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

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>Question
Do your games take place in more urban locales? Or do you prefer rural games?

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>Do your games take place in more urban locales? Or do you prefer rural games?

Urban, but I like to set up fictional cities like they're an island in the middle of nature. Forests, mountains, deserts, swamps, farmland, and/or whatever are within driving distance.

>Do your games take place in more urban locales? Or do you prefer rural games?

They take place in York and Kyoto because those are the places my players are familiar with.

I once teleported them to NYC and they calmly did day labour, bought plane tickets and flew back to England, then took a train (standard class) back to York.

Remember:
>IGNORE X

Does anyone have any advice, or links to advice for setting creation?

Not as in building a new splat or anything, but for figuring out stuff for my game's main city.
I've run a couple of games without caring about that too much, and it just felt... Empty, incomplete.

I know the Dresden Files RPG (the FATE hack) suggests going about building the entire setting as a group, but I was wondering if people did something similar in CofD?

The Damnation City book has a LOT of good ideas on citybuilding. It's a Requiem 1e book but it's a great book for city inspiration, districts, things like that. I've used it for non-WoD city building.

What i do i grab an existing "standard" and work from there.

For mage i used DaveB "broken diamond" council structure. Once you understand why it works the way it work changing things is easier.

Same with vampire i grabbed the most generic power structure i could find to see how it "normally should work" and part from there.

How playable are belials brood vampires?

Very playable in 1e, they have a whole book dedicated to playing them. There's no material for 2e and it'd be a bit of work to convert the 1e material for 2e.

>1ed is radically different from 2ed

Are you implying otherwise?

I didn't say 'radically' but there is enough difference that it might be more work than he's wanting to convert them. Brood powers function on aspects of Humanity primarily, but also key off a wide variety of skills and attributes. Not that any of that has really changed, but things that come out of some of the Investments might be weird in 2e.

Theres nothing stopping a Matter mage from making himself a magical prosthetic arm is there? Or would he need help from a mage with the life arcana to help him integrate the arm?

The way I see it, you have a few options:
1. Use Matter 4 to animate a prosthetic. You'd need to keep it in spell control, and expend attention in order to control it, probably taking an instant action.
2. Use Matter to develop a highly functional, better-then-exists prosthetic limb with nerve-to-machine interface which functions entirely on Fallen science. If you use Matter only to help create it, not fabricate it from nothing, then it should be Lasting. This should be ludicrously fucking hard, and require extended actions over months if not years with bullshit good dice.
3. Use Matter 4, Life 4 to create a fully functioning cybernetic which integrates flawlessly with your biological matter, which you can control as if it's a natural part of your body, and can be safely relinquished from spell control.

Bump post.

Also, theory. Anyone ever actually run a coterie/group through a Gehenna/End of the World-type scenario?

Yeah I took them into a back room and had their sires shoot them in the back of the head. Then I told all the awesome stuff happening in the metaplot. Much quicker and easier than what the book wanted me to do.

What's is like being the Grinch?

Just use the Dresden style, it works best and gets everyone invested.

Pffft, that's like, what, a few points of bashing damage? What did they do after they finished laughing?

Any reason why you want a robot arm instead of regenerating the limb?

I've been working my way through books from the pastebin for the past 2 months and I've read so many interesting things, fell in love with the world of WoD. My friends have some moderate familiarity with DnD, but know nothing about WoD.

I'd like to introduce my friends to this game because we love roleplaying and this is a chance for them to try it in a wildly different setting.

1) Can I run a campaign (chronicle?) with just the PDFs alone? This is a sillier question, but just wondering if anyone has ran sessions without any physical books.

2) What book do I start with, and what book do I make my friends who want to play read? In DnD the books are pretty obviously separated between DM and PC's but idk here. It seems also that a lot of what I've read is additional content. The monster books are the primary ones right?

I have no preference for a particular monster to play as, so I'll take Veeky Forums's recommendation as for where to start.

Thanks in advance, guys!

Can anyone post the Coil of Zirnitra or the Secrets of the Covenants book? Interested in how they fixed the Coil for a character idea.

I was under the impression that regenerating a limb that has been a long term loss is nearly impossible?

The story is, guy lost his arm, awoke, and his long term aspiration is 'make myself a cyborg'.

can kindred used heat based touch screens?

or would they need to spend vitae

You'd have to blush of life unless it would work in gloves / by brushing a corpse's finger along it

so they're SOL in todays day and age if they want a good smart phone

The spell itself isn't unusually difficult it's just that as of right now there is relatively little information about how to make spell effects 'lasting'. Signs of Sorcery is going to have an entire section dedicated to crafting and relinquishing spells so hopefully it'll clear things up.

However, you can sidestep the entire issue with Supernal summoning or calling in a favor from a healing Spirit. Not that there's anything wrong with a PC with robot limbs. It might make for an interesting legacy.

>Not that there's anything wrong with a PC with robot limbs

In fact, WW books are sadly rife with "biological privilege." It's about damn time those squishy bigots at OPP stopped discriminating against the fully and partially metallic among us!

I bet if there was a special pronoun for the inorganic, we too would have our npc's and sidebars.

I guess some discrimination is still acceptable to those purported liberals at Paradox. No matter what people claim, WW hasn't really come that far since the moustache-twirling evil of the Technocracy.

Or you can buy those gloves with the special fingertips that trigger phone screens where normally gloves won't. They should work

Or they buy a stylus and look like a nerd

>1) Can I run a campaign (chronicle?) with just the PDFs alone?
Yes.

>2) What book do I start with, and what book do I make my friends who want to play read? The monster books are the primary ones right?
God-machine chronicles or Chronicles of Darkness 2e works as a general corebook and is my go to reference. It's all you need for a mortals game. If you want to play a splat you can pick up there own personal corebook (Demon,Vampire,Werewolf,Mage, and Promethean have been updated to the current revision Changeling will be updated in the near future and Mummy will be gathering dust and ignored). The splat book will have the rules specific for the entity you're interested in playing which usually work on top of the rules for mere mortals.

I'd glance at the story-teller's guide it is useful for designing encounters, locals, and NPCs. There are also books like hurt-locker that have expanded rules for combat but it's not really needed for a group just starting out.

So can mages/vampires/whatever take mundane merits not listed in their core book but listed in GMC? Say fleet of foot for example.

As long as they're not prohibited from taking them, yeah

I hate how Onyx Path insist on supporting the patriarchy and undermining the rights of Wymyn everywhere by perpetuating the myth of virginity. BAKA. Even we Myn (derivative form of Wymyn, right on sisters) can do our part by pirating .PDFs instead of pumping more money into Onyx Path's closet Alt-Right agenda.

Fucking Great
youtube.com/watch?v=27I3AN0XwP8

V20 280 "Head shots inflict lethal damage."

Agreed. A tiny sidebar on 3rd gender pronouns doesn't automatically make Onyx Path progressive. They need to be donating a flat percentage of their proceeds from Werewolf products towards the Earth Liberation Front.

>V20

Oh that explains why I hadn't heard about it. I prefer the good editions.

>Upon death, a Kindred's organs wither and atrophy, becoming useless
>Except the brain apparently

Head shots inflict lethal in Requiem too, if I remember right.

Isn't that all it takes to become self-righteous nowadays?

A sidebar, a tumblr blog, screaming at trumptards...

Share hurt locker for the poorfags already

Hurt Locker was shared days ago.

We're now waiting for Secrets of the Covenants.

sendspace.com/file/a44ym4

>screaming at trumptards...

POINT AT THEM AND VOTESHAME

How should I round out my character, friends?

I'm in an old WoD VtM campaign Sabbat game and it seems like the betrayals has begun. I'm starting to spec into non-combat shit and I'm not particularly sure where to go

>One point into conscience to have a better chance of not degenerating
>One point into security for breaking into houses
>One point into firearms to use guns for ranged combat
>One point into investigation so I can actually find shit I need to know

But I'm not sure where to go. I want a bit more combat, but I also want things to make gathering information/assassinations easier.

Also, I have the merits unbondable/magic resistance/calm heart/iron will but they haven't come into play at all in bout' 10 sessions, how do I make use of em'?

Equipment is 4 stakes, an AK, knife, phone, sunglasses, kevlar vest, lighter, $2397, febreeze(we had a smelly ass sewer Nosferatu with the putrefaction flaw, but he died), and a crown made from bones(fuckin' vicissitude)

I'm considering making some molotovs and maybe trying to find some incendiary rounds. We also have a replica European broadsword(made in China) ordered off the internet.

Also, politics were finally introduced recently. For most of us, including me, it's our first tabletop game.

You might want some mental and social stuff.

>screaming at trumptards...
>tfw get to enjoy at least 4 years of pure assblast from liberals

Thankyou for reminding me once again user

What use would it be?

I'm thinking of additional points into intelligence right now, maybe manipulation and one in subterfuge. The game feels weird right now because I'm the only one even remotely caring about politics, group dynamics, and NPC relationships. So the game is in a weird position where I'm plotting lies and contingency plans while my group just follows me due to the fact that they keep ignoring NPCs to do other shit.

>The 80 IQ hobo is the only character whose thought process is better than "holy shit it's a low gen that's obviously bait to get us all killed, let's try to fight and diablerize him in a straight up fight" or "let's run into the enemy head on and shoot it"
>Everyone else has 4-5 int

Opening the Third Eye •
At this basic level, the Dragon develops the ability to learn mortal magics and psychic abilities. For every dot in the Coil of Zirnitra, your character may learn a single Supernatural Merit reserved for mortal characters. However, in addition to any Willpower or other costs, every such power’s activation requires a single point of Vitae. Any failures with Supernatural Merits are automatically considered dramatic. This does still give a Beat.

Unleash the Mind ••
Your character may spend Willpower to activate Supernatural Merits without the normal limitation of Willpower in a turn. She can spend a point to activate a Merit, and spend Willpower to increase a dice pool.
Now, drawbacks do not always occur when using Supernatural Merits granted by this Coil. However, all failures are still considered dramatic failures.

Embolden Potential •••
Your character’s blood attunes to her supernatural gifts, as they become more and more a part of her. She may spend Vitae to increase dice pools for Supernatural Merits, as if they were Physical Attribute dice pools.
Upon taking this Coil, Supernatural Merits cost one Experience less, to a minimum of a single Experience. This counts retroactively; the character is refunded one Experience for each Supernatural Merit she already possesses. At this level, Supernatural Merits gained through Coil of Zirnitra no longer require additional Vitae expenditure.

The Dragon’s Breath ••••
When your character spends Willpower to add dice to a Supernatural Merit dice pool, add her dots in Coil of Zirnitra, instead of the normal +3 dice.
At this level, failures with Supernatural Merits are considered failures, not dramatic failures.

Ascendancy •••••
Your character may push herself to extremes in the invocation of her forbidden arts. By suffering a level of unavoidable aggravated damage (Resilience does not assist), she can roll a Supernatural Merit activation as a rote action. Additionally, your character is no longer limited in the number of Supernatural Merits she may possess.

All the more reason to take more Mental or Social traits. It would be useful because attacking every problem head on isn't something that works, and plus you'll probably just have more fun if you talk to people.

Why are you teasing me with books that won't be released for years? Half-Damned is the supplement I'm most interested in.

>Do your games take place in more urban locales? Or do you prefer rural games?
Most of my games have been in cities, though I'm currently playing in a Mortals game in a rural setting.

Maybe he just thinks bionic arms are cool as fuck but wasn't willing to hack off a perfectly good limb in order to get one. Now that he's already missing a limb he might as well become an awesome cyborg instead of just getting another boring normal puny human flesh arm.

Plus with the wonderous weapon spell you can cram all sorts of shit into a robo-arm
>a gun? sure take 3
>a knife? shit son lets just give you a fucking machete
>a hammer? you can have a whole toolkit!

Er that should have been Wonderful Machine

HAPPY NEW YEAR OF DARKNESS

May your stories be awesome, your campaigns inspired, your die rolls break the laws of probability in a good way, and may Aspel be caught travelling through Singapore with a suitcase full of No. 4 China White.

bloody time travelling australians

Dont hate us because we're secretly colonizing space under your noses.

>colonizing space under your noses.

...just how tall do you think we are?

Aussies are upside down remember

>he doesnt know that we invented shrinking technology

Son we've got entire cities under your left nostril.

>never heard of zombies before
that's classic undead lore boi

Thats just wasted stats.got be optimized

1. You can. I have physicals of all the cores we regularly use, but obscure or ST-only books I have PDF copies of (even if I have physicals) and I use my tablet during gaming for it. XodoPDF Reader is great, super-fast even on some of the non-optimized books.

2. That depends on the gameline. If you're running NWoD of any form, you'll want to have them read the core for the game (if reading 1e, the blue WoD book and then the Creature the Splattening book; if reading 2e, the CoD core is a good reference, but you can get by with just the Creature the Splattening 2e books). If you're going to be running OWoD (that's Vampire the Masquerade, Werewolf the Apocalypse, etc.), then there are more ST-only books, but you only need the VtM/WtA/etc. core book for the most part.

The benefit of WoD is there's very little that ends up being 'PLAYERS STOP READING HERE' like in D&D or other RPG books. So as long as you, the ST, want to use the content of that book? Then everyone can (and in the cases of books that they're taking rules from, should) read it. There's a few OWoD Storyteller Guides which more focus on worldbuilding, how to run the game, perhaps some NPC-type things that players wouldn't normally play (this is more prevalent in the OWoD ST guides, especially pre-Revised, when things like the Sabbat or the Technocracy were bad guys that didn't have PC-style motivations).

If your group likes things like Supernatural, X-Files or Buffy, you can't go wrong with a bog-standard Mortals game using the WoD or CofD cores (CofD has more content in the core, while there's overall more content in WoD 1e with expansion books).

If they like Underworld, Blade, Buffy, TVD/The Originals or Anne Rice I'd say go Vampire.

The question I have here, is WHICH pastebin? Our advice to go with CofD won't mean crap if you've fallen in love with Vampire's huge metaplot, for example.

They can, as long as it doesn't say mortal only. A lot of that wasn't reprinted due to space concerns (which is why I wish they'd kept the 'need WoD Core to build a dude, then Creature the Splattening to add monster' arrangement from WoD. Would've given them more coherency on chargen, as well as more wordcount for splat-specific stuff.

>Dragons can take on mortal supernatural merits AND super supernatural powers with that biografting Coil

Wow. Dragons best covenant. Go Dracula

If you have to lie to the Archbishop about something, what are you going to do? Try to shoot him to believing you?

The point of having even a few useful social stats reflects the reality of vampire: you're a lying sack of monster that HAS to lie to everyone to stay alive, sometimes even your best mates in your pack. Even an average pool of 3-5 social skills is useful for generating at least a 'believable' lie, for example, or wheedling information out of people who don't care you've shot them full of bullets.

Not that user, but I'd like to have a pool of 5 in everything. That's my new goal; general competence. I figure since my Coterie is a pack of morons and I can't trust anyone else, I may as well cover my back at least a little bit in all respects.

Hey, don't cuck my answers!

Having a pool of 5 in everything is a bit silly, though. It's cheaper to get potence instead of more strength, fortitude instead of higher stam, or bloodbuff to cover your weaknesses. 4 for a trait to reroll 10s should be good enough

>5 in everything

Hell, a 3 in everything is really general competence. 5 in everything is 'best in the world at all things'.

I think he meant "dice pool is always at least 5", not 5 in every stat

I meant this A pool of five for everything. Usually three in each Attribute and two in all abilities does the trick.

Dicepool size of five, not having all your attribute/skill ratings at 5.

This isn't Exalted.

That'll cost like a billion EXP, though. Our GM is pretty generous and gives us 3 exp/session, and maybe 6-7 per story depending on how well we played. We play 1-2 sessions a week, so even then, it'd take a long time before having a decent pool in everything

I've already given up on the hopes of ever reaching less than 8th gen and getting 6 in any discipline, so I'd figure I'd just find ways to be stronger without that.

If you want 'raw power' you need to look at combo powers, which are new powers created by combining the effects of 2 or more Disciplines.

I don't think there are any useful combo disciplines involving celerity/fortitude/protean/obfuscate, and there's the huge issue of being taught said combo discipline as well. I can't even find someone to teach me fortitude 2

>Our GM is pretty generous and gives us 3 exp/session
That is not generous.

Our group is pretty retarded. I wouldn't be miffed at all if he only gave us the 1 automatic EXP.
Automatic+Learning Curve+Roleplaying = 3

Then usually not heroics

For reference, looking at VtM: revised, 3 XP per session is the absolute baseline. You get 1 for showing up, 1 for bothering to roleplay (2 if you did a good/memorable job playing your character), and 1 if you can answer "name something your character learned this session".

You then get another 1 if you did something heroic or memorable and survived.

So that's a minimum of 3 if you put any effort in whatsoever, and ranging up to 5 if you did cool stuff. And that's just the session-by-session XP.

For the curious, VtR 1e includes no less than six XP sources, and then there were Flaws and end-of-story rewards on top of that.

Anyone who was getting 1-3 XP per session playing VtR was either putting in zero effort or getting ripped off by their ST.

Well you certainly dont have to worry about combat since you blender shit with protean and celerity. I know first hand what thats like.

Ints not a bad choice, neither is street wise or athletics. Remember that your claws give you climbing bonuses and that you also have them on your feet and have fun running upside down on celings

Oh yes there is, retain the quick blood is celerity and protean 3 and it lets you refund blood used for celerity actions.

Then there is another one thats something like 1 in protean 1 in celerity which lets you drink blood with your hands which is helpful.

If you can grab potence there is one thats 1 potence and 2 protean which lets you shoot your claws for ranged agg damage

Where do you see a Protean version? I know that's from Dark Ages, but it's an Assamite combo using Quietus 3.

Its in one of the books, either the v20 or Lore of the clans.

For whatever reason there are a few combo disps that can use either quietus or protean. If drivethrough was still up i'd just send you there

Just to add on to this, it could also be in one of the guide to books since those things often have janky shit in them

Can I link for these? Thanks a ton, this seems crazy. Not sure if my GM will allow it since it's oWoD, though.

Quick Blood seems useful, so do ranged claw attacks, and drinkin' from hands = I can probably drain em' as I attack which means unlimited blood maybe. There's also quickened reflexes, which stop ambushes... and bear form, where if you have fortitude, you can soak all aggravated with full stam+fortitude, meaning pre-bloodbuff stam to 6, bearform, then go fight.

... those ARE OWoD powers, dude.

>conflating zombies with vampires

ok

Sorry, like I mentioned the site that had all of this shit was taken down a while back so now its scattered across a bunch of different sites and books

The other Coil lets you become human for 11-Blood Potency hours. And also has a Scale that lets you buy Humanity/Integrity/Similar for one Experience less per dot of the Coil. If you get completely drained of all blood or vitae and sit around trying not to die.
You can also Diablerize Humanity. And spend Vitae on Humanity rolls.

You can run it with PDFs alone. It's how most people play in my experience (though most of my games have been online).
I'd normally suggest starting with Hunter, but we're kind of in a very complex limbo for Hunter, where it's not quite 2e, so you'd need three books to play at least. So instead I'll say start with the second edition corebook. Chronicles of Darkness corebook. That gives you the core rules for mortal characters, a few additional mechanics for ghosts/spirits/angels, as well as mechanics for creating antagonist monsters for the players to deal with. If you've seen Supernatural or Buffy or any sort of show like that, you'll have a decent idea of what you're in for.
The Chronicles of Darkness corebook also has suggestions for a focused "Chronicle" (their term for game) that involves The God-Machine, a powerful mechanical deity that secretly manipulates reality, complete with cults and angels. It won't give you a straightforward module that you follow (though there are a few of those online) but it will give you a lot of suggestions. The individual monsters provided in the "Horrors and Wonders: Antagonists" section also each come with a bit of a story hook.

You could also start with one of the "monsters", but in general they're very different modes of play from the base game, and I will always suggest familiarizing yourself with that first. At least, until Hunter 2e comes out.

So I was looking through the mage 2e book and I noticed an almost total lack of antagonist stat blocks. Would I be able to retrofit 1e material into 2e to make up for that deficiency?

>Stat blocks in a WoD game

I don't know what parallel universe you're living in but I'm staring at a few in my mage 1e core book.

So here's a weird question.

Are there any of you guys who use electronics when you game, particularly like tablets? Beyond PDF readers and dice rollers, are there any apps/programs you find useful for TTRPGs?

Particularly anything you'd suggest on a Windows 10 tablet.

undead undead

Wow they didn't change that coil at all despite having 5 different forum threads about it's abuse. You can graft the Producer merit onto a ghoul which lets you cause 1 lethal for 2 vitae, use 1 of the vitae to heal the lethal ad infinitum. Theres also the gifted merit in Witch Hunters and spending an extra dot per mage spelll via the sorcery suggestions in Mirrors. All I can say is, sweet fuck I don't know many tables that will let this coil pass. The minmax is real.

The preview for Ziva is missing the third dot, if you'd also like to post that and the scale, user. I won't ask for grafting the flesh since it's probably unchanged. Game balance went out the window when they made this book.

I mean, if anyone was going to be a bunch of munchkin fucks when it comes to blood spending, it's probably the Ordo Dracul. I'd be very wary of someone going all in on the coil at my table, but I can't say it's out of character, at least.

I feel like you just don't understand game balance. You're the kind of person who would argue about how you can chain Mystery Cult to get tons of merits for free, while ignoring that no ST would allow that. And this is a situation where things that ST would allow is real.

Wouldn't it be the developers that don't understand game balance?

What, you mean you don't like playing "mother may I" with your ST/players?