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

It's seems kind of bland and directionless, I guess. I don't know, maybe I'll change my mind once we have more info.

>Bland and directionless
This is exactly what I'm afraid of, especially after Beast.

Thing hiding from, running from and fighting the grand thing that made you

Sounds pretty Demon to me

Geist also had that.

But Geist should be getting that issue worked out on it's 2nd edition. Beast had a Kickstarter, player feedback and everything, and yet the end result was lackluster with little non-crossover direction. Deviant doesn't have cross-over to fall back on, so it is my hope that in doesn't follow in the same footsteps.

You know what else it sounds like?
Changeling
Promethean
Mummy

All three of them have your characters existence be a result of something greater(The Gentry, the Principle, the Judges), and all of them have 'fighting against the thing that made you' as a theme(fighting the Fae/Huntsmen, encounters with Qashmallim mostly, and the path of any Mummy who goes after Apotheosis)

Deviant shares some themespace with other CofD games. It also is doing a lot of entirely new stuff that none of the other games have done before.

ok unnamed Deviant writer

I don't work for Onyx Path
Though I am considering writing something and trying to get in on Deviant

And one assumes not just the people who created you but also other, fucked up deviants who are less in control of their faculties than you. I'd assume that they're going to have a resource that they need a la every single other fucking supernatural and that the less sane of them will still want it.

Any game system is going to have a degree of allowance for potential sillyness because otherwise the system would be oppressively restrictive. It is presumed that the GM/ST/DM will restrict certain possibilities or consider them critically under the context of the game they want to run.
I also really...don't see why guaranteed success(1) is generally a problem. As stated, many, MANY actions aren't based purely on "get on success, do the thing.", and not all rolls can even be done. If a player in my hunter game said "I want to make a roll to ascend to the godhead" I'd just tell them to fuck off. Certain things need more rolls, more successes or more PLOT than just a throw of the die.

Man, both Deviant and Beast really sound like milking concepts that could've been covered by other games. I guess it's just more marketable to launch brand new lines?

Apparently the ST generates the conspiracy based on the choices the characters make in CharGen. I assume in practice it'll work kind of like the Conspyramid from Night's Black Agents, but it's too early to tell.

It's times like these that I wish we still used "Referee" as the generic term for a GM.

It's not the worst term, but it's a bit of an understatement. They're referee, world builder and NPC king all in one.

There's some novel alternatives out there. Call of Cthulhu's "Keeper of Arcane Lore," Delta Green's "Case Officer," and Red Markets' "The Market" all make me smile.

Is PbtA the one that uses Master of Ceremonies?

Deviant shares space with other lines, but no other line does what Deviant's going to be very well

So Deviant is Akira?

Yeah, PbtA uses Master of Ceremonies/MC

I'm personally a fan of Deadlands's "Marshall", because it fits the setting

Yes
From what I understand of Akira, it's a relatively normal Deviant game up until the last act, when one of the players uses his irrevocable "Go Loud" power.
I've never watched Akira, but from what I understand it's about a group of psychic kids with cool powers doing cool shit, and then the last act starts with one of them(Tetsuo, I think?) exploding into a giant baby-faced thing.

It's not quite that. It's more like the government did a very, very bad thing to a group of children and one teen took advantage of it years later and then blew up.

I had a goofy idea for a claimed made from assorted parts of a city(A stoplight, concrete, wiring, maybe lights and windows). Claimed lose their numina, but get weird dread powers suited to them, yea? How well would something like say a "red light green light" power work, something which when activated pits the claimed against the player in a contested action with the claims success stunning the player until the subsequent turn when the light turns green again

Power rangers did it first

So, yeah, Deviant as hell

Damn.

Pretty much. I think the most intriguing thing about Deviant so far is Dave's explicit admission that the PC body count in Deviant is going to be higher than most CofD games. It's less Going Loud in Deviant and more Time to Die.

It's "Going Loud and Breaking the Knob Off"

>The ST is the final arbiter and able to disallow things that might ruin the game
Is nowhere in the same Goddamned fucking ballpark as
>the rules don't matter at all and we should all play pretend and say we had a forcefield the whole time
Stop making the argument that they're equivalent. Stop bringing that up whenever someone points out an argument is fucking ignorant dumbass bullshit that exists only in some realm where the PCs get whatever they want all the Goddamned time.

Except, hey, even if you do feel that having those three conditions at the same time and cracking them is some ultimate super scary "issue"... it can only happen once a session at worst.

There are plenty of things that can both come with a free beat and get rid of any chance of failure. Is Inspiring somehow BUH-ROKEN?
The problem is that you don't think things through. You jump to outlandish conclusions where everyone is insane and letting craziness slip through. Did it occur to you that maybe other people don't see such things as problems? That maybe they are cool with the ability to give themselves beneficial Conditions?

Nevermind that if you blow three dots of Driven on the same task, you're basically wasting it? I mean, if you want to push yourself and be Informed, Inspired, and Steadfast to Do The Thing, you better make sure it was a suitably impressive Thing, because now your power points are gone for the session.

You could argue that a lot of the games milk themes of other lines. Promethean is built on isolation and loneliness. I've complained repeatedly before about how Mummy feels like it's taking concepts from Promethean, Mage, and Geist.

>Stop bringing that up whenever someone points out an argument is fucking ignorant dumbass bullshit that exists only in some realm where the PCs get whatever they want all the Goddamned time.
You're the one bringing it up whenever someone points out a retarded rule. If you don't want to be called a fucking idiot, then don't use that idiotic non-argument.

The rule isn't....really that bad, though. Automatic successes are fairly few and far between, and usually they run as "get one free success", which in the system is nice but not completely game breaking.

Even if it is a non-argument, it's being used to dismiss a non-argument.
"This is an issue!"
"But why?"
"Because it can do things that its meant to do!"
"And?"
"That's ~powerful~!"
"Not really..."
"BUT YOU CAN DO THINGS!"
"Okay."
"It's impressive and scary and powerful!"
"Well if it's really that bad then the ST can say no"
"Well I guess we should all make up our own rules and go bang bang I hit you, nuh uh, yuh huh!"

It's an asinine argument. "The ST can put her foot down" isn't even the crux of my argument in the first place. the crux of my argument is "do you even know how this game works, why would you think that's a big deal?"

Shit, we're not even talking about taking huge penalties on ~magic~ and then getting an assured success.

Doesn't steadfast literally only work on resistance rolls, though?

Is there a decent intro video on youtube? (that's newfag friendly?)
Never played a pen and paper game before, but man, the world these books paint is pretty fucking awesome.
Thinking about dragging a couple friends into this once I have a better understanding of the storytelling.

there might be, though you'd probably be best off finding someone who is willing to take you through the setting and answer your questions personally. I got introduced to the setting through a friend who's a huge fan of it, and once you've got a baseline of understanding it's pretty simple to thumb through the books and look for the sections that detail the info(be it mechanical or lore related) that you want

...

So did the stuff that got released about deviant at the con ever get posted?

So what do you actually *do* in a changeling game?

You make the same argument every time you pop up. It's a stupid argument. Explain why it's a problem

No.
To both of you. Steadfast is any roll, and the Gentleman Gamer would be the closest, but most of his stuff is oWoD, and it's all fluff, no explanation of crunch or anything.

cut yourself and cry

I'm still looking for suggestion for the Samedi bane and boon. In the meanwhile, I've worked a bit on the daywalkers. They are supposed to be weak, and I can't help but think they're somehowe overpowered.
Sternberg (Thin-bloods, Daywalkers)
Clan: Ventrue
Bloodline Disciplines: Animalism, Dominate, Resilience
Boon: Sunlight is but a minor inconvenience for the Sternberg. They take only 2 points of bashing damage from sunlight per hour, and a -1 to all Mental and vision-related rolls caused by their photophobia-induced migraines. They do not suffer the cumulative -1 to all actions caused by the Lethargic condition, but its other effects still apply, and they may never spend Vitae to use Disciplines during day time.
Weaknesses: In addition to the Aloof Curse, all Daywalkers suffer from two banes, both derived from their weak blood. All have the Open Wounds Bane, which counts toward the three banes a vampire is allowed, and they may never raise their Blood Potency above 2 without diablerie.

It sounded like changeling to me. I mean 'captured by bad guys, escaped, have super powers, fight them' fits changeling more than demon, if for no other reason then demons were never captured per se, just made

Mm...it could potentially be a problem, if it applies to any failed roll. But even then, it's not exactly a common condition. Though I will admit, it's quite powerful, especially for a potential mind mage who just uses magic to apply it to himself.

Tell me about these Clans? The Samedi, too, I haven't really paid attention to them, but I'm bored and want to homebrew.

In my chronicle? Engage in heavy politics fueled by paranoia and survivor's guilt, interact with a dangerous world of magic that is full of wonders but threatens to consume you, throw everything you have at not getting dragged back into hell, and try to figure out what to do in a world that doesn't know it's lost you.

A Changeling chronicle can have equal parts wandering another world in search of fae relics, ensnaring mortals into pacts that empower you, and trying to figure out what to do about the doppelganger that sleeps with your husband and watches your daughter play soccer.

Sure! The Sternberg are my OCdonutsteal. They have weak blood since they exclusively embraced from a single family. The Samedi (seen here ) are a reworking of the Vtm bloodline of necromancers. I'm also working on a Gangrel bloodline and pseudo-Sabbat/less crazy Belial's brood.

I mean, if it's just me and a couple friends, as long as I have a basic understanding of the rules, we should still have a good time right? (I guess that really depends on how well I can tell the story.)
Maybe I should see if anyone at my local comic shop plays, they have D&D nights there.

>They have weak blood since they exclusively embraced from a single family

>Boon: Sunlight is but a minor inconvenience for the Sternberg. They take only 2 points of bashing damage from sunlight per hour, and a -1 to all Mental and vision-related rolls caused by their photophobia-induced migraines. They do not suffer the cumulative -1 to all actions caused by the Lethargic condition, but its other effects still apply, and they may never spend Vitae to use Disciplines during day time.
I'm too lazy to look it up, but even in 2e, your dicepools during the day are capped by Humanity, so penalties and the like are unnecessary; they'll already be penalized.
>Weaknesses: In addition to the Aloof Curse, all Daywalkers suffer from two banes, both derived from their weak blood. All have the Open Wounds Bane, which counts toward the three banes a vampire is allowed, and they may never raise their Blood Potency above 2 without diablerie.
I don't remember what Open Wounds does, but I'd suggest having their Vitae pool capped at 10-Humanity instead, and say that they can only raise Blood Potency with Blood Experiences.

Alternately, make them more like a Clan, like the Jiangshi. I've actually been meaning to make a Caitiff clan, because that's one of the concepts from oWoD that I like. Well. Maybe it's more the concept of Thinbloods. I don't like "My sire didn't stick around, so I don't have a clan".

Probably, yeah. I mean, look around and you'll find examples of other people playing. Look up livestreams of D&D or shit.

forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/main-category/main-forum/the-new-world-of-darkness/608073-deviant-the-subtitle-discussion?p=946593#post946593

How long is it gonna take until we get a physical copy of Mage 2e? How long did it take for Beast to get one? Have they done this advanced PDF thing before?
I need it

>Have they done this advanced PDF thing before?
Literally every time they release something.

As you can probably tell, I am very out of the loop, thanks for letting me know. How long does it usually take for them to go physical?

>your dicepools during the day are capped by Humanity
I've checked, and I found nothing about that. The lethargic condition gives you a -1 for each six hours you stay awake and forbids you from using willpower.

>Open wounds
Open wounds prevents vampires from closing their wounds before sleeping. It has no real mechanical malus other than looking messed up, but it's a still counted as a bane for all other purposes. I'm not sure about Vitae being limited by 10-humanity, it seems too low, and about making them into a clan. I can see some merit in it, though.

What would the Caitiff bane be? Only +1 while spending Vitae to enhance attributes and no vinculum?

>malus
The word "penalty" exists, you know.

Well, make it so that their dicepools are capped by Humanity when they're awake!

As for Caitiff/Thinblood, I was going to essentially make them Clanless vampires who have BP 0. Basically just Ghouls+, or non-crazy Revenants. They'd probably lose a few benefits of being a vampire, like having dead flesh.
Actually, that basically is just a Ghoul that can make it's own Vitae.

I know. I just like the word.
Good point. I'll do that.

So they'll be able to walk in the sun, take normal damage from fire and weapons etc.? Interesting. Keep us posted!

Promethean existential crises
youtu.be/GxM9BZeRrUI

Has anyone here done extensive trips into the Oneiros, or Dreamspace? Generally how surreal do you get? Or do you try and keep things more rational or at least metaphorical/allegorical?

I've done short trips into the Oneiros before, I absolutely love the aspect of jumping between scenes in ways which you think would lead to related scenes, chaining to your final destination, also modifying scenes to elicit different reactions and draw out extra information, and change what the scene will connect to.

But I'm just wondering if people have any suggestions? The Astral is (or should be) a big part of Mage, and I really want to make it useful and interesting to the players as more than a covert meeting point. So they'll want to keep going back.

Even if that just means a bumper crop of Beats.

Huh. Mummies only suffer Disquiet if their Cult does.
Also, Sin-eaters suffer Disquiet normally. Didn't Book of the Dead say otherwise? I think I remember a plot hook about a Promethean who was stuck in the Underworld and the ghosts hated him not because of Disquiet, but because of the Wasteland forming.

If by "go physical" you mean "release them and have them on shelves in games stores" the answer is "Never"
You can buy a PoD copy, but that isn't gonna be done for another week, or so, probably.

So I ran the first session of my V:DA game for my group last night. It's two people who have never played OWoD before and have no knowledge of the metaplot. I'm using the first book of the Giovanni Chronicles but trying to make it less edgy retarded. All I know is that they are having a blast.

Is this the work of the God-Machine?

darkestdungeon.com/topic/aliens-will-kill-everything2032/

This is why the Invictus has an easy job
Because nutjobs like this guy post dumb stuff and discredit the idea that there is any sapient life on this planet besides mortal man
It's probably the work of the God-MachineThis is concealment infrastructure

So, who else is hyped for Deviant, even if it isn't coming out for at least half a year?

mite be cool
Kind of worried they are running out of horror tropes now though. Whats next? Aliens?

i'd be ok with aliens.

A part of me wonders if we'd just end up getting something like The Alien Chronicle instead.

So anyone used drive thru rpg print on demand service? How is it? Im thinking about getting a copy of requiem

I liked that idea for Furies that one dev (was it David?) floated, about playing servants of Fate chosen to right the scales.

Only you would

???

From what I remember it was a pretty shitty idea (and I wanted to dig at you because cheap shot)

So apparently if you complete 10 Refinements, you *can* keep one Alembic, but only if you give up "remembering" your previous human life to instead remember being a Promethean. In some ways that seems like a cheat. In others it's neat, and keeps you from giving up your real past. I don't like how it's an either/or choice, though.
Personally, I liked the way that Athanors worked previously, I just wish they'd been developed, instead of being changed. I liked the idea of setting yourself up in mortal life with abilities that would make sure you enjoyed it, and helped determine what kind of mortal you'd be.

He's never really seemed very "bullies must die".
Eh. It was eh. It would have more or less been Beast. Less interesting Beast, without some additions, since it had no Horror fluff making, or Lairs.

The one success thing is a problem because difficulties are supposed to be represented by penalties, not success thresholds and for most powers in 2e (especially spells) they spell out that you only need one success to activate it and get the desired effect. Getting an exceptional is just icing on the cake. Steadfast doesn't work on contested rolls though and it's not very good on extended ones, but the argument started around spells, which use neither of those mechanics.

The reason the debs won't "fix" it is that the group is responsible for setting their own expectations of enjoyment. This lends itself poorly to pickup groups or referee play (or whiterooms and algorithmic approaches), but its alright for telling a story and cooperating towards that end. RPG groups tend to be self selecting, with argumentative people either wising up or getting filtered out.

Would it be a decent house rule to have snipers use perception+firearms as opposed to dexterity?

WITNESSED

It's worth noting that technically you'd be getting an Exceptional with 1 success, so the actual use of it is pretty limited. You're also blowing three uses on one action. I'm not actually sure why Steadfast wouldn't work on Contests. It's just not very use*ful* in Contests.

Really the issue is that getting an automatic success and treating it as an exceptional isn't a big deal. Hell, it's barely a big deal in Mage, just slightly more of a big deal. But, like you said, every troupe is different, and some troupes are going to allow things that others won't.

I've used it for a variety of sizes, b&w, soft and hardcover. Its turned out well for me; no problems.

I'd use Composure+Firearms.

I meant the latter, not the former. Thanks for the time window

What's a good custom Bestowment for an Extempore made from a Vocaloid?

Actually, even though the idea was an Extempore, they seem like they're kind of way too annoying to actually play.

This was my original idea
>Bestowment: Augmented Reality
>777ツ can see the digital reality that interacts with our own, visualizing code and information as it flows through the air. She can see and understand (unencrypted) information like television or wireless signals. By spending a point of Pyros she can roll Manipulation + Computers to interact with that code, as if she was using a computer. When she does, the time between rolls is cut to instant.
I don't really think it fits. Maybe I should go with something related to music, or holograms.

Relevant
youtu.be/39EdqUbj92U

Yo imma copy paste a thing for some more advice.

I'm looking to start an alternate-history Vampire: The Masquerade game that takes place around Vlad the Impaler time.

The core concept is that there are super few vampires in the world (1000 known not sure if that's too low w/ population proportions and the such) but they still all hate each other. The low population and the super-powerful nature of vampires in this era means that anyone who gets to be in one of the clans is an important player in some respect and so can call upon the various resources of the clan.

The players will be part of a new-fangled idea called a "coterie" to act as trouble-shooters for things that are a threat to kindred as a whole and/or too sensitive for bullshit reasons for one clan to handle.

I'm looking to give the players clan-related "resources" (in the form of agents and other such things) for them to call upon to help accomplish the main mission along with secret missions that they aren't supposed to have . Unfortunately, I'm drawing blanks. Any suggestions?

You should check out the Dark Ages line.

Yeah unfortunately those were not in the big Humble Bundle where I got my other books.

There was definitely a big "CURSES" moment when I found out those existed.

Ivw the beginings of some ideas for a kaiju splat, but in terribly lazy and not likely to ever develop them.

Im sort of trying the same but mostly just going with something more along the lines of the tremere diablerising the tzimisce out of existence instead of salubri. The only issue is I'm not sure weather I'd make vicisisitude a discipline or a thaumaturgy path.

Additionally the Giovanni had a clan wide bloodhunt declared on them when it was discovered they genocided the Cappadocians on the grounds that if they did it to one clan what's stopping them from doing it again.so the Giovanni are a small bloodline operating in secret out of Italy and Chicago

If you're willing to go there, there's the old Leviathan: The Tempest (and the new version, but that one isn't close to half made).

Reading the Pack now so, is there any reason for _not_ taking the Werewolf Hunting Nature?

While playing werewolf, is there any reason to use glabro form whatsoever

>what is: the vast majority of fights a werewolf will actually get into

>Glabro

The answer is Crinos

WHAT