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

They can interact, so long as they move to the same frequency.
Ghosts and Spirits can materialize.
Vampires can enter the Shadow through an Iris.
I guess some Blood Magic ritual might be able to allow Vampires to enter Ghost Twilight though, Spirit seems too disconnected.

>How do you feel about supernatural creatures influencing human history?
Technically the Exarchs are behind all human suffering, so there's that. I mean, you could argue they're the result of all human suffering instead, but chicken/egg distinctions aside, they're self-propagating memes that have a massive world spanning cult of wizards dedicated to them. Even if Seers didn't create the Nazis, they certainly engineered situations so that the Nazis would be around.

I tend to draw the line at most historical figures actually *being* supernatural, or at least most figures of the mid 18th century forward. I did write the possibility of Captain Morgan being a Sin-eater, but George Washington likely wasn't anything with a power stat or altered Morality.

>How do you feel about supernatural creatures influencing human history? Has you party ever influence it?

I think it comes off as a little tacky; the Assassin's Creed thing where they assume the viewer is too stupid to understand that we're in the Renaissance unless you're Da Vinci's secret best friend that history forgot is just profoundly not my thing. You can be involved in historical moments, certainly, but I never want the truth behind a major event to be "vampires caused it!" because that invalidates the real history that led us to that point.

For example, saying "a Mummy was secretly running the Knights Templar" is goofy for my tastes, but saying "a handful of Templars revered an Arisen who called herself Baphomet and shielded them once the Pope had them disavowed" is more tasteful and lets you have fun with stuff. Dark Eras handles it best in the Alexandrian setting, where they say that Alexander is a plain old mortal who still changed the world, and because they live in that world the Awakened react to that.

>Chron

The Chronic

Coughed a shit, Long live the new CoD

Is bein a mage fun?
Can vampires be mages too?

depends on what you mean by mage

if you mean "WoD mages with the ability to make reality their bitch" then it is fun and no vampires can't be mages

if you mean "has magic powers" then every splat gets powers that could be described as magic and nWoD vamps even get blood sorcery

>Is bein a mage fun?
Sure, if you like effortlessly winning at everything.

>Can vampires be mages too?
No. Mages like to pretend they're still essentially human mortals, this gives them a "weakness" to parade around as a counter to the claim that they effortlessly win at everything.

It can be.
No, they can't.

Best you can do is be a tremere or you break the rules and have your own fun by stacking splats. Also look into Blood Sorcery, it's the closest thing you'd get to being a vampire mage with free-form powers without breaking the rules.

>if you like effortlessly winning at everything.

Just like in real life, I'm basically a mage irl.

So, I was thinking of joining a Cwod play by post online game, has anyone had any experience with them? I haven't played many games in the Cwod setting, what level of setting knowledge is expected?

>effortlessly
bitch prep time takes work and half that work is invalidated by abyssal invaders/exarchs/rival mages

if you want effortlessly winning at everything you want beast

Depends on the game.
If you're a fresh-off-the-bed Vampire, not too much.
If you're playing bullshit powerful Elders? Quite a fair bit.

Just start out "Solitare" and add players if you get interest. You might need to give the player a sidekick.

>the Assassin's Creed thing where they assume the viewer is too stupid to understand that we're in the Renaissance unless you're Da Vinci's secret best friend that history forgot is just profoundly not my thing.
I think that it's more that people come to Assassin's Creed for those moments. After all, the whole plot is that you're living through events that were kept secret from history. I also like that scattered throughout history, real people were involved in secret conspiracies, because that's already similar to how real people view the world they live in: That historical events were all orchestrated by shadowy cabals of powerful people or revolutionaries. Which if you know your history isn't always entirely untrue. So I don't really mind things like "JFK had a mystical artifact that made him supernaturally charming and he was killed to take it back because he was upsetting the balance of power". Or like in Hunter, where Lincoln was killed by a monster, and the Ford's Theater incident was a fake, where they killed a hobo.

>Dark Eras handles it best in the Alexandrian setting, where they say that Alexander is a plain old mortal who still changed the world
Actually, it says that's an option (and the one they assume), but that he could also have been Awakened, or the scion of divinity as was often claimed.

Well, some DMs allow you to change history.

Goddamn it, new POD from the back catalog when?

So, I'm running a chronicle with the TF:V as enemies. Would it be too much to have some of their elite operatives having the Delta Protocol upgrades from Hurt Locker?

This is a neonate vampire game btw, and the characters are quite combat specced.

>I'm running
That's all up to you. I say go for it, though. Don't even bother with the dosages or anything and treat the Protocol augs as Advanced Armoury.

>Influencing human history

I don't like it, but what can you do?

Also, the other user lookin for Ordo Alchemy? There's not any released in 2e that I know of, but it's covered under Spoiling in 1e in the Ordo Dracul book.

I've downloaded Werewolf and Chronicles of Darkness from the pastebin, gonna download Mage and Vampire when it lets me.

Which PDFs should I start with? The one just labeled Chronicles of Darkness, and then just the main Werewolf one?

I would say chrod rulebook first and then whatever splat caught your eye.

What's the best way to play with friends over the internet?

A group of friends and I would like to try this, but one of my 3 friends lives out of state.

hurt locker scan when?

Discord, IRC, Skype, pick your poison and look for a dicebot. Share sheets with Google Docs.

>scan

what is this the 90s?

Might be a D&D player, they aren't allowed digital books.

>How relevant & interesting have the new Paradox rules been in your games?

Two of my three Assholes are looking to become wise. The third was thrown into a woodchipper by his own spell and is looking for new legs.

Think paradox is working fine.

>Has Time magic been disruptive to your games, like so many feared after the first full PDF dropped?

No one will pick it up. Don't ask why, I have no idea.

>Generally, what're your opinions on how well the game runs?

I like it, which is more then I can say about 1e which I ran as a dare. I would like more stuff on Artifacts. Other then that its okay.

What?

D&D isn't released in digital form. If you want e-books, you have to use pirated scans.

That's great

I'm in my mid 30's so yeah, I am from the scan era. Pdf's from kazaa where the greatest thing in my gaming history.

Seriously? What is this, the 90s?

They seriously claim that piracy will make sure it isn't profitable to release them as digital.
I'll also point out that 4e WAS released that way.

While we're requesting Hurt Locker, don't forget to also share Secrets of the Covenants.

Wasn't that shared days ago?

I'm curious: what do people think of the idea that vampires were originally intended to be humanity's protectors? The original downside to their immortality and magic was that they would feel the pain of anyone's blood they consumed, so would be effectively forced to protect humans to safeguard their own existences; with great power comes great responsibility. But this trait was lost in some past catastrophe (in Masquerade, involving some Antediluvians screwing around), and was replaced with the Beast and such. Golconda, in this case, is simply a return to the original state of vampirism.

not him but i haven't seen anything and if they did they neglected to add it to the mega

I think it's silly. There are zero hints that something like that is true in the setting.

I always preferred the interpretation that God is just a massive cunt who took some punishment way too far.

As written, true. But it's a theme that I honestly find more interesting for vampires than "bleh, evil predators, bleh." It's something that you'd have to drop into the backstory to be picked up over time, but I think it could be handled well.

I used to like using God as an antagonist, but I've since come to prefer not using God at all.

>I used to like using God as an antagonist, but I've since come to prefer not using God at all.

So did white wolf until recently

Sounds retardulous.
Humans were meant to be their own protectors.
lrn2Hunter

Why would you use squishy mortal protectors who age and die if you had access to better ones? But don't worry, I haven't forgotten about hunters in my chronicle; they're just Society of Leopold antagonists.

Eh I think theres a difference between using God as an antagonist and just thinking he's a prick in the setting.

Though the Ordo Dracul are pretty 'fuck you dad' about the whole thing arent they?

>As written, true. But it's a theme that I honestly find more interesting for vampires than "bleh, evil predators, bleh." It's something that you'd have to drop into the backstory to be picked up over time, but I think it could be handled well.

Your tastes don't align with mine then. To me that theme just invites even more "oh, woe is me"-ing. Being cursed is bad enough, but being being cursed and failing in an ancient trust is worse.

I see them more "D-Dracula senpai!"

Retarded as fuck. Don't play vampire (don't play most of WoD) if you dislike edgy evil predators, seriously. It's like those people playing D&D without liking adventurer archetypes.

Well, you the PC didn't fail in an ancient trust; the failure occurred thousands of years ago, from a few dickheads. The entire race was knocked out of alignment from the sins of a few, and part of the point of discovering this is trying to find a way to put it back on track.

Oh, there are edgy evil predators aplenty. They just won't be the entire race.

I find it more attractive if it's the good guys who are in the "wrong". Like, that's the whole point of playing Salubri, isn't it? You got memed by Saulot and literally everyone else but you don't give a fuck, it's the bad guys who are supposed to have it easy.

But the bad guys do have it easy in this scenario, or at least easier; they can just coast along their corrupted existences if they want, and most of them will. It is indeed much harder to set things right.

>Well, you the PC didn't fail in an ancient trust

They totally do. They can't do what they are made to do.
Also, making the guardians of mankind into bloodthirsty creatures who can't face daylight is a shitty idea. (Or is that also part of the disaster?)
Making Mages the guardians would be a better idea. Except all Mage-haters would get their panties in a twist from it.

But they don't have it easy defending their posture. Good should be hard to defend, evil should be easy to sell. There's no "things" to set right or wrong, the important is your inner fight and this simply doesn't exist in your planned reality. You're either ignorant, right or don't give a fuck. No real temptation or doubt, since they can be cast aside by doing more research, and therefore no merit. The more research the good character does, the more challenged his views should be.

They were designed originally to protect against threats that were more active at night, but actually being burned by daylight was part of the curse levied by the shattering of the original contract.

The forces of evil do have a convincing pitch, though I don't quite want to go into more detail because it's not impossible that some fa/tg/uy I'd later want to recruit has already heard too much.

>They were designed originally to protect against threats that were more active at night, but actually being burned by daylight was part of the curse levied by the shattering of the original contract.

Right. So what of the blood thirst? The fear of fire? The various curses of the clans? The withering of the human connection as humanity dwindles?

>Best you can do is be a tremere
Not strictly true, you also have necromancy,
Koldunic, and Daimonion. As well as a few others that I can't recall off hand.

IF you follow one of the 'endings' of VTM it's not that god was a cunt, it was that Caine was a proud asshole that wouldn't even try to be forgiven for KILLING HIS FUCKING BROTHER.

What do you guys think of Mage: The Awakening>

How hard is it to get into for new players?

Hardest part it getting people to understand exactly who Mages are, and what their mentality is like.

They're not just "people with Magic", they're a very special kind of person mentally.

It's great.

Easier to get into with 2e, but really only works if your players are going to be super interested in the setting and learn on their own. It's the most complicated gameline in the system. At best you can make a cheat sheet.

I find that after playing for a bit and dealing with both the privileges of magic and the dangers of Paradox and Hubris, players find themselves getting into the Mage mentality.

Wrong version of vampire, senpai.

Never played it but the person I knew that ran it on occasion awarded bonus xp for bringing your own copy of the book to session because it made it easier on him when people had the book.

although an interesting idea: to get the idea of nocturnal predators from a noble ideals would be to make the original so alien to the modern, that they might as well be a different monster outright.

But hey man not my monkey not my problem

Feeding on blood was always part of the idea, but doing actual harm to anyone would cause them pain in turn, and killing someone they fed on would cause utter, long-lasting agony. Everything else was caused by the broken contract except for the clan curses, which more had the possibility of them existing opened up, and started appearing for various other reasons (for instance, in this version, Absmiliard's hideousness was caused by his self-loathing after one of Zapathasura's illusions tricked him into dealing a killing blow to Arikel).

When is V5 coming out?

Ooooh, so this is Masquerade faggotry.
In that case, do as you please.
Immortal superheroes assemble.

Never, it' going to fail just like the mmo did and we'll be fucked over again.

Eh. You know that drinking someone's blood harms them, right?

Actually, I initially developed the idea for Requiem, then ported it to Masquerade. In the Requiem version, the clan curses all came from the personal flaws of some of the earliest Embraced after the contract was broken.

Okay. I'm a newbie and don't want to drop V20 money on a book. I vastly prefer physical books to PDFs.

They said they'll have a release for it for TT in 2018, and it's in active playtesting by Dracula's crew right now.

Seriously. If you want to remove all that makes vampires different from humans mentally, why even have vampires to begin with?
Also, if it is Requiem, explain Belial's Brood and the Strix, as they relate to this.

In V20, it's completely negligible, since mortals regenerate one blood point per day; you could feed from only one person for the rest of your nights if you never used Vitae for anything other than waking up. Since this is obviously tapping way more blood than, say, blood donations safely could, I came to the conclusion that vampire saliva contains enzymes that promote the rapid replenishment of blood.

Then you better go buy a VTM revised book, because we aren't getting anything cheaper and modern than the V20 book for awhile. Like it's only.. 50 dollars or something for V20 man, come on.

So? Just because game mechanics don't make it that big a deal, it sure does harm humans.
By the requirements of their very existence they harm humans.
Provided ofc that you don't allow all vampires to subsist on animal blood.

It's 65 dollars for a shitty standard version with Office Depot paper. For the actual bookstore-quality rulebook, it's one hundred dollars.

>Seriously. If you want to remove all that makes vampires different from humans mentally, why even have vampires to begin with?
Because it's a connection I find fascinating. As a vampire, you stand above mortals in terms of power, yet depend on them for so much; food, companionship, culture, technology, transportation... it's a relationship that doesn't seem unakin to that of a mortal noble or politician to her constituents, and a similar social contract could--one might even say should--exist. Obviously, there are many, many corrupt and selfish vampires, but there are many, many corrupt and selfish politicians/nobles; a vampire who wants to do good should not simply run and hide from their nature, but deliberately use and deploy it for the greater good.

Belial's Brood was created by a proficient guardian of humanity who just happened to be a psychopath who wanted to leverage his immortality to achieve godhood (how precisely this happened is unclear). The breaking of the contract was largely his fault, and while he didn't create the Beast, he did weave a nasty bit of blood sorcery that calls those particularly attuned to their Beast to join his Brood. The Striges, meanwhile, are just shadowy monsters native to the realm vampiric powers were tapped from.

Hey man you said you want a physical book, there's a cheap option or you get the expensive version for loyal fans not first timers.

I see what you mean, but it seems crazy that I can get a very nice quality DnD book for like 30 bucks, and it's 100 for VTM.

Why make it Vampires then?
Werewolves are all about the close protection of their kin, and tight-knit communities.
You just need to add their rage as part of their curse, and they also have a specific moment for that curse.
Also, would also have a nice theme of watch dogs, and they can ALSO handle ephemeral beings.

If you have a Half Price Books store nearby, check them out. I picked up the main cores for Revised for $10 a pop and most of the Revised Clanbooks for $6 a pop (I still need Revised Tzimisce and Revised Malkavian). V20 compiles everything as one giant omnibus, so you don't have to have all the books to reference, which is part of its utility. I am surprised it's still so much though, considering I got the deluxe MET VtM for $60 and I find the quality to be really good, and I think it's a thicker book than V20.

Not really man, like I get you, but DnD is still making more money than OPP, it's in stores and is the first thing to come to peoples minds when they think about TTRPGs. White Wolf/OPP has gone through some shit and is small as shit now on top of being a 'dead' gameline in a lot of peoples minds.

Really man I'd suggest you take a look at the V20 pdf in the Mega and see if you like it, then worry about the physical book.

>on top of being a 'dead' gameline
Jeez. I WONDER what caused that belief? Oh, right! I think it's the fact that there were THREE YEARS between the release of their flagship game and the first supplement!

Honestly I really wish they would stop making new game lines like that shitshow beast and go full throttle into updating existing game lines to 2e and putting out supplements for them

Hey man I'm not defending them on the SotC bullshit, they got The PAck out fairly fast... Man is Forsaken the only 'big three' game that wasn't a fucking cluster fuck in one way or another? It came out fast and got a supplement, unlike vampire or mage.

Yeah. They should have saved Demon (and preferably Mummy) for later as well. Right now it is in a weird-ass position stuck between first and second edition.
I'm OK with Dark Eras and the Crossover Chronicle though, since they expand the main splats.

Demon is perfectly 2e, what's the issue?

Firstly? Auras. Demons lack an equivalent to the Predatory Aura, Renown, or Nimbus. And those are rather important when it comes to crossover stuff.
There is also the excess of Aggravated damage delivered, which is quite out of tune with 2e philosophies.