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

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>Question
If you could, then how would you fix Beast?

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Euthanasia, the mercifull approach

is that stated in 2e was I heard imperial mysteries was rather mysterious bout what happens.

Why don't they make more use of the good writers and devs? Imagine if the whole Dark Eras had been the same quality as the first era.

Right, I've finished all 13 Clans, 10 modern Bloodlines, and Caitiff, so that actually makes this more or less halfway done, I think. Certainly at least the bulk of what it would be used for is finished, as is the bulk of the heavy lifting in character design - mostly at this point it's reprints. Though I do have to make some Kuei-jin from the ground up and then translate them into standard V20 rules (the same way Lupines are translated from W20, or mages from M20).

Also a bunch of mortals from the ground up.

Still, though, tell me what you think! The PDF has become too large to post here, so I'm hosting it in my Google drive.

drive.google.com/file/d/0B86CqQWWW_t7QTE1TUpaQ1hDNkE/view?usp=sharing

Make them a full-on cross-splat antagonist group. They have a supernatural compulsion to muck about in the other major splats' business, trying to establish themselves as dominant monsters over their 'lesser cousins'. Heroes become the Hunter Conspiracy that specializes in hunting them. That's how I've used them to date.

>Fledgling
>4 dots of disciplines
>attributes aren't 7/5/3 split

Nigga, fledglings are vampires that have been around for under a year. They're quite new to their powers.

"Fixing" Beast would require a ground-up remodeling that would involve having to pick a more specific theme and sticking to it. If it must exist, it'd need to be a hard oWoD to nWoD-esque reboot in its next edition.

Fledglings are vampires that haven't been released from their sires yet. Theoretically they could be any age, depending on the sire. Regardless, it's just a name to distinguish them from Neonates. The point is they're built with 0 Experience, unlike the higher ranks. They're the mookiest of mooks.

Incidentally, proof that a fledgling isn't necessarily less than a year dead. V20, pg. 19.

Not, it wasn't stated as objective truth. That's just the theory of pessimist Seekers.

What're everyone's opinions on Sin-Eaters?

also if they just ditch timeslines i am curious bout some other things, are the other high level entiteis that vouch for other supernaturals multitimeline in scope as well? Like they can go to and from other timelines like a archmaster.

Mate, you gave just turned humans above average willpower. Most humans have Willpower 4 or less. Something like 50% of them.

These are terribly underwhelming for elders and terribly overwhelming for fledglings. A default vampire in VtM is a neonate, not a fledgling. 99% of fledglings are under a year old.

I don't think any GM I know would use these.

Why don't mages and vampires go to war with each other? And all the other playable creatures

>Why don't they make more use of the good writers and devs?

Dave is already developing two game lines, writes for almost everything else, and has a real job. There are limits.

OPP also quite properly wants to try out new writers.

What OPP needs is far better management and oversight over the developers. Simply, Rich Thomas, the owner of OPP and its purported "creative director," is lousy at his job. That's why Exalted 3 was a late mess, Brucato ran rampant on M20, Requiem didn't release its fist supplement for years, and Beast needed major rewrites during the Kickstarter, among other less monumental screw-ups. WW is surviving despite Rich's incompetence, not because of any skill.

Normally I would hope that Paradox would take a more active hand, but Dracula and his oWOD and LARP fetishes, along with his "super edgy" comments straight out of 1993, do not inspire much confidence.

I like them but their game could use some work. Can't help but wonder what the game would be like if you only just played the Geist, though.

In classic WOD, they did go to war, and the already convoluted and bloated metaplot suffered even more.

In CofD, they have no inherent animosity, and war would be very unproductive for both sides. Except under specific circumstances on a local level, what would be gained for a species wide conflict?

When did they war in cWoD? Tell me the story I want to hear it

Any word on Changeling the Lost 2nd Edition?

>just turned humans

What part of "Some Clans shelter their fledglings for years or decades" do you not understand? Fledglings are as old or as young as the Storyteller needs them to be, and will have a like amount of experience and ability. As for above-average Willpower and the like, Vampires do not make a habit out of Embracing "average people". Well, except the Sabbat, but those vampires generally end up dying inside of a year. Only the exceptional ones survive.

>terribly underwhelming for elders

Got that covered to. Straight from V20, pg. 79, "Advancing New Characters" sidebar - these represent relatively "sedentary" elders of 300 years (who should then have an average of 17 Discipline dots, which bears out). The Elders are indeed somewhat underwhelming since they've only been built with 300 XP, which is only 50 over the minimum. However, given that the intent of the VMM is to create a stockpile of quick-and-dirty characters that can be used and then forgotten, I think they work as intended.

On a side note...I think the source of the issue here stems from a disagreement as to when Vampires get their dots in various abilities. You seem to think that, for example, that the bulk of a 0-XP Vampire's Traits aren't acquired until after the Embrace, but I've always personally presumed that most of them come from before the Embrace, with exceptions only made for the Traits that couldn't be acquired pre-Embrace, like Generation.

Speaking from a CofD perspective, why would they?

None of the global-level organizations (the Covenants, the Pentacle or the Seers, etc) have any reason to oppose each other on principle - in fact, quite the opposite. I know there are canonical mentions of the Ordo Dracul and the Invictus dealing with Pentacle and Seer mages from time to time.

At a local level they might fight over territory or local issues, but that's a matter for individual Princedoms/Consillia/Packs/Etc.

>cWOD Mage / Vampire War

whitewolf.wikia.com/wiki/Massasa_War

whitewolf.wikia.com/wiki/Blood_Treachery

While I think you're being a bit hard on Rich T, you're not wrong about OPP needing stricter management and oversight. Rich isn't incompetent - he can't handle the scale and volume of work that they're trying to get done, yes, but in his defense he's basically given him and his small team a near-impossible task. His problem is that he keeps just asking the fanbase to forgive them rather than actually taking steps to reorganize/figure out how to hire more people/change procedure so that the same mistakes don't keep happening.

And this is speaking as a Wraith20 backer, I know all about how their lack of oversight and willingness to just accept delays without doing, well, anything is holding them back from being taken seriously. I want Rich D's Wraith as much as anyone but for fucks sake, if it takes him 5 years to finish it then bring in another fucking developer to help him out, don't just say "please be patient (we have your money already)"

I'm bored as all fuck

Tell me about your favourite WoD campaign. I want to hear a good story so don't leave any details out.

You're a vampire. it's not scary anymore. you kill god

I cannot forgive Rich for his abject lack of oversight and control over Brucato for M20.

I don't blame Brucato for being the douche he is (although allowing one person to write and develop M20, no less Brucato, was foolish). However, Rich knowingly allowed him carte blanche, and it is sadly evident.

Tour de Force, 5 Stars - The Guardian

VtR 2e question. How do you create Bloodlines? Both on a mechanical level, and on the in game processes for a character establishing a bloodline. The fourth Discipline added, if you're establishing a bloodline at BP 6 and you've not bought up any of that Discipline all you've done, essentially, is get yourself a discount, yeah? Or added a new one available if it's another clan's exclusive.

Just somewhat fresh to the game and curious how that aspect works out.

If you had to run a crossover game between any 2 of the CofD lines, excluding HtV, which would you go with?

Without having seen any of it, I'm leaning toward DtD and DtR. Might not go full Unchained on that side depending on just how low the Renegades are, but say some Fractals or Offspring and a Renegade or two fighting a GM backed conspiracy could be fun as hell.

Question here, I red V20 Vampire the masquerade and I'm interested by V20 Vampire Dark Ages. Can I only read DA's setting or is DA's system and disciplines or are they so different that I'll have to get through a 600 page book all over again ?

There has got to be a simpler term for "roll is considered an exceptional success on three successes instead of five".

I mean, we have rote actions, 9-again, 8-again, etc.

How sue-happy are White-wolf/CCCP/whatever-they-are-nowadays? I'm thinking about making a shitty (per defnition) indie game quite heavily inspired by WoD.

Undying and Urban Shadows haven't gotten the boot yet, so you should be safe.

If I had to run a two splat crossover? Requiem and Lost probably. Thematically speaking, they're within arms reach of each other, with more than a little overlap in places, and the mechanical power disparity isn't too bad.

Either Promethean and Geist or Promethean and Changeling.

They have no legal standing if you're not using their same terminology and such. Undying, for example, doesn't build in the same manner as WoD; it doesn't use 'clans' and such, and it's very vague in the terminology. Can't say anything about Urban Shadows, but there you go.

Makes me wonder: Can Demon use angel jacking and/or Infrasturucture to trigger New Dawn for Promethean

>Rich isn't incompetent - he can't handle the scale and volume of work that they're trying to get done, yes, but in his defense he's basically given him and his small team a near-impossible task.

Problem is that noone ask him for said impossible task. Noone ask for Deviant, beast or even demon. They should have just lets their main lines an 20ths run their course and then star focusing on new IPs. As its stands right now they have like 11+ gamelines that are stretched thin to make somewhat bellow average content.

Goddammit I worked hard on this.

Looks more like you worked high on it, but we appreciate the effort.

I was drinking last night but still :-/

But if they weren't doing new gamelines, we couldn't get the lovely pronoun sidebars or all the gender-insanity.

how else can they spew their ridiculuous sidebars and political opinions so that we poor plebeians play our games right?

We don't need new gamelines for sidebars. They also needlessly take up room in supplements.

I additionally noticed that the open development blogs have basically gone silent. Except for an occasional OPP forum post by DavidH, it seems the experiment with open development and spoilers has come quietly to an end.

It's not that they've come to an end, it's that there's pretty much nothing to talk about. Changeling 2e's still in playtesting and development, and nothing major is in a writing state worth blogging about.

Next person to make the post be a bro and use this pic

We have Deviant, Signs of Sorcery for Mage, two Requiem supplements, Dark Eras Companion, etc.

There's more than enough going on to provide us with some spoiler scraps.

Wouldn't a vampire lawn chair burst into flames or disintegrate in sunlight?

So I'm about to run my first ever campaign this weekend, specifically M20. I'm very familiar with the system, so on that front I'm fine.

But I am so nervous to run the session itself. Does anyone have any tips about running a game for a new GM?

Perhaps we can convince them to put the sidebars in the development blogs so that there is more room in the supplements instead?

Both vampires and wood are flammable so by combining them you defeat their shared weekens...

That's great, thanks.

This is so fucking wrong. Archmasters don't pop up in parallel universes. It was an entirely optional theory in Imperial Mysteries. Stop spewing lies,

This is the comment of a biased vampire fan that cannot possibly fathom the idea that vampires are in-fact not the strongest splat.

Mages may actually be stronger than the god that cursed Cain considering Masters of the Art hinted twice that an archmage/exemplar might have created the universe/caused the big bang.

Why do I keep responding to idiots who keep clinging to the joke "YOU LOSE" character sheet. It's not legit.

Disciplines have never been above planetary in scale. Spheres can hurl the universe at you.

Almost nothing gets blogged about until it actually hits the Development phase.

>Deviant

Not even a solidified game yet, as far as we know. No point in sharing things that might not even make the setting bible, let alone the book.

>Signs of Sorcery

In development, already previewed. Could be more but I get the feeling that Deviant's bible takes top priority.

>Two Requiem suppliments

Only one of which is in Development, the other already previewed by Matthew Dawkins under Rose/Danielle's permission, who are caught up in Cavaliers of Mars and getting Half-Damned to development, respectively. That said, Half-Damned got previewed, but that seems to be more because Dawkins wanted to show off his work for a year-end wrapup rather than anything traditionally open development.

>Dark Eras Companion

That I'll give you, though a preview of that probably needs an individual line developer's green light to blog about and that's probably it's own can of worms given the workload most devs seem to have.

Open Development only works if there's enough material in Development to show off. The production cycle is too slow for this to be regular at this time. We will see if this speeds up, but for now, forum posts are pretty much all we've got, which is why some OPP posters seem to be doing compliantions of spoilers in dedicated threads.

>Perhaps we can convince them to put the sidebars in the development blogs so that there is more room in the supplements instead?

Stop with the crazy talk.

The blogs don't reach a large enough audience and are free.

The material must be in published books so the developers can save the world and force the consumers to pay for it.

>Half-Damned got previewed

When and where?

All I recall is a relatively recent A Thousand Years of Night preview about elder flashbacks, and totally devoid of any new rules or setting information.

Not this again

Why even bring it here?

We could have serious discussion about Chair: the Grilling in with Magister McReedy has to fight against vampiric lawn chairs that started to devour tourists during the summer season.

While it doesn't necessarily mean that an Ascension Archmage couldn't beat Caine, one Exemplar starting the big bang also doesn't necessarily mean that all Archmages or even Mages could be stronger than the Judeo-Christian God.

The whole point's moot anyway, since oWoD power levels are pretty much just whatever a developer decided at the time.

Vampire fans are idiots and still sore over the Lawn Chair Crusade of 1993. Of course mages are stronger than god? How could one think any differently?

Can we please stop shitting up the thread with supremacy arguments? The games weren't made with equivalency in mind, nor crossover, and it just causes arguments (or trolling).

There was a book saying the judeo Christian god may be nothing more than a powerful Celestine. Which would mean mages CAN become stronger than big G. But lots of OWoD books are retarded.

>Can we please stop shitting up the thread with supremacy arguments? The games weren't made with equivalency in mind, nor crossover, and it just causes arguments (or trolling).
Actually, OPP, the guys who introduced the stupidest, trolliest of all supremacy arguments into the cesspool (e.g. "if you care about game balance you're a little kid"), are ALSO the ones who really pushed for the crossover game idea.

Remember that one of the whole points of Ascension Revised was to lower the previously ever increasing Mage power levels by using the Avatar Storm to cut off masters, chantries, outer realms, etc..

It didn't exactly go over well with the fans...

God doesn't seem that impressive if he didn't create the universe.

>mage supremacy

What is this lawn chair meme? Something to do with the very real truth of Mage Supremacy?

Matthew Dawkins's end of the year blog, and it's only a single paragraph or two to show off what his favorite thing to write was: theonyxpath.com/2016-year-in-review-matthew-dawkins/

As for Thousand Years, I really doubt we're going to see any more previews until it hits stores, unless they want to do an open playtest on Elder rules. I don't expect anything super new in terms of mechanics, it'll probably just be lots of Devotions and maybe some kind of advanced social engineering system. Most of it'll probably be ST advice like the preview, if I were to venture a guess.

>CWOD games weren't made with equivalency in mind, nor crossover, and it just causes arguments

Blame WW's poor game design.

At least CofD, particularly 2e's, attempted some reasonable degree of mechanical compatibility.

>>mages are the absolute bestest of all bests
>>mages can destroy cain and his papa god

Happy?

The Lawn Chair meme goes back so far that it's actually explained and discussed in M20,

No. Because vampire fans are delusional and still deny our right to create our Imperium

>mage supremacy

I believe you might be confusing cWOD and CofD, but yes #MageSupremacy applies in both lines.

I kind of feel bad for werewolves and changelings. Absolutely no one thinks they're supreme about anything.

>judeo Christian god
>OWOD
Why do people keep saying this? Jesus is a disciple of the Devil and i'm pretty sure Mohammed is divine/divinely inspired (seeing Mecca has a true faith barrier)

I understood how utterly over-powerful (not overpowered, I don't have a problem with them being powerful) when I read that snippet about a mage creating a small sun to kill vampires.

One thing I have noticed about the splats is that those who play Vampire are the predominant voice of power inequality. They are really upset about being 2nd best in the OWoD. I find it hilarious that they're one of the weakest splats in Chronicles.

Wrong, Jesus was a Hermetic mage (Mage supremacy confirmed)

Am I the only who feels the starting amount of dots is rather small? I asked my ST for some bonus Experiences to round out an underqualified character, gave justifications and everything, but still got a no. Am I asking too much?

>snippet about a mage creating a small sun to kill vampires

Where is this snippet?


Vampires are hardly one of the weakest CofD splats.

At least in 2e, they received a significant power boost.

>Jesus was a Hermetic mage

Jesus was a nephandi who was a former member of the Celestial Chorus.

FIFY.

Is there a particular reason why you can't create atomic explosions with Forces 5? Or has that limitation been removed in 2e?

Masters of the Art has some really disgusting powers bordering on instant "I win" levels. I don't think anyone is going to disagree with this assessment.

I would like to believe this. But God doesn't have very many feats other than being a dick.

One if the reasons why I don't like the idea of the Abrahamic god being the supreme being. It just seems silly.

Get out of here mage supremacist whores

>Hey ST, can I have extra XP that other players don't get?
Unsurprised he said no. However yes, if you want to play more than a newly Awakened/Embraced/whatever character, you're going to need extra experiences.

So change your damn character concept to fit the power level.

I think it is in the first nWoD mage book. Or it might have just been a real spell written down there and I'm imagining the rest, it's been a while.

You can create a honking big explosion with radiation at Forces 5, but nothing really thermonuclear. Dave indicated that still requires a Force 6 Dynamics Practice.

archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/45982134/#45986807

>Vampires are hardly one of the weakest CofD splats.

Not weak. Compared to others? Weak.

If you don't like the idea of a mage butt slapping God get the hell out.

It seems like an odd limitation. You can 'easily' create ultra pure weapons grade plutonium with Matter magic and still set off an explosion the mundane way.

So a mate and I are planning on getting into nWoD/CoD (I know two isn't ideal, but we're hoping to get some others later), and I'm gonna be the ST with him playing a regular joe human sorta guy, who is a private investigator (figured that was a good way to get into supernatural shenanigans)

So I've got the basic hook, where the young and attractive second wife of an older richer guy dies shortly after they move into a new house, and it's ruled a suicide, but the husband doesn't believe it. A bit of research would turn up that the house has a habit of women dying in it, and then eventually it would turn out that the women are killed by ghost of a woman who killed herself, but then came back and drove her husband and son mad until they both turned into Slashers, with the son turning into a Mask and living in the house hidden from the residents until his mother gave him the permission to kill woman who set foot in the house, each time a new one does so (I'm not entirely sure if a ghost basically having a Scourge on a lead works or not, but neither of us know a whole lot about the lore, so it sorta works for this game).

So I'm not sure how well the concept works, and also what sort of story beats I should have in place. I know the actions are driven by his character, but I've never run an investigation game before and need to put some framework in there. I was planning for him to have a female NPC helper thing who can give him some information and who I'm planning on having visit the house so the Mask will go after her and my player's character might sort of need to protect her, but I'm not sure how I should introduce his character to the whole supernatural thing, and the best way to set up the whole mystery/investigation element.

Any players/ST's with good advice? (Or people who've run investigations in other games)

The Order of Hermes Tradition Book states on p.11 that he was a Mage. Where is the book that states that Jesus was a Nephandus?

>Where is this snippet?

I direct you to any Mage corebook ever.

>Says vampires aren't weak

You are beyond mental therapy

Werewolves are pretty monstrous in 2nd edition.

A mage can't simply nuke (unless the obvious Unmaking practice) them now. They must rely on locking them down. Which is inherently worse for the werewolf because they will start to study the beast.

Ban is a really powerful spell. Not much hope of escaping that without outside help.

Because nuclear explosions are a result of the properties inherent in certain types of atoms which allow them to cause a feed back loop, not a property of what kind or how much energy is present.

the arcana you want is Matter.

Did anyone here ever RP a transexual character? How did that turn out? What did it add to the concept? Where you able to do it without being disrespectful or disruptive?

One of the most successful troll moment in mage history. Veeky Forums got the fans so mad they had to put it into the book. The best wins me chaps the best

>disrespectful
>disruptive

rly makes u think