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

You could have just let the last thread go, instead of doing what you're doing now.

These, more or less. You make the contacts, and spending the XP is a way of telling the ST "absolutely keep these folks around".

>"absolutely keep these folks around".
well they'll still die in places where they need to die, or get lost or just cut ties or whatever, the player just gets the XP back

Oh, absolutely. I'm really glad that the Sanctity of Merits is officially a thing, it really does take the sting out of pulling some serious plot heaviness.

>When is your next game?
Most likely Thursday or Friday, running W20.

Story justification is important, new money and friends don't just appear out of thin air, they have to be acquired. Although I think the book details a couple of exceptions, like fate and totem for the wolves.

>When is your next game?

literally never

Whats the difference between allies and status? They both seem to be able to get an organization to do things for you

Status is how much power you have in the organization. Allies is actual people who are willing to do things for you. They're similar, but different. Retainer (which is a more straightforward "sidekick" merit than Allies is, and generally represents one person) is another one.

They also all have different mechanics, so there's that.

There's also stuff like Hobbyist Clique, and Staff. There are a lot of social group merits that all serve different purposes, but could theoretically be the same thing.

Status = a group/organization helping you out and cutting red tape because most/all of them know and like you, but aren't going to drop what they're doing and show up full force because you called one of them at 3 in the morning after getting mugged.

Allies = friends you've made who are willing to go out of their way to help you out with something. They lack the organizational power of Status, but are more flexible.

oWoD question: why is there so much hate aimed at Mage's metaplot in Revised edition?

I wasn't playing Mage back in the day (on account of being an elementary schooler), but looking t it as a cohesive whole now the Avatar Storm seems to have largely made the game more grounded and approachable. Any old-schoolers want to explain?

it mildly lowered mages power levels and that seems to be the base of most complaints.

It made a lot of of the more fanciful campaigns harder to do or even straight up off limits, and that burned the people who approached Ascension as a more cinematic game. A recent interview with Martin Ericsson actually gave me the words to contextualize what caused the controversy of 2e vs Revised for many oWoD lines: 2e was urban fantasy, whereas Revised tried to get back to the oWoD's personal horror roots in 1e. Of course, Revised was still a bigger edition in scope than 1e, so the hardliner 1e people were still not happy.

Another major change that some people didn't really like about Mage Revised was its approach of "The Technocracy's more or less won, the Tradition needs to learn to get by or try something new". Technocracy fans also had to deal with White Wolf hammering down on "No, really, Control is corrupting literally everything you stand for and you need to fix that shit or get borg'd"

Stupid question: What happened to the Ravnos, Followers of Set, and Assamites in the nWoD? Do they still exist?

>Do they still exist
no, kind of, no.

That makes me a bit sad, but I'm still going to mod an assamite into my hunter game. They're too cool to die off imo

Nothing really "happened" to them as much as they just don't exist in CofD (the new term for nWoD). However, aspects of them have shown up in some of the other aspects of Requiem: a Nosferatu's Nightmare has echoes of Chimestry and there's some Settite and Assamite DNA in the Mehket's make up, for example. As long as one also considers Covenant as well as Clan in their character concept, its surprisingly easy to replicate the feel of a member of a Masquerade clan in Requiem.

If you still feel the need to play one straight up in Requiem, however, consider obtaining the Vampire Translation Guide. It was written in the later days of Requiem 1e and before V20, but it's still very useful for converting things back and forth, and is pretty backwards compatible with V20 and Requiem 2e.

There's no "still exist" because the nWoD/CofD is a wholly unrelated universe to the WoD. Elements of them show up in Requiem bloodlines (the Khaibit are a lot like the Assamites and the Bohagande are a lot like the Ravnos), but there's zero continuity overall.

Of course we say this now, but just wait until One World of Darkness vs The Chronicles of Darkness is a thing.

All kidding aside, still kind of bummed that Exalted vs The World of Darkness never materialized. That'd be a gonzo-y slapdash of a mess that I would have ran with reckless abandon.

>theonyxpath.com/the-quick-the-dead-monday-meeting-notes/
>Meanwhile, we are releasing the Advance PDF of Promethean: the Created Second Edition this Wednesday! Dead parts that are now alive and all that.

My next game is next week. It's nice to have a game that hasn't collapsed before the thing started.

Awwwwww shit. Been waiting so long for that book.

>When is your next game?
No clue. Last one ended last week due to Uni starting again and shitty timetables.

I could start another one, but I don't trust my prospective players to not shit it up with D&D Murderhobo attitudes.

Such are the trials of a Uni RPG Society.

HAPPENING
A
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P
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I understand your pain my friend, I always want to run WoD but my players have the attention span of knats and only play D&D

>Inb4 special snowflake ranting

There have been a lot less mechanics previews for promethean then some of the other lines. Im hype

>when is your next game
The next time I'm having a day off on a weekend like normal humans do. Not complaining though, kitchen is fun, just makes it harder to get together with my friends.

I'm the storyteller of a V20 game, I've set it in modern days Vienna with some slight social changes to reality. Basically the prince is a reculsive Malkavian woman that stays in power because she seems to know how succesful anyone is going to be and can always side accordingly. The city has won in influence and capital since the local ventrue and nosferatu were the main european investors in new technology and there is the now global company "WebRats" (How subtle) thats leading worldwide because its mostly Nosferatu working on it with people mostly being ghouls used to uphold the image.
The Primogen of the ventrue is a very modern vampire that started the new era, tightly working with the nosferatu. He is mortal enemy of the sire of one of my PC's, a Austria-Hungary Era Ventrue that lost on influence and power because he didnt want to go with the times. The player is actualy a young upstart, and is used by his sire to get a hold on this whole new age mess.
The main nosferatu NPC acts like a goofy dude but in reality wants to use this new era and informational power to make the Nosferatu strong on their own, without having to trade this heavily with the Ventrue to stay in their position.
Meanwhile there's also a slight thread of a charismatic Toreador Primogen trying to seize power by showing more action that the ventrue actualy bringing order to the city and not just handling the finances and politics, Sabbat trying to get a foot in the city and fuck with the masquerade, and maybe well intended, maybe just power hungry Anarchs trying to get their own neigbourhoods.

Next game is next week.

The cliff hanger was one player got Paradox 5

I am the ST

What do I do?

Fuck 'em up, clearly.

Do you want it to be a one time plot point of "this is what happens when you fuck up" or a plot arc?

Did they contain it?

youtube.com/watch?v=nqPcQeMEnFc

For some reason this reminds me of changeling so much.

Completely different game. You don't even need those clans to play vampires like that (not even vampires from secret societies like theirs). They could be Bloodlines (and are probably statted up that way in the 1e VtM-VtR Translation Guide), or they could just be regular vampires of a type. There are only five (or seven) Clans, and they're much broader.

If you're running Hunter, you don't need them to exist. Your characters might face a luck vampire or a snake vampire or an assassin vampire, but generally speaking what they face shouldn't be a Ravnos or a Setite or an Assamite in the first place. It also shouldn't be a Nosferatu or a Daeva or a Mekhet either. It should be a Bloodjacker or a reanimated corpse or any one of a hundred things that doesn't come straight from the pages of another book and comes with massive social group baggage. Though there's nothing wrong with implying that this vampire might wink-wink, nudge-nudge be something your players are familiar with.

You should be using Hunter: The Vigil rules as well, not Vampire: The Requiem rules.

Do you mean edition warring or some kind of a comic book intercompany crossover like Amalgam or Captain America/Batman?

Neato. I'm legitimately surprised. I didn't even know it was ready for that.

Most likely next week. It's a Hunter game, and last session we made a daring escape from a vampire's lair, at the cost of a very important cell member. That being said, I caused a bit of a jailbreak, and escaped with quite a few of their captives.

Only problem is the elder vampire of whom we escaped from is now VERY interested in capturing my character, half out of anger for running off with all her bloodbags, half out of begrudging respect for my ability to pull it off.

We're kind of out in the open with over a dozen anemic people to take care of. We can't take them to a hospital or they'll end up in the vampire's clutches again. Our only hope is to get to our safehouse on the other side of town.

>nwod hunter has no hunter.net
>internet was mostly new when that game came out
>modern hunter.net would have shitposting and memes
missed opportunity.

The Union has a canon dedicated forum that's essentially identical to hunter.net and I'm sure Network Zero has a message board as well. Read the book!

Hunter 2e is practically guaranteed to mention a hunter.net equivalent.

That's not even remotely true, though.
Also, ironically forums are kind of dying, and twitter is way too public, so I wonder how the NetZos of the future will coordinate. Discord?

An actual crossover where Exalted invades the oWoD. If I recall correctly, it was brought up as a semi-joking, semi-real suggestion for a Kickstarter stretch goal for the Exalted 3e campaign.

Why contain it? 'Scool.

Same way a lot of organizations probably communicate: GroupMe, What's App, stuff like that. SnapChat is probably extremely popular.

Because not containing it means the ST now has enough Reach to summon a rank 1 Gulmoth

>Ywn shitpost on hunter.net after taking down a skinwalker.

Why even live?

The sound they'll make rattling their cage will serve as a warning to the electronic old men.

>Subject: GUESS WHO JUST GOT TO SECOND BASE WITH A FIRE LADY
>closed after hundreds of posts of shitposting

>Implying it wouldn't just be /x/

Hunter.net was protected by either Lucifier or the Ebon Dragon and Scarlet Queen. Probably Lucifier. Either way it was impossible to hack without going insane. One vampire did and he became more insane than a Malk on LSD afterwards.

Kinda hard to replicate without divine intervention to get the exact idea down.

People on /X/ are afraid of their own shadows. Most Hunters are brave enough to actually fight monsters.

Besides, Hunters are mechanically required to have jobs. They're not NEETs.

Thanks for reminding me how disgustingly hype I am for Hunter.

Anybody wanna talk about their favorite groups? I'm not gonna derail another thread with Division Six talk (unless that's what you want), but Habibti Ma and Utopia Now are both awesome.

I actually liked pretty much all of the supplemental groups over the core ones.

>be demon
>man fuck the machine
>spend centuries doing little shit against it, major thing here or there
>fuck this is going to take longer than forever
>maybe the humans could help
>lot of them, some of them know about the wider world and strike out against it
>to weak though
>really strong when they get together and get organized
>like scary strong
>one day this hot new invention hits the scene, something called the internet
>lets humans talk from all over real close, share images and other shit to
>easy to trace though if you know what you're doing
>get an idea
>use stolen infrastructure from over the long years to make super site
>basically unhackable, especially not by angels
>just let the word get out and watch them do their thing
>some faggot uses it to talk about not having a monster gf

Those start at rank 2 and grow in rank with more reach.

Before Aspel unleashes their hot hot take on the supplemental hunter groups and there's a 50/50 chance the topic derails: I really like The Barrett Commission a lot. I'd love to run a Night's Black Agents/Hunter: The Vigil crossover with one group playing the burned agents of NBA (maybe fluffing them as burned Task Force: Valkyrie agents after they got on ADAMSKI's bad side) and another group playing members of the Commission, and they try to help each other bust open the Conspyramid.

that could actually work shit

Wait what book was this mentioned in?

It's in one of the books some where. Can't remember which, been years man.

So they do
Even more reason to contain it

That was a dumb mechanic, and NEET is a viable Profession. Profession isn't your job, it's who you are, so Occultist would fit.
I don't like that mechanic though and now that it's in the corebook I hope 2e doesn't have it and does something different with the "Hunter Template".

I sent in my shit finally.

What's wrong with me giving my hot take?
My problem with stuff like the Barrett Commission is that it's great worldbuilding but it's not the kind of thing that makes for interesting gameplay, since most of it would be filing TPS reports.

>Night's Black Agents/Hunter: the Vigil crossover

You have my attention.

The Dracula Dossier adds a handful of vampire-focused antagonist groups; the British Project Edom wants Dracula or another tame vampire to fight terrorists and is as central a baddie as the count himself.

I know dude, just poking fun at Veeky Forums. Though a NEET hunter sounds like fun.

Congrats on the submission.

The Barrett Commission could make for an awesomely action-packed campaign; think about being the guys who busted Al Capone on his taxes, except the mobsters have fangs and superpowers. Or being the handful of politicians and cops not on the take, skulking around to find blackmail material you can use to force others to stop working with the monsters before you publicly ruin their careers. It could be House of Cards with mummies or a cabal of wannabe Snowdens hoping to oust crooked baddies.

Alternatively, any Hunter group you can't think of a chronicle for still make for fantastic unexpected antagonists in another game; a Division Dix van smashing through the wall of your Sanctum is just as valid a use of the material as playing them yourself.

>think about being the guys who busted Al Capone on his taxes, except the mobsters have fangs and superpowers.
Yeah, but that guy didn't actually fist fight Al Capone.

Not officially they didn't.

>fuck up unleashing paradox 9
>manifest a rank 6 abyssal
>Guardians of the Veil rewind the timeline and remove you from it to not have to deal with that bullshit

I love Net0 FAR more than I should. Probably because back in middle school I was big into cryptozoology and fell for almost every single low-rez "fallen angel" video on the net. They hit that nostalgia button *just* right.

What's the appeal of VtR? There's a lot fewer vampire clans

>There's a lot fewer vampire clans
In VtR, a character's clan is more of a theme than an entire concept. You can have an entire coterie consisting of a single clan, with each character concept being clearly distinct from the others.

Personally, it (and other CofD lines) appeals to me because I like the sandbox "take-it-or-leave-it" approach.

>no metaplot
>better mechanics
>fewer clans, but more bloodlines and variants (like in wicked dead)

There are more political factions to choose from, that's a cool thing.

Fewer clans doesn't really matter. They're less stereotypes and more archetypes of vampires. Your Daeva are your sexy Lestats, your Gangrel are your atavistic monsters, Ventrue are the Dracula type, Nosferatu are spooky hideous vampires, and Mekhet are the creepy shadowy hidden lore archetype. They touch on cultural aspects of vampires without getting bogged down in the really often ridiculous parts (for some reason gross and ugly=secret spies and messengers/hackers? Necromancer vampires means incestuous mob bosses? Kings and barons have picky appetites?) and it's a lot easier to play two of the Requiem clans drastically different without ignoring the "schtick" of the clan, the way you'd have to if you, for instance, make a Toreador who thinks paintings and sculpture are dumb but loves martial arts. Not to mention that no vampire type is faction locked.

As I often point out to people, it's a lot easier to take a Masquerade concept and make it work in Requiem than it is to take a VtR concept and make it work in Masquerade. Masquerade has a lot of baggage that Requiem doesn't.

And that's just the clan stuff. While plenty of people seem to love the ridiculous setting and overarching metaplot that went on through Masquerade's run, a lot of other people think the machinations of ancient powers that you have no control over is pretty frustrating. Personally, I find the backstory of Masquerade to be stupid. It doesn't help that so much of it is presented as SEKRIT HISTORIES that mean your character is some idiot who doesn't believe in Antedeluvians or whatever, despite like half the books talking about them and vampires being referred to as Cainites even by the people who say Caine wasn't real.

I need to pick up the Dracula Dossier. I was thinking about having it be the center piece in the crossover, but I don't think Count Fucking Dracula meshes very well with the one that Edom wants to get. Maybe he can be a side character.

Nothing wrong, I just remember the last couple times. Also congrats on the submission!

AND you've got the stupid vampire Illuminati schtick, which is just... so dumb. I hate that you've got things like the Gangrel unanimously leaving the Camarilla over the awakening of Zapathustra because the Camarilla refused to acknowledge it. Both because everyone of a single 'race' doing anything unanimously is dumb, especially in a time before Twitter, and because it's stupid that the Camarilla just ignores all evidence of the Antes.

Honestly in terms of "why do people like Requiem more" I could just keep going on about things I hate about Masquerade. But for the actual appeal of Requiem?

It's a more interesting setting. There's no ancient fuckboys sitting in the background waiting to rise up in your setting (unless you want it) and there's an air of mystery surrounding vampiric origins, but really who cares? Most people aren't anthropologists. There's variety, even if there are only five clans. Five clans with several different approaches to them, and on top of that five major organizations to belong to. And for another Masquerade comparison, the groups aren't based on your race like this is Warcraft or something, and they're not the only all consuming global organizations that exist. There are hundreds of cultural or regional groups, and even the main ones have different expressions in different places. The Carthians of San Francisco may have more in common with the Invictus of New York than that city's Carthians.

And while "you can do anything in your game" is and always has been a thing, Requiem actually facilitates that, giving you plenty of options AND plenty of examples. While Beijing plays too much into "clan determines your everything", basically no sample domain in VtR2e is "average". And I love that. It's so much more refreshing than the Vampire Illuminati.

And I haven't even gotten to how much I love Humanity and Touchstones and what they represent in the narrative... But that's mostly 2e.

All of the Masquerade clans could fit into Requiem's clans, as the latter are more archetypical instead of having concrete histories. VtR also has more factions than VtM and they aren't openly warring in a Jyhad, allowing for more tensions and politics.

Overall, the game feels much more like personal horror, and has mechanics to reinforce it.

>I need to pick up the Dracula Dossier. I was thinking about having it be the center piece in the crossover, but I don't think Count Fucking Dracula meshes very well with the one that Edom wants to get. Maybe he can be a side character.
Count F████ING Dracula is Dracula's Promethean, if I remember the implications. Plus, it's not like you need to follow the setting exactly or anything.

I also like that there's so many valid origin myths compared to the one true Caine.

True, but having the two settings mesh is part of the fun! Like there's no way I'm NOT putting Telluric Vampires in it.

I mean, your Dracula can be whoever; the Dossier proposes like six different mortals he used to be, and allows everything from core Dracula to Cthukhu sorcerer Dracula to alien space bacteria Dracula.

I think I'm sold on it, I had no idea about the extra bloodlines within the clans and variations of it. Plus variances in the setting, I'll give it a shot, thanks!

that could still work. Just replace lucifer with random super powerful demon, and whatever magic he did with crazy infrastructure stuff.

>I had no idea about the extra bloodlines within the clans
Bloodlines in Masquerade are "this Clan but slightly different". for instance City Gangrel and Country Gangrel, or Malkavians without Dementate. You'll rarely get a vastly different or even unrecognizable bloodline. The ones that are get considered Clans in their own right (like Tremere).

In Requiem, there are something like a twenty existing bloodlines for each Clan and you're encouraged to make your own. There are some Bloodlines that span generations and others with only a few members. They're often vastly different, taking one aspect or potential archetype of a Clan and emphasizing it. Many Masquerade Clans could be done as Requiem Bloodlines (and have been, like the Bruja and Toreador in the VtR 1e core, or the treatments in the Translation Guide). Hell, I've even made a Catgirl bloodline that's (in)famous in these threads.

Here's a list of the Bloodlines
wodcodex.com/wiki/Bloodlines

>Plus variances in the setting
CofD (previously nWoD) very much tries to be a setting, not some playground for pushing out future narratives that change everything, like oWoD's metaplot. As such, it's much easier to pick and choose what is and isn't true.
My favourite example of this is usually the VII book. It has THREE options to choose from. There's also Blasphemies, the Werewolf book that gives alternate origin myths and things to put a wrench in the story of Father Wolf. More recently is the God-Machine Chronicle, the book that updated the mechanics to 2e. It has several options for just what the God-Machine *is*, like an alien entity of a sentient Cold War computer; Demon of course doesn't seem to use any of those.
And, of course, like I said, the setting itself isn't homogenous, and different cities are going to have different social structures.

There's even the Dark Eras book for historical roleplaying, and Demon STG has Biblical and cyberpunk settings.

>Be other demon
>Appear to faggot bitching about not having a monster gf
>demand cuddles
>he keels over with a heart attack from years of sitting at home shitposting
>still no cuddles

I would give a nonvital organ to play this.

>protocols of the godmachine and scores of angels whos soul purpose is to ensure demons never get laid ever
truly this is hell on earth.

>It doesn't help that so much of it is presented as SEKRIT HISTORIES

This is my only real frustration with Masquerade. The setting history is so fucking amazing, and fucking vampires should have some way of keeping history alive better than humans because they're fucking still around from when it happened.

The overall metaplot designed to happen during the modern nights or after the game launched, I didn't like much. Most of it made cool novel ideas or was good for a big chronicle like MET or ONWBN but should have stayed metaplot for those groups because they were too big to properly work in a chronicle most people would actually be in. There are only supposed to be like 40 vampires active in an "overpopulated" camarilla city in the USA. Most people are going to have like 3-6 people in their game. Stuff like the week of nightmares doesn't really work with those types of numbers.

Also... I love masquerade, but I want to try requiem because one thing I've noticed about masquerade is that the clans tend to get boiled down by players to a tiny amount of what they could be, to the point where people fail to realize that until the modern nights, each clan aimed to be self sufficient and many of the independent or paranoid clans still do, so you're going to have a group that looks all the same on the outside but contains a lot of different people with similar disciplines "raised" by their sires with similar ideology but with radically different life experiences and talents. A well functioning independent clan should be at least aspiring to be more or less like a megacorp in shadowrun.

And it's hard to get characters from different clans on the same page in masquerade without resorting to cheap ST railroading or metagaming. Especially Camarilla coteries who are supposed to be low gen.

Ideally VtM would reboot itself entirely as a direct follow-up to Dark Ages: Vampire, with all clans as viable player options in the same coterie. The Jyhad and Sects are the weakest parts of VtM in my eyes.

Apparently my Promethean playtest is lifted. Ask away!

I could deal with that. I think Requiem handled that part a lot better, with the groups you could join that were less specific to clan or bloodline and more based on ideology. I'd especially like to see most vampires not belonging to a formal ancient covenant, but having them available to join.

I'd also really like to see more examples in the sourcebooks to get people to play one clan chronicles, especially new players. That's one of the better options in VTM if you can all agree on a clan and have good roleplayers who aren't immediately focused on some tiny part of the clan's hat. But I know getting gamers to agree is like herding cats.

I feel like it's important to point out that at this point, there is no more Metaplot. Metaplot is only something that happens DURING the life of a game. It's the way the game changes with each release and each no fiction book. It's Shadowrun giving story justification for mechanics changes, or mechanics changes based on what happens in the story. And much as I hate Masquerade, a lot of the problems for me don't come from Metaplot, but the setting... and, admittedly, how the setting is designed to take advantage of the "metaplot" concept, focusing on big power players and ancient histories as opposed to the actual meat of the game that your characters will be involved in, which isn't really the secret histories, it's the night to night living.

Of course, if you did follow along, then shit like The Week of Nightmares could wreck your chronicle ideas, and if you want to run a game set after the Week of Nightmares, it's really silly and your whole history gets bent around that point no matter where you set your game, which is the main problem with Metaplot in the first place. But, of course, if you ignore that, well, then you have to go "off book", like having Gangrel who aren't Unaligned, or Ravnos that are no longer supported

Also, Week of Nightmares works great... if the players are at the heart of it and dealing with it and stopping it and dealing with the fallout. Otherwise what's the point?

Anyway, check out Requiem. The Second Edition came out a few years ago, and it's a really good vertical slice of everything that made that setting better than Masquerade, refocused and tweaked. Although I will say that Bloodlines don't actually exist within the book; there are three of them as web supplements, but you really should make your own Bloodlines. If you ever ST, you should make Bloodlines with your group

Ironically, though, while I love the mechanics for Bloodlines, and love the way they're being done in 2e... Vampire plays perfectly well without them

Err, my NDA has been lifted.

What's Disquiet like now?
What are the new Transmutations like?
Do the Unfleshed and Extempore get their own unique Wasteland/Disquiet/powers? Are they any good?

Might as well be called "Requiem with metaplot" instead of Masquerade then

I really want to, but no one in my area will play it, so I'm stuck looking for another group online or something. And at that point, Geist is higher on my list of games to try, or a Ghouls:Fatal Addiction game based in the Carpathian Legacy Foundation.

I feel like a lot of that stuff was meant to give STs plot hook ideas, then big changes would happen like you mentioned that might mess up your planned plots. But a lot of that stuff was in there for people who wanted to play lower gen vampires as well, to give them ideas for the history and character concept and everything of their character, that gets IGNORED in favor of super shallow concepts a lot of the time.

I actually have a game of Promethean planned for this Saturday, hearing about this my group might end up trying 2e. What would be the biggest hurdles to get past if I have a character built very much on 1e?