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

Any group out there, probably roll20, that would be up for bringing in a Beast? I'm starting to make one and I'm interested in trying my hand at this.

Having not read much of Beast, why would someone invite a Beast to a game? Like, I know they vaguely 'help other creeps do their thing', except Demons. But I wanna know specifics.

Played well they can be a nice foil to almost any splat and generate a lot of interesting questions for the players.

Most likely because someone wants to play an OP dragon-kin in a Vampire game

My understanding of Beasts is that they have the opportunity of teaching through fear. They can act like advanced scouts because they inherently root out otherworldly shit and can create a space to trap the big bads and invite people into their lairs. Essentially they can be the trapper of the group, if I'm really understanding this.

Upsetting people on roll20 by pointing out things lifted from Tsukihime.

>by being a grognard
ftfy

That's that anime about the bug men, right

No, Tsukihime is Twilight for boys.

So all the chastity lessons and cheesecake rather than beefcake but more action scenes rather than pining?

Do you prefer vampires being magically preserved corpses like in VtR or being blood-filled stretch-armstrongs like in VtM 3e

Magically preserved corpses. Which are also full of blood, because the vitae they take has to go somewhere, but no weird magical biology shit. They just are corpses preserved forever at the moment of their embrace.

Magically animated corpse. They have organs, but they're atrophied and shit. Not just human shaped water balloons full of blood

Given how the embrace works the organs shouldn't be any more atrophied than they were at the moment of death. They're just dead and useless. Until you kill a vampire and they decay to where they should be in a matter of moments, of course.

Requiem vampires because magical preserved corpses make more sense to me than organs transforming into blood bags.

Magically perserved corpses because VtM is shit just like everything oWoD

Whatever Buffy vamps were

Kitties?

>Mages
>no sense of right and wrong

From the thread:
>>Are Geists amalgamated ghosts, then, or just this specific example?
>Just that one example. Since Mage 2nd already kind of spoiled it, I guess I can share this tidbit:

>Geists are Rank 3+ ghosts. The only (well, almost only) way for a ghost to cross from Rank 2 to Rank 3 is to drink deep from one of the rivers of the Underworld. This does... strange things to the shade brave/desperate enough to try it--but it does mean they're Anchored to a concept of death, which makes it much harder for them to get blasted back to the Underworld once they escape.

He seems to think we're going to get real previews around November/December, so that's good.

>why would someone invite a Beast to a game?
Probably the one splat that won't fuck with the theme by bringing in their own theme.

Would a member of the Promethean Brotherhood have a Nimbus?

No.

>wouldnt mess up the theme
But that is vague, what do you mean by that? Because I could take that as their theme being flexible, their theme being nonexistent, or whatever.

So... What other arcana do you think a prime mage should have to activate Promethean artifacts?

Life? Death? Can't just be more prime.

Why not?

Not that user, but from my understanding Beast is just really flexible. They're both pariahs and allies of CofD

It's basically nonexistent is the thing. "You're a horror monster that spooks things!" is all it is, really, and with crossover the theme is mostly "you create families", because you no longer need to spook things, since you have the power to voyeuristically feed your Horror instead of needing to feed your Hunger.

Prime. Or none.

They aren't Mages. If they did have a Nimbus, it would be that of the dead mage.

Who are they again?

Their only real theme is "No Small Boxes", which means that you can't fit everything into neat little categories. That can lock into pretty much any CofD game.

They sacrifice Mages, steal their Gnosis, which lets them cast spells

What? There are several small boxes.

I don't know if I agree with just prime.

Prime is the study of the supernal, and of magic.

Azoth and the principle aren't just pure supernal magic, so it doesn't work from that side. The powers of azoth are magic to be studied sure, but in that case prime wouldn't need any other arcana to study any magical effects.

So the main way to justify only prime is if Promethean magic just can't fit into any other box.

Five subtle arcana = soul (in theory, mages can't make/unmake soul)

So Pyros is just the five arcana plus the Principle's secret ingredient

Mages can CERTAINLY unmake a soul.
They just eat it.
Universal Sacrament for any of the 5 subtles, and used by Reapers, draining it of all its energies for personal use.

Question from last thread: Is it a bad idea to fuck your fetch as a Changeling?

I imagine a Beast creating a family cause he's fucking tired. 10 days till retirement and I'm too lazy to chase down my own meals

Don't fetches tend to alert your original keeper when they are aware of you?

Or do they usually just try to kill you. I forget.

Mages can make and unmake souls and do whatever they want

Dave pls, your double dubs don't make make your fanfic real

Their response is coloured by who they are, but when a Changeling reappears in the mortal world, a Fetch instinctively knows this, and the fact that he's fake. A poorly made copy made of twigs, leaves and sack-cloth, a part of a contract to steal someone with actual worth. Someone who will not appreciate you having lived their life, despite your prior complete innocence to both that fact, and the nature of your existence.

Understandably, this can be highly traumatic, and drive them to drastic measures to affirm some sense of self, and protect the only life you've ever known.

>No small boxes
Except that there's no such theme in the game itself.
Beasts also destroy their theme of family by literaly allowing you to choose your family
They also claim that heroes are not necessarily wrong but then go on for 300 pages about how heroes are wrong
They also ruin their theme of hunger from the moment they dabble in the theme of crossover

Fetch is generally you without some personality traits that usually really doesn't want to be killed by this weird thing they had apparently been mimicing for their whole life. Some of them can develop echo to summon The Keeper.

Or could develop doki doki feelings that lead to romance.

I'm just going by what the book says, don't shoot the messenger here:

>No Neat Little Boxes

>The world of the Chronicles of Darkness is not a tidy place. Werewolves hunt spirits, but mages deal with them, too. Vampires make people disappear, but changelings find that abhorrent. Sin-Eaters help put the dead to rest, but many other characters deal with the unquiet dead in their own ways. Beast examines some of those swirling undercurrents in the Chronicles of Darkness.

>Characters — and players — might assume that they have a solid understanding of how the Chronicles of Darkness work and what the “rules” are. Beast is a reminder that no one—not the most connected vampire, not the wisest mage, not the oldest mummy — really has all the answers. Beasts delve into the secrets of the Chronicles of Darkness not because they necessarily wish to solve mysteries or gain power, but because this world is their home and they feel they have the right and, sometimes, the responsibility to know.

>This theme comes up in another way, though: Beasts are not “good guys.” They terrify people in order to feed their Horrors. Although their culture teaches that they do so in order to impart important lessons, their peculiar form of pedagogy is entirely optional. A Beast is capable of being a force for wisdom, even for “good” in the Chronicles of Darkness, but doing so is entirely up to the Beast.

Yet another smutfic I wrote once.

Naw, that's dumb. I don't see why life isn't a nice simple answer. There is no creep type covered by life, and that is what azoth creates, life where there was none. It does this more often than it creates a soul.

So...yes on the clone fucking?

Yeah, like I said: it's a fake theme. How the hell does Beast remind us that there's no such thing as a neat little box when they're clearly just another little box added along all the others?

Quite possibly.
I can't see any reason why social maneuvering wouldn't work on your Fetch.

It's there out of sheer arrogance.
"You think you know how things work. But really you know nothing. Buy our book, we're the true source for all Supernaturals"

Beasts break the rules by their very existence, which proves that there is a unified origin for almost all the monsters in the CofD, and that they are the purest form of all monstrosity. Just when you think you've got the whole world figured out, a Beast shows up to be more monstrous than you could ever be, using powers that are the true origin to your own. They shouldn't exist, and yet they do.

>It's there out of sheer arrogance.
Oh you mean like the whole fucking book?
Then again, OPP realized that they fucked up and are working on the Crossover Chronicle in order to deliver a true crossover book instead of a self-masturbatory splat of older-siblings having all the answers

How's that fun again?

Of course, the counterpoint is that Beasts draw power from the Astral, which by its nature connects to all concepts of mankind (which incorporates every splat bar Demon), which explains their "family".

They merely delude themselves into believing their own mythology says they're special. As being anything other than someone whose Soul was eaten by a Goetia, and now exist solely to satiate itself on the sanity of mortals.

Beast would be so much better if they acknowledged the game is about broken monsters who blindly flail around attempting to justify the horror of their existence, and the burden they place upon mankind.

How does it destroy the theme of family by allowing you to choose which Family-the-character-type you are? It means "family" in the colloquial social group type of way.
I also feel like you're misreading "Heroes are wrong lol".

You're right that they ruin the theme of Hunger. I mean, you still Hunger, but you now have a safe and fulfilling way of feeding it.

I feel like that's not the kind of "little boxes" thing that we assumed you meant. I also feel like Beast *highly* encouraging crossover sort of shoots that in the foot. Hunter and Mage and Promethean do a much better job of encouraging "there is weirdness out there!" while Beast says "use this book in combination with these other books!"

>No creep type covered by life
Uh... all of them except Vampires?
Also, the subtle arcana forming the soul is true. But Pyros is closest to Prime, yet inherently untouchable by it. In the crossover explanations in 1e, Pyros can be examined with Prime but not manipulated. There's no "create Pyros" spell intentionally. Also, Azoth doesn't create life, and Life wouldn't do anything for objects regardless.

>Beasts break the rules by their very existence, which proves that there is a unified origin for almost all the monsters in the CofD
Not really. It's pretty clear--and even explicitly stated--that Beasts are Goetia. Also, one of the problems I have with Beast is that it feels like it would fit better if it weren't the, what, 12th CofD game and maybe 30th overall WoD splat?
"Look, here's a wrench in your understanding of the setting!" works much better in, say, Demon or Mummy.
Nevermind that Beast doesn't expand anything; it even just uses something from Mage.

...

You're different, and you get to be different.

>I feel like that's not the kind of "little boxes" thing that we assumed you meant.

>Characters — and players — might assume that they have a solid understanding of how the Chronicles of Darkness work and what the “rules” are. Beast is a reminder that no one — not the most connected vampire, not the wisest mage, not the oldest mummy — really has all the answers.

When they talk about "the answers", they're talking about things like, "Oh well X from Y splat is probably just a Z from Q splat", stuff that CofD fans tend to do that can slip into games. Thus, "you can't fit everything into neat little categories".

No one is really stopping a player from doing that. That actually sounds really interesting.

There is a line in the book that states that the moment a pre-Beast is Devoured there is an instant of darkness and an infinite black space where the Beast feels warm. I imagine the character I want to play wants to achieve that at one point, going back to that safe space and is the primary reason he teaches, for someone to put him back in there.

And I think there's the story hook. Work with Hunters, Changelings, or whatever to get them to the point where they fear him and have to put him down.

But you can still do that in Beast.
In fact, it encourages it :V

Your powers are literally coming from copying X from Y splat!

>Of course, the counterpoint is that Beasts draw power from the Astral, which by its nature connects to all concepts of mankind
>They merely delude themselves into believing their own mythology says they're special.
I don't really think these are mutually exclusive.

It's the way in which they think they're special though that matters. Sure almost no other group has such an innate connection to the Astral.
But then again no other faction tries to claim a universal connection to every other Supernatural.

Best part of 2e was that Mages (the faction previously most likely to justify everything with regards to their cosmology) can very easily tell what's connected to the Supernal, and what's not.

>But then again no other faction tries to claim a universal connection to every other Supernatural.
So?
I honestly don't really see why everyone hates this so much. Vampires have literally claimed they're Gods.

When using prime to study the magic of a different creep, you use an appropriate arcana. Fate for fae, death for vampires, spirit for werewolves, mages supernal + whatever arcana, geist death, etc.

I don't think any current creep links to life arcana.

I think it's because Beast, as much as I love it, is lacking the depth the other splats have.

Why would it need to? Nothing is covered by Forces, either. Also, that's not even true. The book even uses Prometheans as an example in the Theory, Practice, and Crossover sidebar. It suggests that you could rule scrutinizing a Promethean (as in, the Promethean itself) with Life, among others. You also don't have anything scrutinized by Matter, or Space (though I'd argue Space could help pierce a Demon's Cover if you were strong enough).

My biggest problem with it.

Well then that answers my question. I'd never seen that side bar, which is why I was asking what arcana to use for prometheans.

It seems the book itself has said life.

Can you secude your that isn't quite you? Yes? Then you should absolutely have cute romance with your self that isn't you.

Dear /cofd/&/wodg/

I was wondering if anyone had a pic of one of those "Disclaimers" WW used to put near the front of their books? Preferably the one found in VtM, but any one will do.

Thanks in advance.

or not. You know. What have you

Okay, so I want to make a Changeling campaign with elements of monster mash, but try to do it by only using Changeling rules. How would one approach creating Lost that could be easily be mistaken for Kindred? Major of Bane of sunlight and Ban on entering houses uninvited?

>It seems the book itself has said life.
Not quite so simple.

Meh. Seems like a simple answer dressed up with OP style 'but maybe not!' Woo.

I meant that you were looking for something for Azothic Objects and what would activate them. Life isn't the kind of thing that would fall under.

Tbh, I like it that way. Mythos is at its best when it can be adapted to the needs of troupe and Chronicle at hand...

It also provides several options and gives you the framework to fill in the parts they didn't use as an example.

Sometimes you need to force mages to find a way besides 'bs how your arcana works in this instance'. Not always, I know they enjoy arcana BSery. But not everything can be jiggered into every hole. If that works, the arcana lose all meaning.

Whatever would be able to examine the Promethean would be the same arcana that would power the magical objects they create. Prommie athanors and whatever are created by azoth and powered by pyros. Which means life likely works on both.

It shouldn't be bs:d by the player, it should be up to ST to tell what's bs and what actually works.

That is semantics. That is just ST approved BS

>Whatever would be able to examine the Promethean would be the same arcana that would power the magical objects they create.

That doesn't even old up for humans.

Humans would be the actual exception, since a human creating magical objects is abnormal.

Seriously, humans are the worst example to bring up.

>Whatever would be able to examine the Promethean would be the same arcana that would power the magical objects they create.
No it wouldn't. That's not what the thing says, either. It doesn't say that Life is what makes Pyros work.

It says:
>Death would detect Vampires, obviously
>Death might be able to examine a Promethean because they're made from corpses.
>Life might be able to examine Prometheans because they're alive.
>Prime might be able to examine Prometheans because they're alive due to the Divine Fire.
>Spirit would show a Werewolf not as a werewolf, but as being in flux between ephemera and material
It's specifically talking about observing the entity itself. I mean, Death is not the first thing that would come to my mind when thinking of how to examine a Vampire's powers; Mind is. But to examine someone and learn they're a walking corpse, that would take Death.

An Athanor, as a physical inorganic object, will never ever register with Life.

Humans are never an exception, they're the baseline.

All my shrugs.

The 'answers in mage are whatever the players feel like' game isn't all that interesting. Who cares. I'll use life, everyone else can use whatever they want. Because that's what this will end in anyway.

Yes, you can do whatever you want, it's true, but that doesn't mean your reason isn't dumb. And if your reason is dumb, you should expect people to point that out.

In fact the whole section on Mage Sight points out that there isn't really one specific answer to each problem anyway.

The biggest mistake beast made was letting people read the first draft.

The second was not getting another one before being released.

Seriously, imagine if they fleshed out horrors a bit more. Right now making a game about murdering horrors and taking their stuff is a pain in the ass. Imagine what it could of been...

Well, I mean, the earliest draft was leaked to get a freelancer blacklisted, and it did get another draft during and after the Kickstarter campaign that got shown off.

What to you mean, to get a freelancer blacklisted?

I'll guess that you're talking about amy, but isn't that stupid? They could've simply told her she wouldn't be getting more work

I think that ultimately the game is better for having had all the criticism of the Kickstarter draft, even if I think a lot of it was built around nitpicking and hyperbole. But if the final version had been the only version we saw, I think Beast would have done better than it has. The well has already been poisoned, so to speak, and nothing will heal it but maybe time.

The leak and the prerelease were more or less the same game.

Someone from Amy's playtest leaked it to get her fired. It didn't work, at least not right away. To get fired you have to be involved in a leak AND point out how sloppy the Exalted art was.

Nothing?

Ah. Too bad

Ok, so someone got access to the original Beast playtest draft, and threatened to release it unless AmyV stopped posting on WoD general forever, because apparently we can't go one thread without some kind of drama. She obviously didn't, it got leaked. She didn't get blacklisted from that, but rather something else she did later down the line, something about Exalted.

The whole event was very embarrassing.

I looked through my books but none of them had it in there. Sorry, dude. I tried.

Playing World of Darkness for the first time with a human DEA agent in his 30s. What can I expect? Also it's New WoD not Old.