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

Either way, I'm done supporting either White Wolf or Onyx Path.

I'll keep my old 1e nWoD books and my 1e/2e oWoD books, and I'll still buy second-hand hard copies of older books off of Amazon, but I will never send Martin Ericsson or the SJW hipster toolbags at Onyx Path another penny of my money.

Fuck them.

Plus, I'm the kind of guy who hacks his WoD settings anyway (I remove the metaplot from oWoD entirely, and remove Humanity and other morality systems from nWoD), so Onyx Path and White Wolf already hate me for having badwrongfun.

Fuck them. I'm glad that White Wolf is no longer in CCP's hands, but they couldn't have been bought out by a worse group of people.

Paradox should just stick to making strategy video games and stay the fuck away from World of Darkness.

So, who is the worst White Wolf/Onyx Path developer?

Martin "Dracula" Ericsson?

Phil "Satyros" Brucato?

Justin "World of Darkness is Serious Fucking Business" Achilli?

The fucker responsible for Beast (forgot his name)?

Brucato, probably.

I have no idea who any of these people are or the larger politics surrounding White Wolf/Obsidian Path/whatever. I just like Vampire: the Masquerade and am jazzed about V20 existing and getting support.

I also just never cared much for Requiem. It just feels bland and empty next to Masquerade. Not that Masquerade didn't suffer from the reverse of that problem (i.e., bloat). But between the two, I prefer the setting and themes of Masquerade to the setting and themes of Requiem.

Pretty much, yes.
And they are claiming it is to "protect" CofD. That irks me even more.

Meh, I keep the base setting but chuck out the themes for both Masquerade and Requiem. Eat the chicken and throw away the bone is my general approach to WoD's themes.

I just generally prefer Requiem because it has no metaplot and Rule Zero is more encouraged and easier to achieve than in Masquerade, which strongly discourages Rule Zero (at least in Revised).

Personally i think David hill Jr is one of the worse people working for OPP. He is the definite proof of OPP shitty hiring practices of getting people from their own little echo chamber.

Then Phil Brucatto, though i dont blame him as much as the company itself for not reviewing M20, then hitting him with it draft several time on his face and send him to his safe space without a organic dinner until he produce a quality product.

As for Dracula, he hasnt actually release a product just yet.

Martin Ericsson is an utter toolbag who probably got his ass kicked in high school a lot.

He really strikes me as one of those edgelords who cuts themselves while voluntarily listening to Type O Negative, Sisters of Mercy, and Linkin Park.

If Rod Ferrell never snapped, killed two folks, and went to prison, he would've been the American equivalent of Martin Ericsson.

>I just like Vampire: the Masquerade and am jazzed about V20 existing and getting support.

Same here, at least they didnt fuck up masquerade....yet.

>But between the two, I prefer the setting and themes of Masquerade to the setting and themes of Requiem.

In the end is easier to ignore stuff you dont like from a game that is creating stuff you like from nothing.

Martin Ericsson's "Differentiate our WoD" program is OPP's only defense against White Wolf!

True

I'd say Brucato is the worst, given how much of a nutjob he is, with M20 truly revealing the depths of his insanity. Seriously, M20 is like a Chick Tract for Chaos Magick.

After him, I'd say Achilli is the next worst because of his snobby attitude and how he basically made toxic elitism the norm for White Wolf fans with his work in Revised Edition.

Then David Hill is bad for Beast alone.

Ironically, Martin Ericsson is probably the least offensive of the four despite the fact he is a whiny edgelord blinded by nostalgia. He hasn't actually written any game material yet, so we don't exactly know how bad he's gonna be. Worst thing he did was neuter CofD's potential, and considering he could've just discontinued the franchise altogether, that's not as bad as it could have been.

>Then David Hill is bad for Beast alone.
What? Did he even work on that?

I don't know for sure, but I think he may have. I'll have to check my sources.

Oh yeah, that reminds me, I put together a playlist of pretentious music for my upcoming V20 game. Thoughts?

(For the record, I'm the guy who keeps bring up The World Of Ow I Stubbed My Toe Someone Turn On The Damn Light, so a lot of this is meant to be tongue-in-cheek intentionally edgy)

>in an alternate world, Rod Ferrell is the CEO of White Wolf while Martin Ericsson is serving a life sentence for double murder

In a tongue-in-cheek context, that playlist actually works.

Hell, I'd still use Inner Universe and Dragula in a game's soundtrack unironically.

>how he basically made toxic elitism the norm for White Wolf fans with his work in Revised Edition.

Can you expand on this?

>After him, I'd say Achilli is the next worst because of his snobby attitude and how he basically made toxic elitism the norm for White Wolf fans with his work in Revised Edition.
Thought that was cause of Exalted.

Camilla, please shut the fuck up.

Ever notice the "One True Way" attitude so prevalent in White Wolf's fandom.

Justin Achilli essentially normalized that shit with his decisions made during Revised Edition's run.

The whole "If you're not playing overly angsty personal horror, you're playing the game WRONG!" attitude.

1e and 2e oWoD had personal horror, but it was treated as one valid theme out of several other equally valid themes.

David Hill has been great on Changeling so far.

I wanted to put in some Linkin Park, but nothing really felt like it fit. Maybe "Faint" or "Numb". "In The End" and "Crawling" are a little too on the nose, on the other hand.

I'm actually going to go on record as stating that I actually unironically like the My Chemical Romance album The Black Parade. It's a decent rock n' roll album, which is more than I can say for 90% of rock n' roll that come out in the past 10 years. But then again I'm really into 70s/80s rock n' roll in the vein of Slade and early Queen, and The Black Parade was intentionally modeled on that style, so it might just be the appeal factor.

I never read Exalted, so I would not know, but that does not surprise me, to be honest.

We finally got rid of Aspel and now we have Camilla. These threads just can't win, can they?

Nigga what?

Have you read VtM? There's entire parts devoted to telling you to do you. Revised and V20 as a fact were supporters of that .

God damn I wish IanW was around to kick people like you in the face.

Meh, I prefer oldies music from the 50's, 60's, and 70's along with classic rock (1960's-1980's).

Once rock started becoming "alternative", I tuned out.

Classic country is good too, but modern country sucks ass.

Ah, so he's the reason why I felt the need to put a disclaimer in my Vampire Monster Manual.

Personally I think Vampire runs best when it runs like the first 2/3rds or so of Bloodlines. Dark without being oppressive, but lighthearted at times without going full farce. Open to both overt and subtle approaches to problems. The attitude that "being a vampire is awesome" isn't a wrong one.

1e and 2e had that, and V20 brought that back.

Revised had that stuff too, but usually with a backhanded comment on how you didn't truly understand the game.

Yup

Achilli was a shitlord, but he did mellow out somewhat over time.

Brucato is clinically insane while Ericsson is an utter dickwad.

>Will there ever be WoD vidya again?

Probably not and even if there was, it would probably suck.

Speaking of vidya, I miss the Street Fighter RPG that White Wolf made in the 90's. I even mix it with my oWoD games from time to time.

Speaking of Capcom, I wish Dino Crisis would come back.

>Rules-wise, higher existences are tricky because hard-and-fast guidelines rob the accomplishment of its mystery ("If the character sees God, she may ask him 1d3 questions")

From the Revised Clanbook Tzimisce.

For my part, I come from D&D natively, and my approach to the matter is that if D&D can start as a tabeltop wargame where characters were disposable and become a game where individual characters matter and you want to run the same one for years, it's not wrong for WoD to go the other direction.

I also generally prefer having some hard-and-fast guideline rules in order to streamline play. It's not that I'm lazy, it's that when my players are making a mess of things and doing stupid shit like trying to negotiate with the sapient vozhd, it can be a pain in the neck to come up with stuff on the fly.

Whatever its other flaws, D&D has been knocking around for more than 40 years. It's doing SOMETHING right.

Agreed

Too bad the only good Dino Crisis game was the first.

I wish oldschool tank control Resident Evil would come back
Jill is 10/10

Nooot a fan of any Resident Evil before Resident Evil 4. I'm kind of bad at video games that aren't called StarFox 64, see, and inevitably what happened to me in Resident Evils 0-3 and Code Veronica was that within the first 15 minutes I was out of ammo and health and was desperately shuffling away from zombies and/or dogs. It just wasn't fun for me.

Jill is indeed 10/10, though.

This

You are what is wrong with the Resident Evil fandom

I probably spent the entirety of my middle school life playing Resident Evil games. The series sort of died to me after 4, which I consider one of my favourite games of all time, but not really a Resident Evil game.

Old Capcom horror games in general were and still sort of are my fucking jam. Haunting Ground was superb and I still play through Clock Tower 3 every now and again.

This also reminded me of an old youtube channel I used to watch and now I'm just ashamed

Tank controls were bad and you should feel bad. It also went downhill on new controls because after 4 they forgot to add horror with their action but that's a completely different axis of good-bad than controls.

I remember her but didn't follow. I wonder if she ever got any better over time?

I also remember Capcom Friends

Ahh, that brings back memories. Nothing like a Fishmalk to make every other character look good by comparison.

Also, do you use a template to make the stat-blocks? I'd love to use that format for my own games.

Is the Viking dark era any good?

Leggy's animation improved with time, but looking back at her channel it all feels sort of adolescent. Stuff that I would be really down with if I was still a teen, but now it just seems sort of mid-2000's lolsorandumy to me.

That was sort of the whole fandom in a nutshell though, lots of lolsorandumness. It still doesn't stop me from getting Capcom nostalgia every now and again though.

It reads like a dry history book and then there's also werewolves. One of the weaker Eras.

>caring about anything other than Forsaken by Rome

Yes. In truth, it's assembled from the D&D 5e's monster statblock, which I find to be among the more elegant ever made given how neatly it organizes things, though obviously it's been heavily modified for my purposes.

Still, if you head over to /5eg/, the Mega in the OP should be able to get you to the Microsoft Word document that contains all the templates n' stuff. The stat-block is made out of a bunch of invisible tables and seems to actively resist attempts to edit it, though, just as a heads up.

It might be just as easy for you to build the thing from scratch in Microsoft Word, using tabs rather than tables.

>That was sort of the whole fandom in a nutshell though, lots of lolsorandumness.

God I remember fandoms for everything back in 2005. I was online before then as a younger teen, but it was around then I first started venturing out of anime forums and getting involved in fandoms and other sites besides with my friend group and going to a local convention. Shit was so terrible.

That's also about when I first stumbled onto this site. There's no escape.There never was.

That feeling when you get rejected from a game simply because the ST didn't like your character concept, even though he asked for 6 players and 6 people posted.

What was your concept?

Rich Moros who survived a near death experience during a sea trip and was carried back to land by someone he saw as Charon The Boatsman. The experience made him reconsider the purpose of money and power, so now he uses his resources and magic for philanthropy. He is a member of the Silver Ladder.

I mean I've shot down PC ideas before because it doesn't work for the game, tonally skewing way dark or light, or due to it being an obvious troll. Usually you work with the player to either fix the idea or go back to the drawing board though.

Not really. It focuses way too much on the wrong things. Like a battle at the ass-end of the era.
It also doesn't bring up the Shadow of old Scandinavia, like, at all.
It has a decent translation of the Technology Gift to a pre-industry setting though.
Oh, and it has a write-up of a Lodge without ANY mechanics. It's literally a waste of space.
Oh, and the Geist tack-on is just bland.

He didn't give say what he disliked about the concept at all, nor did he give any indication that he might accept a modified or alternate concept.

Should have asked, but he should have had some commentary anyway. Weird. Maybe he just really hates one specific aspect. The altruism? The Silver Ladder? Charon?

I'm curious, can Mages summon Wraiths with death magic?
Or any of the other strange things from the underworld like Plasmic monsters?

I dunno, I get the feeling I wouldn't have fun at his table. But that's ok. I can find other games. I am not so sure if my concept is so good either.

Can anything be magic in Mage the Awakening?
Like... no matter how odd the belief it can have supernal relevance and be true magic?

IGNORE X

>Believing Drac has any control over newworld
haha lulz no

What are you talking about?
Belief has absolutely 0 to do with magic in Awakening.

So what parts of WoD are represented in that image? Other than Vampire.

>Will there ever be a World of Darkness vidya again?

Sure. But I'm not really holding out any hope for it being any good.

>M20
Phil. fuck this hack.

Drac is like that over enthusiastic kid. so meh. good luck to him I guess. maybe he'll make something?

>Beast
The developer succeeded in making a mechanically noob friendly cross splat, but suffered in the writing department(terrible) but I'd chalk that one up to lose time. and cracking under the schedule. Which really does suck. Because it's got some interesting ideas. just didn't come together.

Justin? Don't remember the story on him

Yes?
Like.... anything and everything is magically relevant in Mage. You can have weird mages who believe that the stock markets have a magical influence over the world and by manipulating them they can cast magic. And it works for them.

>Will there ever be a World of Darkness vidya again?
There's an MMO in the making. For almost a decade now.

Wrong game. Awakening at best you can use some mortal trappings to aid in spell casting but they don't do anything and aren't magic. Ascension is the belief is magic line.

>We ever get rid of anyone
What fresh new hell is Camilla?

No, not really.

Magic in Awakening is not finding Magic in the world, it's using the symbolism of the world to call down the pure power of the Supernal realms.

So for example, there's no inherent Magic in Hermetic concoctions, Druidic chants, and Wiccan rites.
However each of those represents various Supernal symbols in different ways, which a Mage can use to enhance their Magic using them as Yantras.

Basically instead of creating an entire spell by yourself, using nothing but your imagination, you can use those stand-ins, which define parts of the spell by themselves, to enhance your spell.

Also, these traditions can hide kernels of Supernal knowledge, hidden deep within the fallen detritus of Pancryptia, which a Mage can pull forth and learn from. These wouldn't actually let their Sleeper practicers use Supernal Magic, but they might for example include Spirit-summoning rights operating off Fallen magic, or they might just be a hiding place where the Supernal has sequestered away some secrets.

Yes and No

It's mostly based on finding symbolism and sympathetic connections in the world prison . BUT you can buy into and spend exp in order to use off beat tools to still do your magic. It can make for some highly specialized but non then really effective magic

I should also probably clarify when I mean it's not about "finding Magic in the world". I mean it's not about finding the actual ability fo cast Magic in the world.

There's a fuckload of Magic shit going down in the Fallen World all the time, however as a Supernal Mage you're probably just going to be getting enlightenment from that (increasing Gnosis), as well as finding discrete Magical items/effects which you can use for your own benefit.

You can find a lot of Magic in the world.
But you can't find the ability to cast Supernal Magic.

that was cancelled when CCP sold the rights to Paradox

it was cancelled way before that.

Did he tell you why? I'd accept that PC in a heartbeat if I gave two shits about Mage.

Just vampire, that was all concept art from the MMO IIRC.

That was cancelled two years before CCP sold anything to Paradox. They couldn't get enough PSSSSH in it.

Someone who won't shut up elsewhere about how the Morality systems are wrong and how he strips them out and hates the 'standard mode of play' for the WoD games.

>PSSSSH

?

nothin personnel kid

You can summon ghosts with Death magic, as well as command, harm, strengthen, and bind them, but proper Wraiths are a supernal summon. They come from Pandemonium, so you would actually have to be a Disciple of Mind to summon them.

You might mean Spectres, which are one of the supernal summons of Stygia and can be summoned by a Disciple of Death.

please note that I could be wrong, I've never really read up on the subject extensively

Oh man, you never heard of it?

>This constant build and rebuild approach meant massive issues in the development process. Features that were good enough to retain in one build had to be redesigned from scratch for the next because so many other interconnected parts had changed. Even when there was enough to play, internal testing revealed a confused and unfocused experience.

>Most of the sources spoken to for this piece identified the same problematic CCP manager, who had little vision for what the finished game would look like.

>“Not once could he answer any question about moment-to-moment gameplay or areas of focus,” says one source. “Instead, he preferred to deliver buzzword-laden rambles… It was not uncommon for him to communicate in onomatopoeia.

>"I once saw him looking over the shoulder of a programmer at some bit of User Interface the poor guy had hacked together. He straightened up, put fingers to lips and said, ‘No, this isn't it at all. Make it more... psssshhhh’ He hissed on his fucking fingertips, like the air coming out of a bicycle tire, and then just walked away.”

theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/05/world-of-darkness-the-inside-story-mmo-ccp-white-wolf

So how bad is Conquering Heroes?

Bad. Don't read it.

Thought as much. Same style as Beast?

Yes, but with dick eggs.

...

That a new kind of creature?

Yep. And those dick eggs, cause consumers to also produce dick eggs!

What do you guys think of Boston Unveiled? It has some cool stuff in it. I wouldn't mind playing a game based on it.

If I could ever find anyone to play with

So one of my Mage players is playing a Silver Ladder Lictor. I'm currently trying to think up a situation where he could be called in to perform his duties as magical judge & investigator.

I want to have a scenario where there's a small-scale conflict between the Guardians of the Veil and the Silver Ladder, but where, if you look deep enough, the Guardians are actually in the right. Or at least, MORE in the right.

What are some reasons that Mages from those two orders could come into conflict?

>What are some reasons that Mages from those two orders could come into conflict?
For the same reason that different branches of law enforcement come into conflict. Maybe the Guardians get handed the official investigation on a crime but your player is ordered to look into it on the sly. Not because he can crack the case, but because the Silver Ladder doesn't trust the Guardians to handle it. So while your player has good intentions he is undermining the Guardians, who also have good intentions.

Disputes over recruitment, and the right to Awaken.
Conflict over the competing rights to use Magic, and to maintain the Veil.
Issues regarding their different policies towards other Supernaturals.

Example conflict:
A local dirtbag with a lot of money, and serious influence has been pubically noted as undergoing a Mystery Play.
The Guardians see him as entirely bereft of virtuous moral fiber, and entirely undeserving of the Awakening he may soon undergo. They are as such considering leveraging the Labrynth to disrupt his burgeoning enlightenment.
The Ladder see him as being an individual, who while a total shitbag, is still deserving of Awakening, and can be taught the principles of the Awakened. Every Soul has the right to Awaken, and do deny that right is to aliken oneself to the Exarchs.
The guy has however already come to the attention of a powerful Seer, who is waiting for him to Awaken, so he can then snap him up immediately, break his will and turn him into his newest Pawn. Even if he doesn't, the man is still entirely unsuitable for the Diamond Orders or Free Council, and will likely either turn to the Seers in time, or become Left-Handed.

Has anyone ever run an antagonist campaign, playing Pures, Seers, Belial's Brood etc...? How did it turn out?

So if I may ask, what exactly is the problem people have with M20? As far as I know V20 and W20 are at least fine, so what happened?
And would anyone have advice for someone who might be interested in running VtM? Are they "x by night" books translatable?