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

Dark Ages is a bunch of individual mages fucking around and just doing whatever. While there are a few big factions, the game stresses that even cabals are rare.

Sorcerer's Crusade is where you start to see the foundation of the Tradition/Technocracy split, and is much more about all these different feuding political groups.

Both are a lot more fun than modern Mage, IMHO

Building a character for Requiem and having trouble picking merits. I want to do a vampiric health nut. Very choosey about feeding, because obviously drinking from bad mortals makes bad vampires. Probably Ordo Dracul with a focus on balancing the humors to prepare for change. What merits should I look at to support this? I was thinking the one for feeding on ghosts might be an interesting idea, but I'm at a loss for anything else that goes with it.

I am looking for the PDFs of V20 Ghouls & Revenants, and V20 The Black Hand: A Guide to the Tal’Mahe’Ra
Also, any opinions on these two books are appreciated, i might actually Buy a Hardcopy of the Black Hand one if i like it.

My mage spends his down time investigating minor things that interest him, and going out to clubs or bars.

V20 Black Hand is full of gonzo shit and terrible art. If you liked Dirty Secrets you'll love it, but it killed any further interest I had in V20 as a line.

Read the OP, user.

>gonzo shit
God dammit that made me think of a Nossie version of the muppet.

>Gonzo shit
What do you mean by this? How is it different from the other Books (partially) written in a in-universe style, like Lore of the Clans?
>Terrible art
Imo all the art in almost all V20 Publications has been pretty hit or miss, and far more often the later then the former, so what makes this worse than the rest?

In general, what did you really dislike about it?

Secret fey bloodlines. Secret ghoul wizards. Secret children raised in Enoch to be trained from birth to be vampire assassins. Eating a guy and birthing his ghost.

The whole thing reeks of the most over the top shit from the Vampions era.

Just bought MtAw 2ed.
How backwards compatible is it?
What are the major things that I need to change about the old stuff?
I know that Legacies changed to have 5 powers instead of 3.
I know ritual casting isn't an extended action any more.
I am figuring out the Reach mechanic (not sure how it affects balance though, compared to old stuff)
I think I get Conditions and Tilts.
Am I forgetting anything major?

Vulgar/covert isn't a thing anymore.

Is there a thread somewhere with detailed analysis of the implications of the different rules in 2nd edition?

Are these threads an acceptable place to discuss it, or are people sick of talking about it?

What are the general opinions about the changes, besides the agreement that the Arcana are badly balanced against each other?

Hey folks could use a little advice.

I want to use a Seer Agent as the main antagonist for the next chapter of my game. The idea is that he's trying to start a war between the Werewolves and the pentacle and is going around destroying Pentacle interests and vice versa.

What should his gnosis and arcana ratings be for him to mimic werewolf regeneration and gifts?

I was thinking Gnosis 5, Life 5, Spirit 5, Fate X, Mind X, but I'm getting lost in numbers.

How much Experience above starting do the Mages have?

He'd have to be Gnosis 6 to have multiple Arcana at 5, though if he's already a Master in two Arcana it begs the questions why he's doing this instead of working on Archmastery and Ascension. The guy you're describing could easily stomp most people and is likely one of the most powerful mages in the area. Every single Spirit in the loval Shadow knows and either hates or fears this guy.

We've been playing for awhile. Not sure of the exact number off the top of my head but some where around 40-60.

>why he's doing this instead of working on Archmastery and Ascension

It takes an Awakened equivalent of a mid-life crisis to decide to try to become an Archmaster.

Especially with the Seers of the Throne who have a bunch of Tetrarchs and Ministers trying to keep you down.

You realize that as an NPC the Seer can be as weak as the Storyteller decides to make him.
Especially since it sounds that the Players are first rank Masters themselves.

I'm going to start using 2e rules for this chapter. So I may need to spend time and rebalance around the parties sudden boost in power.

>rebalance around the parties sudden boost in power.

What is it about 2e that gives the players a boost in power?
I know some of the Fate spells really seem OP, but besides that...

So Enhanced Item says that a Dot can provide a +1 to the item's bonus as a tool.

Does that include Yantras, or are tools only used for skill checks?

What about the Fate spell Monkey's Paw?
+3 Reach boon version seems to explicitly allow it, with +4 taking it beyond the typical maximum of +5 dice.

It's +5 after you subtract everything else. So as I understand it you want as many bonuses as possible so you can just add potency or other spell factors and get yourself back to the +5 limit.

>tfw made an npc that's an 11 year old lasombra who was embraced in as part of a deal her mother made to avoid them both being thrown into a concentration camp.
>find remember lasombra are catholic

We'll crap now I gotta change it or come up with a workaround

The Lasombra care more about being the meanest most efficient motherfucker around than anything else. They're Catholic because that's where the power was in Medieval Europe, not because they love church.

Dave, if you're still around, was the Coil you wrote about torpor/sleep ? I recall there are two coils that cover these things.

Will the Lower Depths rules ever se... light? 8D

SoS ? Tome of the Pentacle? The third, yet-to-be-announced-book ?

I'd love to see some sample Depths described.

Only info we have on them is gleaned from interrogation of their inhabitants who have arrived in the Fallen World though.

But everybody knows that Duat is a Lower Depth whose central missing thing (is that still a Depths thing?) is Sekhem.

I swear to God I can't tell if you're genuinely retarded, or that you actually think that's funny.

Either way, I'm so sorry.

>Dave, if you're still around

I think we drove him away by all of the hate that followed the full .pdf release of MtAW 2e.

I blame 2hou

Mages trying to force shit into their model of the universe is funny to me, what can I say.

What mysteries of CofD would be beyond the ability of a group of Gnosis 10 Arcana 10 Archmasters to explore?

The fact that pursuit of hidden knowledge being a Theme for Mages makes figuring out WoD cosmology quite relevant.

What the hell kind of campaign are you running where you have gnosis 10 arcana 10 archmages as PCs?

>though if he's already a Master in two Arcana it begs the questions why he's doing this instead of working on Archmastery and Ascension.
Almost no Masters, even double Masters, work toward Archmaster or Ascension. Actively pursuing Archmastery is about as common as vampires actively pursuing Golconda.

The act of obtaining Arcana 10 is an act of Ascension.

Incorrect.
Very many Masters try for ascension.
Almost all of them fail.

The Cabal's theme is a Nameless Order called 'Brotherhood of the Eternal'.
They are all apprentices of an Ascended Archmaster and their goal is for each of the 10 of them to make their Golden Road into a link between 2 Supernal realms.

Making a comprehensive map of WoD's cosmology is only one of the tasks they will have to face.

Fun little detail: One of them has the True Friend (Aeon of Fate) Merit.

I am using Imperial Mysteries, where Arcana 10 is very much not the same as Ascension.

>Almost all of them fail.

Fun fact: Not a single person is known to have failed to become an Archmaster.

Because failing erases you from existence so thoroughly that it is as if you never existed.

He was here last thread and is developing a new line as we speak. Let's not be so full of ourselves as to think we actually drive people off, as opposed to "they got busy".

Of course they have, they're the ones who constantly bemoan their inability to catch hold of the practice of Dynamics.

>developing a new line as we speak

I really think Deviant should have waited until all of the kinks were ironed out from the MtAw 2e .pdf

I mean failed during the big 'walking across the Abyss stage'

If anyone hasn't read Imperial mysteries, I highly recommend it.
One of the most flavorful and interesting supplements published for MtAw 1e

If you've survived to that point, trained until you're capable of Archmastery, but fail at the Abyss Walk?

You're a big fucking disappointment.

It's the game for 2016, so they at least have to start planning it in 2016, Mage or no Mage.

That whole 1 game / year is entirely self imposed.
Plus I think Beast proved that taking more time on a game is a wise idea.

Doing quantity over quality is what killed TSR...

It may have worked out better for everyone's sanity, but I'm sure I'm not the only one out there who is much more interested in the potential of Deviant over the powerwank of Mage.

I just had a thought. Can Ochemata earn experience? If they can wouldn't an Archmage become a God overnight? Create dozens upon dozens of Ochemata send them to the fallen world (preferably into the past if you can manage it) with a particular task like master driving, master hand to hand combat, Attain mastery of the Life arcana etc. And then when they succeed reabsorb them and gain experience by the boatload.

>Can NPCs earn experience?

This is the main issue.

For PCs, the per scene limit on Experience will take care of the problem.
Does your storyteller allow you to fast forward through a bunch of scenes just to say that you gained Experience from them?

I don't think any of Beast's problems would have been solved by time. There's just not a lot you can do after the initial hook, and there's not enough support for the weird mysteries of the CofD to explore, probably because that ends up being Mage's bag.

When Onyx Path starts selling woodburning kits en masse, maybe then it's time to worry. The worst thing OPP's done so far is trying to have a few KSes per year.

Does the new Mummy have Peruvian and Chinese variants like CWOD? Or is it just Egyptian.

Technically Pre-Egyptian, but they are all amnesiacs and can take on new bodies.

I see. So Dark Ages are the best for a high-fantasy setting?

Not really. To be quite honest, the Modern Nights feels pretty damn high fantasy, it's just that the fantasy world borrows the names of our streets and countries.

So what are the quick and dirty details on differences between chronicles and nWoD?

I see. I guess mage isn't suitable for high fantasy with a lot of races and stuff right?

The Jewish and Moorish branches of the clan were killed off though, out of religious zeal.

Not really. Nothing WoD-related does.

To give you an actual answer: Egyptian only, although you might have a different appearance, if your original body was destroyed.
Egyptophilia is a core concept of Mummy, and utterly irremovable.

>To give you an actual answer:

What, Atamajakki's chopped liver now? answered it just fine.

Things from the Lower Depths can be missing more than"insert Arcana here." This isn't to say they aren't missing some Arcana, but it's like saying Vampires are Death Arcana. While this is partially true, it's also absurdly simplified.

For example, if I had to peg an Arcana to Sekhem, it would actually be a combination of Fate, Time, and Life. I think DaveB speculated in a blog post about the lower Depths that the Inferno was missing either Virtue or Vice, I can't remember which. That means it's likely missing parts of Death, or Mind, or Prime (they always lie, even when telling the truth) or all three. Things aren't always cut and dry. There isn't any reason that a Lower Depth can't be missing part of an Arcana which causes it to manifest in weird ways.

So my players seem to have decided:
No Uncharted Maging.

Dave has given city building advice, and I'm working on making Mages to flesh out the city, but I could really use some suggestions for actually RUNNING a game. How should I incorporate my city's core mystery into the chronicle? It's not so much a problem to solve as it is just a backdrop. Here I'm sticking with the Silent Hill inspired setting, where the Primordial Dream is bleeding into and Verging in the city. My idea is that the area has a bit of an intelligence, and wants to "help" people by making them face their fears and guilt. Though I'm thinking I should really loosen that up a bit; The Astral is Mastigos territory first and foremost, and beyond that it's pretty crazy to have the city outright scare the shit out of people at a semiregular basis.

I have ideas for a Beast/Circle of the Crone cultist thing, but I'm not really sure how I'd get the players involved in that.

I may just go for a more generalized spooky vibe, where ghosts are common and goetia can form in the city based on urban legends (like that one episode of Supernatural, with the Tulpa).

Tighter themes, improved rules.
Obviously the place of sin isn't missing Vice.

Medieval mage sounds pretty cool, wish Awakening had gotten a Middle Ages setting in Dark Eras

Which book talks the most about Lower Depths?
MtAw2e seems very limited in what it says.
I heard that Left-hand Path mentions the Lower Depths, can anyone tell me what level of detail they go into?

I think you need a Chronicle idea first, if the Primordial Dream Verges aren't the main seed.

Well, I'll need player characters for that, and only one of them so far has a definitive character concept. Everyone else is nebulous, or has several. Some of my players are having trouble coming up with concepts, which is one reason I really need to figure out some guidance for them. It's also hard since they're on a scale of newness but mostly still pretty inexperienced, so I can't just ask what kind of things they like in the WoD.

I do know that I'm going to give all my players about 5 free dots of Merits, probably Mentor 2 and Sanctum 3, with the set up being that their training mentors set them up in the new city so they can make a name for themselves and go bother someone else for a change. Much easier than "you all meet in a bar".

Then you're just going to have to wait on that before you do anything. When in doubt, use pre-mades.

What's that one book that's a full length Mage chronicle? I know Dave used one story from it when he ran one of his games. That story was about having the players make new characters and telling them that this is a side game to take a break from the main stuff, but its actually a Truman Show sort of thing and the characters are actually trapped in a Lotus Eater Machine.

Maybe I should look at that book.

The motherfucking archived subnet site got taken down, anyone know where else to get it or have it saved?

This might be just me, but IMO the arcana are overall no worse in balancing in 2e, it's just DIFFERENT problems.

For instance, Time has supplanted Mind as one of the two rulers of the roost. Fate has been retardedly OP since 1e, at least now it references a sufficiently universal system (IE conditions) that screwing over people who rort it is easy.

The newer casting rules are more codified, which makes system mastery a bit more important than it once was.

The Mage Sight and Mage Armor systems are fucking glorious triumphs over 1e though.

The new paradox/reach system takes significant effort to get used to but is an improvement.

The specific keywords relating to ephemeral entities have diversified and the spells that effect them are more explicit (As of the entire 2e line but this is still really relevant), which I initially wasn't sold on but now I've had a chance to play, they are really good.

Honestly my overall view is that M2e is HARDER to play (Even for a beginner), but better. It's made as many problems as it solved, but the new problems are much easier to patch up as a GM than the old ones were.

>Honestly my overall view is that M2e is HARDER to play (Even for a beginner), but better. It's made as many problems as it solved, but the new problems are much easier to patch up as a GM than the old ones were.
This is honestly my biggest worry as someone about to ST Mage for a group of mostly beginners.

Something I can't recommend enough would be to very quickly get through a oneshot of 2e with some veterans to try and get your own understanding of the system up to speed. So you can pass on the 'correct' understanding to your beginners.

Not like, veterans of M2e but just people who are good at RPGs in general. They'll make SURE that you're appraised of every single difference and rule quirk etc.

Calculating Reach for instance was something that I almost immediately *got* but it wasn't until halfway through the test game that I realised half the group were doing it wrong. People are going to make mistakes interpreting 2e, and you can't take much for granted from 1e in terms of mechanics, even if the fluff is virtually identical.

If none of you have EVER played Mage before, it'll be an uphill struggle, but you'll never actually stall out from disagreeing on something, which is a risk I found uncomfortably common with my group who were familiar with 1e, we had to stop and reconsult the book like, every 20 minutes-ish.

The new Dark Eras can't come soon enough. Deliver us from Mageposting.

>Calculating Reach for instance was something that I almost immediately *got* but it wasn't until halfway through the test game that I realised half the group were doing it wrong.
In what way?

>For instance, Time has supplanted Mind as one of the two rulers of the roost. Fate has been retardedly OP since 1e, at least now it references a sufficiently universal system (IE conditions) that screwing over people who rort it is easy.

But doesn't that make Acanthus the god-tier best path now?

Into era-specific Mageposting.

The only Mage stuff in the new book is the Mummy crossover so brace for more of Atamajakki's tranny ass

>The Kickstarter for Beckett's Jyhad Diary is live!
>theonyxpath.com/the-deluxe-becketts-jyhad-diary-kickstarter-is-now-live/
>kickstarter.com/projects/200664283/deluxe-v20-becketts-jyhad-diary
>docs.google.com/document/d/13WDVErUbdGpg2PIOO6Bd7S5r66gXfs8t3BklnCjPSdU/pub

Oooh, I see they're finally making Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines canon... more or less:

>Armando Rodriguez, Brujah; *1922, #1949.
>Rodriguez had to fend for himself from an early age. As a child in a near-starving family of nine, he quickly learned to hold down small jobs (many of them illicit) to aid his family. That did not save Rodriguez' younger brother though, who died when the local doctor refused to look at the child unless the family paid him. Nor did it stop his father from being fired after decades of faithful employment, or his mother selling herself to the same employer so she could feed her family. When Rodriguez was Embraced, he finally had the power to fight back and has defended the downtrodden since. Rodriguez is a rising star in the Anarch Free States and many Unbound look to him for leadership. He's rumored to have been involved in the fall of the most recent nominal Camarilla Prince of L.A., LaCroix, aiding parties unknown in his destruction.

I thought his name was Nines.

Maybe it's a nickname, maybe Bloodlines isn't really canon.

>I thought his name was Nines.
Nines is his nickname. If you play as a Malkavian, you can ask Nines "what happened to one-through-eight?", and Nines will answer "Same thing that happens to a lot of Anarchs", implying that he's the ninth leader or somesuch. It's also possible Nines is his chosen/given vampire name; a lot of vampires give up their mortal names when they become, well, immortal.

>maybe Bloodlines isn't really canon
Beckett's diary does seem to make references indicating that it is canon, at least in the V20 timeline.

>The New Asylum, Santa Monica, United States: Los Angeles is the same as I remember: The Anarchs are back in power after the Camarilla's failed attempt to install a Prince.

>Explosions rocked the Los Angeles harbor this evening. Three container ships hailing from China and Japan are still ablaze, and the fire department is struggling to contain the fire. Police have issued no statement yet, but insiders fear this might be related to the domestic attack 12 years ago that destroyed the Golden Temple in Los Angeles' Chinatown.

>Hallowbrook Hotel, Los Angeles, United States: Are there no decent hotels in L.A.? This one absolutely reeks of blood.

>Ocean View Hotel, Los Angeles, United States: I've checked in to a newly-renovated hotel and only now begin to suspect there's some weirdness to the place. Lots of footsteps at night, creaking floorboards, walls, and ceilings. A vase even shattered as I closed the door to my room. At least it's isolated, however.

Is the PC from the game referenced?
Also I like how all the characters are now Canon.
LaCroix, Isaac,Gary
all great fun characters.

>Gary
Meow.

Gary Golden was secretely a cat?

>Is the PC from the game referenced?

Only barely, in Nines' own profile info, where it says he's suspected of aiding in the destruction of Lacroix:

>He's rumored to have been involved in the fall of the most recent nominal Camarilla Prince of L.A., LaCroix, aiding parties unknown in his destruction.

And y'know, that suits me just fine, since it makes it easy for VTMB fans to use the Fledgling in whatever fashion they want to. Was he/she an Anarch, Camarilla, Independent or something else? What clan was (s)he from? Were they the kind who helped others, or the type of person who slaughtered everyone they came across? That's up for the Storyteller to decide.

yeah its always hard to put a character from a game in cannon when theres a lot of decisions in the game. But having them be some near mythical figure is fine.

that was meant to be a terrible, terrible reference to Spongebob.

They didn't realise you got 1 free reach *at* the arcanum level necessary to cast a spell, they thought you just got extra stuff as your arcanum increased. Its a natural mistake coming from 1e where you needed to go over the arcanum level to access advanced tables.

Yes, but now you only have 1 problem child to watch instead of 2. It's easy enough to just repeatedly create encounters that fuck over the Acanthus player, not so much to fuck over Acanthi and Mastigoi to the same extent as each other without collateral.

Also, it's easy enough to try your hand at balancing the boon/hexes and time-travel systems with just one or two changes, whereas you used to be at the point where you'd have to fundamentally change the purview of Mind and Fate to fix them up.

For instance, banning Chaos Mastery and saying "You cannot gain Steadfast or Inspired using Fate" immediately ramps down Fate to like, merely among the most powerful of the arcana. Rewriting Shifting Sands is a pretty serious fix to Time too but I'm not yet familiar enough with it to be certain that is what I want to do, or enough to fix it.

My players are constantly whining that internal balance is fucked, and that it's impossible to resist a Mage who wants to cast a spell on you.
From a cursory glance at the system, it looks as if they have a point, but we haven't really played it. So do they actually have one?