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

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Have you ever LARPed before?

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I have larped, my group does weekend sessions in the woods and fields about 30 minutes out of town.

I play a Paladin, and I have by far the toughest job, since I wear full plate and carry a shield and a longsword. Organizers go easy on me thankfully, and for trudging around in about 150 lbs of gear, I do get amazing defense bonuses. I've talked new players down from full plate into some chainmail (40 lbs) or better, a brigandine (20 lbs) since the last guy who went full tank actually passed out while hiking.

On the plus side, I'm in great shape from where I was a year ago.

Ignoring the slut shaming and lack of relation to WoD, that's some seriously bad math with pointlessly inflated numbers. By that logic, as long as they've had sex more than two hundred times (or his dick is longer than 5.5 inches), he's given her more mileage. You can't count the same dick repeatedly (in and out, 100 times, three sessions each). It's not 10.42 miles of cock. It's less than 92 feet.

Anyway, reposting this from the last thread
>Ideas for houserules
● Rotes are cheaper, at 1 Beat per dot, but more restrictive
● Rotes are very specific, use the same mudra and action every time. They either have no Spell Factors or come with free Spell Factors (Rote Factors from 1e); using a Rote in a way that it's not intended requires a Reach (A Larceny Rote doing something not Larceny related)
● Environmental Yantras no longer give +1; instead, they're flat out required to perform Rituals; no ritual casting a spell in your garage, unless you've at least made your garage a fitting place for the spell
● Order Tools provide the Dedicated Tool -2 to Paradox (makes Techne more like Magical Tradition)
● Dedicated Tools give a free Spell Factor
● "Patron Tool" is a generic version of the Prelacy Merit, and any being with Rank 6+ can grant it
● Maybe lower Ritual time a bit

Basically just a few things to encouraged "being a wizard instead of a psychic" even more than 2e already does.

What book should I read to get information on how to make Spirits for mage games?

Mage.
Book of Spirits
Spirit Slayers
Werewolf 1e

But not Werewolf 2e?

I run a Masquerade LARP and play in a Lost LARP every 1st and 3rd Saturday of the month.

The 2e books have to fit way too much in, so the specifics of Spirits are sort of left up to the ST.

He should look at it like this. If she went through 200 guys in 4-5 years but ended up staying with him, the dick must be good.

> Environmental Yantras no longer give +1; instead, they're flat out required to perform Rituals; no ritual casting a spell in your garage, unless you've at least made your garage a fitting place for the spell
Not sure why this wasn't default in the first place.

I remember a few threads ago that Vampires in the new edition of WoD would have some new way of getting powers, based upon LARP rules of some kind. Could anyone explain how exactly that works?

The idea is that you get powers based on who/when/how you feed.

For example, if you manipulate someone to the point that they don't even know what they're doing or why they're doing it and then feed off them, that advances Dominate.

If you convince someone to let you feed off them through sheer charisma and sexual energy, that advances Majesty.

etc. etc. etc.

Alternately she's tired of the dick and he's a cool guy regardless. Or none of it happened

>Re: Environmental Yantras
Yeah, I really feel like having a ritual space prepared should be the first step of a ritual. And the first step for that should be either creating a proper generic ritual space (which will usually mean a good sized Sanctum) or finding the right location to cast your ritual

So essentially you level up your powers by showing you don't really need them.
I don't mean that in a disparaging way, I like that. Being good at emotionally manipulating people should strengthen your emotional manipulation magic.

That's all stuff that they used in the Nordic LARP-style End of the Line event they ran. I would REALLY hope that it doesn't really change the design features of the TT version; I think it would be a neat mechanic for say, bonus-granting, but requiring it for specific capabilities, but I think it'd be TOO different for the normal TT crowd, which is their current baseline.

Anyone remember the basic guidelines for moving 1e weapons over to 2e? I know you reduce all damage by one, how do you figure out initiative penalties?

working on a vampire the Masquerade campaign and I'm planning to set it in a neutral territory, it isn't ran by camarilla or sabbat But there is a presence of those sects in the form of lasombra and ventrue bring present in the area. That being said I'm having difficulty figuring out the clan that should be in charge, I am starting to lean toward the territory being run by assamites who impose rule by having a "blood tax" to be paid by the inhabiting clans. Any criticism of that?

That might be the one thing to being Ventrue and Lasombra together. That would be fun to see. Otherwise the image of a tax collecting vampire is too good not to use

Why does the Sabbat have more coans and bloodlines than the Camarilla?

Because the Sabbat are more willing to do fucked up shit to their blood and see if it is passed on. Also the Sabbat embrace more frequently which can lead to mutations.

I kinda want to try it but the only groups in my area are either a while drive away or are kinda dicks from what I've heard. Somewhat surprising for NYC

Yeah, actually. It was my first foray into actually playing WoD. Unfortunately I was brought into it about a month and a half of every other week games before the STs decided they were going to call it quits. I was an Ordo Mekhet, built my character on the idea of being a private investigator turned vamp, but Vamp was the line I knew least, some critiqued my backstory as being a bit lacking. Then the Ordo guys saw that I had put a bit into the whole wits/dex thing and decided I'd be the best of the Covenant to handle the sniper rifle because the player of their last sniper left. Not that we were going hardcore on the fighting, but everything was on edge because some big bad had returned to the city and they wanted to have their bases covered. I wound up spending most of my time there obfuscated and not sure how to set up scenes, so I'd tag along with others. On the final session a lot of weird shit was going on while all of the Ordo and two Carthian Daevas were waylaid on our way to deal with something and the sun started rising strangely early, so we took over the walk in cooler of a Denny's to hide from it. Suddenly we all started rolling Occult rolls and a few other knowledge type checks to try to figure it out, and whenever we found something we'd compare notes. The Daevas just sat there cleaning their guns and whispered to each other about how nerdy we were as we just 'sat there thinking and talking about shit'.

Most of the girls there were stereotypes, but the people were cool as shit. We had a Rock Band party before it ended and got drunk as shit.

>Looming Presence [Anakim]
>Giants are not the only ones renowned for their size. Dragons, rocs, and kraken are all orders of magnitude larger and stronger than any human being, the cube-square law be damned. Beasts with this Atavism need not be especially tall, though most are significantly above average, but they are always intimidating, inspiring dread disproportionate to their height. People take notice of them and immediately stand aside.

>Dice Pool: N/A
>Action: Reflexive

>Normal Effect: The Beast’s actual height and weight are unchanged, but his effective Size is raised by (his Lair dots). Greater Size produces a commensurate increase in Health.

>People instinctively react to the Beast’s effective Size instead of actual Size. A Beast with 2 dots of Lair registers as being Size 7, the same as a grizzly bear, so people immediately notice and cower he walks into a room. Demonstrating his real height only compounds the strangeness of the experience. Disquiet settles over those in the Beast’s shadow, granting him the rote quality on Intimidation rolls. Furthermore, the successful application of Hard Leverage opens one more Door than usual when using the Social maneuvering system, as people rightly fear his wrath.

Does this mean a Beast with Looming Presence is a big guy for everyone else?

A human teenager(most beasts) would be size four, say you add one dot to your size. You're still shorter than size 6 "giants"(7 feet and up."

>A human teenager(most beasts)

NO BULLYING

Beasts already have enough of a stigma, stop shitstirring

Sorry, sorry. It was just a joke bro :^)
I actually quite like the concept of beast, and the interplay between them and heros, honestly. If I ever get around to reading their full mechanics I was planning on putting one in my hunter game.

Size 4 is Small-Framed, less than 5 feet.

Are human teenagers THAT small?

the NEEEEERDS are

But since it's for Hunter, you don't need to read all of Beast.

>Are human teenagers THAT small?
No.
Also, I like the idea of a tiny little girl Anakim.

Yes, they're counted as size 4 because it's just sorta "implied" that teenager means like, 13-15. Some teenagers are size 5 and some are 4.

>Also, I like the idea of a tiny little girl Anakim.
youtube.com/watch?v=DdP3Itc6_Es

...

>Or none of it happened
Let's hope that's the case for the dude. Poor bastard. Maybe not poor bastard

What's not to like about a woman who knows her way around?

> Beckett's Jyhad Diary
Oh god yes

Reposting this a little further down the thread:

I'm trying to come up with some houserules to encourage Mages to act more like wizards than psychics. I'm not exactly looking to take away the psychic stuff entirely, but I want to encourage characters to do rituals and use Yantras and set things up instead of just waving their hands.

● Rotes are cheaper, at 1 Beat per dot, but more restrictive
● Rotes are very specific, use the same mudra and action every time. They either have no Spell Factors or come with free Spell Factors (Rote Factors from 1e); using a Rote in a way that it's not intended requires a Reach (A Larceny Rote doing something not Larceny related)
● Environmental Yantras no longer give +1; instead, they're flat out required to perform Rituals; no ritual casting a spell in your garage, unless you've at least made your garage a fitting place for the spell
● Order Tools provide the Dedicated Tool -2 to Paradox (makes Techne more like Magical Tradition)
● Dedicated Tools give a free Spell Factor
● "Patron Tool" is a generic version of the Prelacy Merit, and any being with Rank 6+ can grant it
● Maybe lower Ritual time a bit

>Mages to act more like wizards than psychics
In what way do you think they act like psychics now?
>Rotes are cheaper, at 1 Beat per dot, but more restrictive
Nothing in the system costs beats, it is always full Experiences.
>Rotes are very specific, use the same mudra and action every time. They either have no Spell Factors or come with free Spell Factors (Rote Factors from 1e); using a Rote in a way that it's not intended requires a Reach (A Larceny Rote doing something not Larceny related)
Isn't the Mudra part already there? Also, wouldn't this restrict them to the point of uselessness?
>Environmental Yantras no longer give +1; instead, they're flat out required to perform Rituals; no ritual casting a spell in your garage, unless you've at least made your garage a fitting place for the spell
I dunno. Having to re-decorate the sanctum for each spellcast feels like a shitton of work.
>"Patron Tool" is a generic version of the Prelacy Merit, and any being with Rank 6+ can grant it
Would remove the exclusivity of the Seers. Also, if one reads up on where the Prelacies came from in the 1e seer book, they are quite a bit more than just backing by Rank 6 beings. It's soul-shaping on par with Legacies.

so what's the cool new stuff from the dark eras?

When I say "psychic", I mean "casting an Instant spell with little preparation". I don't necessarily dislike Instant casting, but I want to encourage gathering Yantras and preparing rituals and things like that. I want Mages to prepare what they do.

As for Rotes, I'm fine with them costing Beats. I'm not limited to what the real game does in my houserules. They would be heavily restricted, but I feel that's how Rotes should be, which is why I'm offsetting the cost. Technically speaking, no Yantra is one-size-fits-all, so even Mudras should need to be fitting for what you're actually doing. Though maybe in exchange I should also definitely use the Spell Factor rule.

Also, it's more than just redecorating, and it SHOULD be a shitton of work.

As for Prelacies... The game suggests that Seer Prelacies are just the most common form of Patron Tools. I figure I might as well use that Merit to signify how a Scelestus might have their Patronage, or just someone whose backing comes from some powerful Spirit or Demon.

>When I say "psychic", I mean "casting an Instant spell with little preparation". I don't necessarily dislike Instant casting, but I want to encourage gathering Yantras and preparing rituals and things like that. I want Mages to prepare what they do.

But... This is what the game does already.

And I want to do it more.

But you'd cripple them to get to this point.
Wouldn't it fit better for you to boost the thaumaturges from Second Sight, rather than cripple the mages?
Being able to, at a whim, re-write reality around them is a big part of Mage.

I'm not really taking that away. I'm just encouraging using Yantras more. The fact that other than Mudras most of them are all just +1 is underwhelming.

Other than requiring a proper ritual space, the only real "nerf" is explicitly making Rotes specific, but in doing so I'm also going to make it so that they give free benefits and cost substantially less.

So my PC is an islander has
Survival 3
Specialty Ocean Survival
I take Interdisciplinary Speciality for Ocean Survival.

Can I use that with Athletics for swimming? Drive for boating/sailing? Weaponry for spear fishing? Crafts for net weaving?

>Athletics for swimming
Probably
>Drive for boating/sailing
If it's an ocean worthy vessel, not a short range pleasure boat
>Weaponry for spear fishing?
No. Spear fishing is near the coast, not the ocean proper. Harpooning wales or operating a trawler, maybe.
>Crafts for net weaving?
Depends on your setting and whether net weaving would be a common thing.

Just ask your ST before rolling and don't argue too much if they shoot you down. Not that they're necessarily right, but mechanics arguments bog down play. Save it for after the session.

So you treat ocean and coastal locations seperate. No one actually lives in the sea just near it. People who are skilled with ocean endeavors are almost always king of coastal waters too.

Allies dots measure loyalty or capability?

If that's the setting you're playing in, sure. If you just want to have a +1 on anything related to functioning in or around bodies of water, take Aquatic Survival instead.

The sample specialties:
>Specialties: Foraging, Hunting, Navigation, Shelter, Weather

"greater relationships and access"
They don't increase their capability, but they do determine how many favors you can ask for in a chapter.

These are generic rules for a group specific problem. Not my cup of tea as it adds a lot of busywork. If you're the type playing out detailed scenes and using Down and Dirty Spellcasting for all the irrelevant shit and your players are cool with it, power to you.

...what the fuck was that Post you were replying to?

>no one actually lives in the Sea.

No, there are a few tribes in the pacific that live entirely on boats.

Alls I can tell is there's a deleted post with an image titled 10.42 miles of cock.

Why not just exercise and roleplay at a table like a refined gamer? Everyone knows you can't remotely achieve the kind of sophisticated storytelling standing around with a bunch of pillocks. It's all orgies and high school cliques.

i'm STing a dark ages: vampire chronicle for two almost completely new players

how much shit should i have prepared for the first session? one of them has played bloodlines and knows a little bit about the lore/setting, so i'm not sure if i should skip the hand-holding via sire or just throw them knee-deep in the shit

please spoonfeed and validate me

Tends to be too nosy to cover up the shit she's done. I don't like nosy people.

Ease them into it. You can more or less dump someone into modern day Vampire cause there's enough media to make it easy to digest, but with Dark Ages: Vampire you've got the basic Vampire stuff with the alternate time setting. It's gonna be a lot to take in even for a seasoned vet.

youtube.com/watch?v=vPlT2uKruwM
Which Splat best fits someone like V?

Promethean or vampire

Splendid.

>vampire
Ventrue with Celerity, right?

And whatever the "don't give a fuck about damage" power was.

So I was actually interested in trying out the larp that is near me. I'm on the east coast and there's only one that's close by me.

What can I expect from the people? I've read through the rules and I hope someone can also help me when I'm there but I've found so few reviews from how the games actually go.

I'm honestly worried it's going to be a bunch of people sitting in a circle talking about how they are real vampires.

That would be Resilience, which the Cof Ventrue get as a core Discipline.

He added a club from season 1 of his youtube experiment. I guess he is running out of ideas.

always knew there was fishy about that guy

You know what would be rather funny? Mason and Phil from Madagascar as Malks.
>"I hear Tom Wolfe is giving a speech at Lincoln Center."
>*Deranged sign language.webm*
>"Well of course we're going to throw poo at him!"

I honestly don't see much of an issue with it, unless it was poorly written or contradicted other lore. I'm sure it is probably a common occurrence among developers to place bits of their own games into the general settings.

You act like there's a problem with that. Also, Club Deep was the best party set up in the V20 RMC book.
I want to run a game where everyone owns a club together.

Super common. They're just making a big deal out of it because they hate some Youtuber.

but the RMC book was plain bad, so 'best' doesn't mean much

No it wasn't. I don't even like Masquerade and I thought most of the characters were interesting, other than "I am Mexican and religious".

It's not his own game. Someone else came up with that club and GG just used it randomly in his book.

>his book

Should be this book sorry.

Okay, so I know the majority here dislikes Genius: the Transgression for some reason, but I am kind of new to the community so I don't know any better.

Watching Gravity Falls it gets very clear that McGucket and Ford are very inspired Geniuses (most likely rogue unmada), but I just stumbled upon an interesting dilemma: Geniuses' Wonders can't be recreated by mere mortals, but that's what seems to happen when Stan reopens the broken portal.
>So is Stan a Genius too?
How would you justify it as a Storyteller if he isn't?

Yes.

I think it's more "reliability", which requires both

>I know the majority here dislikes Genius: the Transgression for some reason
Because it's got bad mechanics, doesn't fit in the World of Darkness, was intentionally made as a "they changed it so it sucks" whinybaby response to Awakening, has an even narrower theme than the game it was trying to fix, and is dumb pulp Nazi punching that fits more into other games like Spirit of the Century. Oh, and on top of that you basically always have to prioritize Intelligence, and it tries to bring in Consensual Reality.

>Watching Gravity Falls it gets very clear that McGucket and Ford are very inspired Geniuses
No it doesn't, at all. It makes it very clear that it has the same kinds of inspiration as Genius.

>mama polari

And?

>The one that triggers this thread so hard
That's why she's the best of them all :V

That means he is copying other peoples ideas and passing them off as his own.

Not really? I mean, I'm not even sure where you get that it's not his idea in the first place, or why you seem to think it matters. If it's something from an existing work, it's not really any different than the fact that Bob the Builder and Tom Cruise are Mages. If someone he knows came up with it, then he's just making it "official". Or, as he put it, canonizing it.

Unless you're saying some random person came up with the idea and he stole it, which doesn't really seem like a possibility.

>Unless you're saying some random person came up with the idea and he stole it, which doesn't really seem like a possibility.

That's exactly what happened.

Then you'd have to have some kind of proof! Although "a club run by people who do club related things but are vampires" is pretty impossible to steal since it's so common an idea.

Honestly unless he also came up with Polari, Mascha, Mu'tazz, Go-Yuri, etcetera, I'm not even sure how he canonized Club Deep in the first place, since the information on the actual club itself is just that it's a stereotypical supernatural nightclub with paintings and MMA matches that happens to be named Club Deep.
"There's a thing with this name" isn't what I'd call canonizing, but whatever floats his goat.

your nose is showing, Matthew.

youtube.com/watch?v=gM_vB5za9Mw

youtube.com/watch?v=XnO84wzw1sw

Joshua Deep doesn't really look like he is played by GG is all I'm saying. That character owned and named that club and that player came up with it. Then he got banned and GG used his ideas.

Bloodlines is on sale for 10 bucks on GoG.

I don't get it.

I'm not watching someone's shitty quality G+ game. I'll just take your word for it. What makes you say he STOLE it, though? Other than the name being a reference to some club from some game he was either also in, how are his ideas getting used? Also, what makes you think that guy didn't give permission?

I'm reading this demon story telling guide, as a first time wod reader.

So god in this universe is a giant computer machine?

Seems cool.

Why would you start with the STG? Why not Demon core?

But also yes. Robot God. Not necessarily THE God, but it might as well be.

There are plenty of Gods in the Chronicles of Darkness.
The God-Machine is just the one that gets the most screentime.
Plus it's more an aggregate of all its infrastructure and angels, not a discrete being.
Think Hive Mind.

That shit quality G+ game IS GG's youtube experiment.

That player was banned from the game and I don't think he is on speaking terms with goymer any more considering he didn't seem all too pleased when I mentioned to him that goymer was using stuff he had created and maintained in the game before his ban.

- The Gentleman Gamer is immunized against all dangers: one may call him a scoundrel, parasite, swindler, profiteer, it all runs off him like water off a raincoat. But call him out in Veeky Forums and you will be astonished at how he recoils, how injured he is, how he suddenly shrinks back: “I’ve been found out.” -

It was the first to download. The mega is finishing up still. Anyways, if I ever get to play this, it will be as the story teller.

I remember reading about how the oWoD was a collective reality, influenced by the perceptions and beliefs of the majority of its citizens. Is that still the case?

>Is that still the case?

No. And it wasn't even always the case in oWoD. Only oMage had consensual reality; everyone else had their own versions of the world that were presented as equally objectively true.

>Implying I'm him
I doubt he posts in this thread. Are you the guy he apparently stole that idea from? Because it would explain your weird obsession.

How terrible. Really that seems like such a weird reference to make. Who references stuff made by someone you don't like? It's not even anything more than a name. He didn't even make the plot about how it's going to explode or anything!
The more you use /pol/ memes the less I care, though

No, because consensual reality is dumb. I mean, there's still stuff like how Belief feeds Spirits, but not in the same way as oWoD.

>Is that still the case?
It's not the case at all in CofD, and wasn't really the case in oWoD, as even mass misconceptions didn't become reality.

So what is the best approximation of the God Machine's ultimate goal? I'm assuming there isn't a stated ultimate goal, so we're left to theorize and stuff.

Self-propagation

Why would it act so subtly?

Because if it was open, it could be destroyed, or at the very least it would find it harder to manipulate human infrastructure. You're reading the STG, though, so there's actually a setting Shard where it IS out in the open, and the world is a cyberpunk dystopia.

Also it's dumb. Like, that's my explanation for almost everything. The God-Machine is dumb, and the epitome of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing, but with a billion hands. It's a broken computer simulation that someone left running. It's an RTS with all of the win conditions turned off and no time limit.

Maintaining some consistent state of the earth by preventing disruption and building in layers of failsafes.

So I am a new GM to WoD and am starting my first VtM game sunday, with new 3 new players. They are all diff clans and I want the setting to be mid 90s chicago, in the vein of VtM:B. Any tips? I wanna start of light, get them interested with their characters and how they meet, but I have no idea for the plot or story. I might just rip off of bloodlines and have them do odd jobs for the prince and along the way meet the big players. Also any other reading besides the rulebook I should get?

>VtM

The Vampire the Requiem rulebook