temporal-sympathy-and-time-magic

A good cover letter should be two or three short paragraphs. Here, have a format that I used for my submission:

[Generic opening salutory, since multiple devs could potentially be looking at your material. "Dear Monica" could work if you specifically want to go for Hunter 2e.]

[First paragraph: Summarize the submission attached to your e-mail. Make sure that you tell them what line it's for. Something as simple as "A fiction piece about X and a statblock about Y" works.]

[Second paragraph: give your publishing history. Do not lie, plenty of people have OPP as their first gig. For the Hunter Open Call, this is where you'd talk about your background or some cool stuff you have experience with that you think you can bring to the Hunter table. Keep it short and again, do not lie.]

[Third paragraph: list all the other lines you'd like to write for. Remember, only WoD and CofD lines are currently looking for new writers at this time.]

[Closing salutory]

[Name and adresss]

Remember to attach the non-disclosure agreement and your actual submission. Then, like they say, wait feverishly. I didn't hear back for months.

I'm not sure how the form actually works. I couldn't get Adobe to actually sign it last time. I think I just printed it out and scanned it with my signature.

See this is the problem .Only interesting thing that ever happened to me was a prisoner taking me hostage for like 6 minutes and threatening to rape me. I don't have anything interesting to write about myself and I'm a just a white guy from an Anglo country so i have no unique or interesting culture I can talk about.

my only gripe with temporal sympathy is that there needs to be clarification on whether you need a sympathetic yantra with a past or present version of a person. Like if you want to target someone when they were a teenager, would you need their high school diary or could you use a lock of their hair as it is now?

A body of sharp lines and concrete corners like a brutalist structure with a thick cloud of nauseating and almost choking perfume following them everywhere. Their belly and back contains a square glass window with a fluid like paint sloshing around inside, popping, fizzling, and creating smoke as it moves in a mesmerizing way.

Generally, you probably want an 'art is dangerous' bent, or become the perfume aisle. People have died from too much perfume/axe bodyspray in a room! I mixed both because just being a perfume bottle is boring. Paint fumes also work though.

PDF readers should let you be able to sign it digitally but printing and scanning is fine.

"I have personally experienced a hostage situation" is something worthy of nothing. There's also subcultures within your Anglo country that you know or are apart of. You also, I assume, know how your field of work operates. Everyone has a personal lived experience that they can share.

If you truly beleive you have nothing, absolutely nothing, submit with your strongest work, like you were going to do anyways. Every dev looks at that pool, and you may be surprised who responds.

Glorious.

Politics and roleplay are not inseparable. An HtV game can explore character development, personal horror and action / adventure without getting into compact / conspiracy politics.

Also why would anyone play D&D?

Then just be as direct and honest without embellishment as you can and let the quality of your work speak for itself. In the end, it doesn't matter how white straight or anglo you are so long as you can produce quality material.

So you considering citizen of another country some kind of abomination like nigger or gay?

Look like the 80s and be poisonous as fuck. You're a Costa Rican frog.
>Fairest representing lead based paint
Also, Snopes me on that death-from-perfume thing.

>PDF readers should let you be able to sign it digitally
I'm pretty sure it was an error between keyboard and chair.

You assume the only type of diversity is being a nigger or gay?

lmgtfy.com/?q=death by body spray Multiple different deaths for you.

Oh wow, I would not have expected it to be that prevalent.

I know it's fantastic, question is - how does it sell? I would like to see next W:tF supplements.

Dave - what did you think of new Top Gear

I'm planning a Deviant campaign based on Clarkson, Hammond & May's shenanigans. Will that work?

Or you could make The Stig a Deviant.

Clarkson is clearly arisen.
Hammond is a demon with poor cover who try to look "cool"
May is a mage and he is constantly distracted by all the things around only he can see with his mage sight. Also space arcana 0.

>May is a mage and he is constantly distracted by all the things around only he can see with his mage sight
As someone who likes a lot of James May's side stuff where he does fixit stuff or explains how things work, this is definitely true. Especially watching the behind the scenes episodes of Head Squeeze.

I thought Clarkson was fired because everyone finally got tired of giving him second and third chances not to be an asshole.

>Did "The Pack" sell well enough? Or will OPP scrap the W:tF because nobody plays it except bunch of autists like myself?
Sales stopped increasing when the file started being pirated.

But they've already gained the money it cost to make back with at least some extra. Any sale from now on (and any physical sale) is going to be profit.

>I thought Clarkson was fired because everyone finally got tired of giving him second and third chances not to be an asshole.

Clarkson was never fired, he just didn't renew his contract with the BBC when it expired. Punching an Irishman was just a smokescreen

I've taken your advice to heart and now this character is Ithaeur and weirdly enough an Iron Master. I'm going for the angle that she was pretty based in science until her change happened and now that she knows that spirits are a thing she'll just deal but god help you if you try to push that new age crap on her. Sort of a skeptical mystic.

The mage character in question is my husband so I know he won't be a dick about it. He's intentionally trying to avoid stepping on our toes in his character creation. The rules themselves might be a clusterfuck, but we'll have to see.

It's still part of the top ten on DriveThru RPG that OPP is dominating right now, so that's a good sign.

>I've taken your advice to heart and now this character is Ithaeur and weirdly enough an Iron Master. I'm going for the angle that she was pretty based in science until her change happened and now that she knows that spirits are a thing she'll just deal but god help you if you try to push that new age crap on her. Sort of a skeptical mystic.
My character's an elodoth Iron Master. They were a supernatural debunker. Before he changed, he was brought in by some of the other pack (who had changed, they were ithaeur bone shadows) because they were going to make a show for tv about exploring haunted houses (which they would then shut down with their magic, as they were ghost hunters).

Unfortunately the house they picked was guarded by the last member of our pack, an old hunter in darkness who made up the ghost shit to scare people away from the house so the hidden darkness beneath wouldn't be let out.

When my character had his first change the house was destroyed and the evil got out.

Yeah. Hopefully sales will increase again when there are hard copies available.

We want it to at least hit Gold.

To be fair, DriveThru RPG's ranking system favours new products. It's simply a ranked list of everything with [Time on Market] divided by [Copies sold]. It's a very crude metric.

The metal icons are a signifier of how many copies have been sold. Electrum is 251, Gold is 501. Platinum 1001.

Well that explains why Beast jumped back to third place so quickly.

Does it? It actually seems weird that it would jump in rank.

Wow, so less than 500 copies have been sold so far?
Also, why is Electrum less than Gold? Electrum is an alloy of gold and silver.

>Electrum is an alloy of gold and silver
That means it's less than 100% gold, and the remaining bits are less valuable than gold, ergo overall less than gold.

>Wow, so less than 500 copies have been sold so far?
Yes, but it's a short book and didn't cost as much to make as some others. 4 writers.

>Also, why is Electrum less than Gold? Electrum is an alloy of gold and silver.
Silver - Electrum - Gold

>Does it? It actually seems weird that it would jump in rank.
Maybe he means because fo their "second" release. They started selling hardcover (it's not on top 10 anymore tho).

>(it's not on top 10 anymore tho).
N/m it is, it's just number 10.

Oh, when was that? I thought the final version had been out for a while now.

Weird looks like it all came out march 30th.

Dunno why it got a jump.

youtube.com/watch?v=ou0w40EtMDA
This is how I Thyrsus

anybody have "The Primordial Feast: An Anthology for Beast: the Primordial" pdf

So the Astral is a vertible cornucopia of material, but rarely have I heard people tell of their exploraiton of it.

What have you done in the collective subconscious?

I'm thinking of playing up its importance for communication within a Legacy, and a relatively secure location for training.

When I stop being shit I'm going to run a Mage game where the Primordial Dream is verging with reality. My Hunter open call submission is also going to vaguely imply that it's touching on the Temenos.

The issue with mage in crossovers isn't entirely whether or not the player in question is a dick. Mages have access to an extremely broad toolbox, and their mechanics are such that anything they choose to be good at, they are going to be ridiculous at. You also need to reconcile mage's completely different tone/theming, and handling Obsessions, giving out arcane exp, and so on, while balancing it against the greater focus of the game (in this case probably Wolf Politics and spirits as per WtF). It's just hard to do and there's a lot of potential for someone to end up feeling not good about it, especially if any of you are new.

>Meanwhile, in my Mage game
>Players meet for the first time in-character in a Cafe, discuss the Obrimos's Obsession for a bit
>A guy screams and runs out of the restroom, says there's a dead body inside, they check it out
>Naked guy with a hole burned through his chest
>Acanthus uses Time to watch the round before his death, sees an entirely non-descript naked albino man pulling the guy's clothes off as he takes his last breath. There's no hole through his shirt, but the hole is already through his chest.
>Obrimos Mage Sights and sees a faint glow around the edges of the hole
>They fuck off before the police show up, start looking for the albino man from a nearby rooftop with Zoom In
>Obrimos spots an albino man on the other side of the Thames(game is set in Richmond, London, UK), but it's not the right guy
>Acanthus sees someone wearing the clothes the dead guy had on, but he's not an Albino
>Call up the Obrimos's mentor, talk for a bit about what the fuck is going on
>Suggests using Mage Sight on it, they do, realize it's a robot, hang up so they can figure out what to do
>Follow him for a bit so the Moros can figure out what he's made of(Steel, Silicate-Aluminium, lots of other miscellany)
>Obrimos uses Influence Electricity to turn him off, Moros uses State Change to liquify his joints
>They pretend he's a drunk friend who fell over
>It's 1 pm
>They succeed at a roll to convince people they're just a couple of drunk uni kids walking their drunk friend home
>Start carrying him into an alleyway as he wakes up and asks what happened, what they did
>Moros suggests one of the other 2 go check out a school he was walking towards, just in case any more killer robots come along
>Robot laughs at the implication that he's a killer robot
>Moros taps on his skull to prove the point
>Question the robot for a bit, basically learn he just killed the guy for his clothes, was gonna kill "an enemy" of his creator before they stopped him
>Session ends there

Is this game just a lead in to a Deviant game?

>So the Astral is a vertible cornucopia of material, but rarely have I heard people tell of their exploraiton of it.
In 1e only one splat could get there and it was really hard to do, and mechanically annoying

No, it's session 1 of a Mage game

The Moros is currently wanting to dis-assemble the robot so he can learn to make his own.

My multi-splat game did have an Astral arc, but as mentioned, this had to be railroaded rather than allowed to happen.

Anywhere in the Astral that is deep enough to have cool, useful stuff in it, is also deep enough to be suicidal if you go in solo. And selling the rest of the party on an astral expedition is hard even if they're Mages.

On that note, I would say this: Despite enormous quantities of material on it, I have no fucking clue why anyone would ever visit their own Oneiros outside of the GM pulling bullshit (Like "A fey has invaded it" or whatever).

Noone will ever find your oneiros unless you take them there (Or if you lose a fight to something strong in the Temenos), so no point in building defenses, and there's nothing much to be gained intrinsically (even as a source of sage advice its pretty crap because everything there is invested in you staying as you are).

What's the point of Matter if it doesn't let you analyze something without tearing it apart.

Chris, Chigg and Matt delve into Beast the Primordial, and take a critical eye to the game.
For the Secret Frequency we have a look at the Pope Lick Monster.

podcast.darker-days.org/e/darker-days-radio-episode-72/

It does
He analyzed it so that he could effectively tear it apart

I thought Darker Days was oWoD only and Network Zero was your CofD podcast.

Nah Network Zero is CofD only, and starting from the very beginning of everything to be more accessible for people.

Midnight Express is our friends who do a oWoD podcast.

DDR then is both, and more current, and also a place to come for interviews with the writers.

Very beginning in what way

Well Network Zero is going to go over all the core books for CofD, looking at them without the overhead of all the books that have gone before. Once we have done that we will start looking at each of the expansions coming out for each 2e book, before even beginning to delve into the good books for each game in 1e.

We are really trying to keep it focused on 2e though and act as a introduction/reintroduction to each game. For me personally it is useful as each of the games have changed in ways which while that is fine to discuss on DDR, on Network Zero we can really do longer reviews.

So what is this exactly? You're just sort of going through and reviewing the books? That feels like it could only really cover a few episodes, since there are only, what, 8 books for CofD?

Well once we have done the review we can go into particular topics for each game. So chronicle concepts, or how to run political games. Things like that. I have plenty of ideas I never get to use personally.

I was just saying you could have this Chronicle with Robotmen who don't know they're Robotmen, then once it rounds out, you've got Robotmen who've learned they're Robotmen running away from their creator. It's where my head went with the story.

I almost had him be a robot-man who didn't know he was a robot-man, but decided it didn't really fit with where things were going
Largely because he was about to walk into a primary school and kill a child, a few minutes after killing and stealing the clothes from a guy in a cafe restroom.

>I have no fucking clue why anyone would ever visit their own Oneiros outside of the GM pulling bullshit

Well, if you want to practice Goetia you're probably going to be spending lots of time hanging out with your Demons. And anyone could and should pay their Daemon a visit every once and a while if they have the chance, it usually has useful things to say.

Sounds like the Obrimos is the only one who got to play.

Does a mage with Fate 2 and a Praxis for Exceptional Luck receive a Beat every scene literally just for being lucky?

They can cast Exceptional Luck, score an easy exceptional success, and then resolve a Charmed condition for a fortunate occurrence... that gives them a Beat.

Only if the GM lets them roll.
Which is why the Quick and Dirty spellcasting rules are so helpful in that respect.

Quick and Dirty spellcasting is only for:
>spells or create effects that should be easy and require little risk or effort from the mage

Page 126 says mages use Conditions to gain Beats all the time.

And casting Exceptional Luck to just do something mundane without any pressure on... won't be rolled.

You don't get Beats for picking a cheap bike lock that's sitting on your desk.

I almost mentioned Goetia. The thing is, anyone capable of summoning Goetia could instead summon something from say, the Temenos or Deep Astral. The only real advantage to summoning Goetia is that they're something you can summon with the Mind arcanum that you can absolutely guarantee will never kill you. Apart from that one advantage, they're a bit weaker and far less useful utility-wise than anything else you would bother to summon from the Astral, and often less personable/likely to follow instructions.

ALSO, cause you derangements if they get taken down while summoned.

I would imagine living an everyday, charmed life would be easy and require little risk or effort for an Acanthus.
Isn't that their entire point?

Mages use NEGATIVE conditions for beats all the time.
>Spells most often inflict Conditions that harm, hinder, or inconvenience characters. Spells can mimic the effects of a helpful Condition, but using magic to gain a benefit and a Beat is double-dipping. Beneficial Conditions created by magic don’t grant Beats unless they’re the result of an exceptional success.
>using magic to gain a benefit and a Beat is double-dipping
>Beneficial Conditions created by magic don’t grant Beats

>Beneficial Conditions created by magic don’t grant Beats unless they’re the result of an exceptional success.
Praxis.