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

He was Baali. The guy took handfuls of LSD and washed it down with Kentucky liqour, until he lost the line between reality and fantasy. He thought offing Heather's parents would open the doors to Hell and grant him power, or some shit. By the time they locked him up for trial, he was telling the jailors how he would escape, because he was an "immortal ninja assassin".

My College came down extra hard on goths and wierdos that year. It fucking sucked.

I agree but some people in our hobby are of the mindset of "they've changed something so it sucks".

I mean, they doubled down hard on some themes of that in Promethean 2e even which came later so it wasn't retconned out or anything. There's a lot of shit going on in the setting! Not everything is spooky occult robot gods.

I've always thought of the GM as more of a Lovecraftian horror. Utterly alien and unknowable.

so do 7 humanity vampires have any type of feelings or whatsoever?

Yes, vampires still have feelings. Ignore VtR 1e, they backed that shit off with 2e and it was never true in Masquerade. Even low humanity ones have them.

Mine doesn't because feelings are gay.

>What's something from a splat you've never played that entices you most about the idea of playing one?

Mummy starting powerful and becoming weaker

youtube.com/watch?v=AG_0fna99p0

youtube.com/watch?v=D3vhpk7DhZM

Why are mummies the best pop culture thing that the WoD doesn't use as one of its big name lines?

youtube.com/watch?v=L1tAXVj8NHA

Are mummies all pseudo-egyptian or can they be based on other cultures that practiced mummification.

All mummies are from Irem. There's one singular origin point for them, though they spread over the world and given vagaries of memory they could easily think they come from somewhere else until about memory 4/5 when Irem starts to reassert itself in their deepest recall.

Also the Su-Menent are probably behind Mesoamerican mummification practice

youtube.com/watch?v=wVee6GU_RXM

Being unpleasant to be around or having trouble reading people doesn't give you superpowers. There isn't any sort of magical force that will give you something else to compensate.

Yet if you make your socoal group the lowest priority your character is suddenly much smarter and stronger.

How dare OPP fetishize having an unpleasant personality! It's incredibly offensive that they would treat a lack of charisma like it was some sort of payment to be made for other abilities.

I can't figure out if you're just satirizing fat acceptance or also complaining about game simulationism as well

Elvira is mai waifu

>reading VtM books
>come across mentions of several vampires who actually have True Faith rating
>including a fucking Lasombra, who was one of the cardinals/archbishops in the Sabbat
>who used both True Faith and Abyssal magic at the same time

How? Just fucking how?

He got very lucky on his humanity loss rolls.

Moncada? He also made the Path of the Night because he thinks God made vampires to put the fear of him in mortals and make everybody better Christians

I don't know man Lasombras are bullshit I only like Obtenebration

Yeah, Lucita's sire.

>He also made the Path of the Night because he thinks God made vampires to put the fear of him in mortals and make everybody better Christians
I see where the seed for the Lance in the nWoD came from.

Could Rod beat the Acid King, the other LSD-abusing teenage RPG murderer.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricky_Kasso

Well yeah, Rod's an immortal ninja assassin.

Would it be conceivable for the AA to come to the defense of the Seers if asked? Their charge is to 'defend the awakened' I'm looking for a moral conflict for a future game.

No, If the Exarchs are so great then they can save their own fucking Slaves

...

>Can't wait to see how magecucks ruin this thread

Just don't question their undeniable superiority over the other gamelines. They want you to do that.

That band is amazing live. If anybody an Veeky Forums actually enjoys going to shows I highly recommend them.

Excellent musical taste, though.

>If the Exarchs are so great
They rule the World of Darkness. Of course they're great. More than great, really.

So why do their slaves need Arrow assistance?

Fuck Seers

How do you get Attainments? Are they just freebies for buying new arcana dots?

2e Daeva Kindred have obsessive emotions as their new weakness.

I have a question! Is there any splat capable of taking on a Mage on equal terms 1v1 ?

No

Demons?

A Mage

Deviants

If that Mage is prepared and knows their opponent inside-and-out.

No. You're fucked. Not even a Demon is going to be spared.

Follow-up Question: Is there any two splats combined capable of taking on a Mage?

Only with the power of love

Beast and another Mage

>Love is weak

>Hatred is eternal

Sometimes I think Dave developed Mage all too well. Hubris seems to rub off on its players.

Are Mages the Jace of WoD?

The hubris is real. Power-mad munchkins abound.

Yes it would be conceivable for Praetorian to come to the defense of the Seers

A Mummy

>Would it be conceivable for the AA to come to the defense of the Seers if asked?
As a whole? No.

Now if there was a pylon of Seers who wanted out and came to the AA for protection, that would be a different story. And make sure they've done bad shit so that the argument for helping them can't be "No blood no foul".

>I don't know man Lasombras are bullshit

They scored points with me when I learned that they're the clan of pirates, including being the driving force behind the Sea Peoples, AKA the Bronze Age Vikings who actually did have horns on their helmets.

ST Fiat defeats everything.

Define "equal terms".

in Classic world of darkness do 1s take away from damage and soak rolls?

assume mages get all their advantages and the enemy gets none of theirs

Which is exactly how mages fight. They will deny you your freedom.

That's how it goes.

yes, but you can't botch either.

We get it, you love Mages. Now talk about something, literally anything else, you appallingly boring bastards.

>in Classic world of darkness do 1s take away from damage and soak rolls?

Every roll of "1" removes a success from the roll; if that removes all successes on your roll, it's a failed roll. If there are no successes and you also get a "1", the result is a botched roll.

This system still applies to damage and soak rolls, but unlike regular rolls damage/soak rolls cannot be botched, only fail/succeed.

So yes, 1s take away from damage and soak rolls, but you'll never botch such a roll, no matter how many 1s you end up getting.

No. Even other Seers won't come to the defense of Seers if there wasn't some pay involved or direct command from above. Seer society is edgy as fuck Social Darwinism on steroids.

I still don't get why some people think the Seers make better antagonists than the Technocracy. They are so ridiculously evil they make cartoon bad guys seem reasonable.

Nice generalization. I can do it too.

>I don't get why people think the Technocracy make better antagonists than the Seers. It's just technology vs magic bullshit. Wonder how long it took them to come up with that.

See?

Partly because the oMage is so badly written that even cartoon villains are more compelling antagonists than the Technocracy.

oMage will always read like the wet dreams of a luddite mixed with the worst kind of noble savage worldview.

Let's try to be serious for a moment. The Technocracy has a semi-reasonable goal (channel magic through their paradigm, which helps the common man but also suffocates freedom), while the Seers serve what according to mages is essentially the Demiurge, because they like being evil power-mongers. That's not an appealing antagonist to me.
It's certainly full of that, but Awakening and its pretentious pseudo-Gnosticism and cave myth allegory isn't much better.

So given the Seers don't give a singular fuck about each other, beyond as pawns.

Would it be feasible for my game to have exceedingly few Seers in the city? Say probably about... 10?

Mostly because those who weren't super fucking subtle and smart about it were killed in horrendously dangerous fucking bombings and surgical strikes by Blank Badges and other anti-Seer factions? A faction which now devoid of Seers to fucking murder is trying to stir shit with the Diamond.

Creating a city where there's not even a single fucking clue about the existence of the Seers other than conjecture.

Seers serve the Exarchs for a bunch of reasons. Some are indoctrinated right after Awakening. Some think the only way to get ahead is to work under the beings that literally rule the world. Some just don't care who they work for, as long as they get paid. Some want to rise to power in the Fallen World, and others want to be rewarded with Ascension.

Those are all things that real people would do. If your ST portrays all Seers as mustache-twirling politicker wizards that eat babies to gain the favor of the gods then that's on him, because diverse examples of Seers have been provided, in their own book and in others.

>pretentious pseudo-Gnosticism and cave myth allegory isn't much better
What the fuck does this even mean?

Oh shit, are you the extremely biased Ascensionfag?

Actually, here's a very weird question. This is from someone who has never played Mage before.

What's this about an 'Avatar form'? Because apparently Mages (like Voormas) can transform into something similar to their Avatar when they cross the Gauntlet? If so, that's the coolest thing I've ever heard, actually.

Precisely because they are ridiculously evil. They aren't "extremists with good intentions", or "not evil, but misunderstood", or "actually better than player characters". MtAw is ultimately a horror game, and Seers are horror antagonists, producting pure nightmare fuel as a side product of their life.

Awakening has gotten away from atlantis (it leaning so hard on it early in its life was a problem, I concede that) and done a lot to improve its overall setting in the years since the first corebook, but even if it hadn't it would be better by default since it actually went to the effort of giving the universe a cohesive metaphysics (one that actually incorporates disparate magical traditions better than Ascension ever did) instead of Brucato rubber stamping "idk magic, also TECHNOLOGY BAD!" where he was supposed to actually write that part of the setting.

>So given the Seers don't give a singular fuck about each other, beyond as pawns.
Mostly. Some Seer pylons actually do come together out of common beliefs and common goals, like cabals. Your average pylon though, is formed out of convenience and any member will turn on another if they think it'll get them a leg up in the pyramid.

>Would it be feasible for my game to have exceedingly few Seers in the city? Say probably about... 10?
Consilium dominated cities are a thing, yeah.

>Would it be feasible for my game to have exceedingly few Seers in the city? Say probably about... 10?
Seers aren't as numerous as Pentacle mages, so no problem with this.

>Mostly because those who weren't super fucking subtle and smart about it were killed in horrendously dangerous fucking bombings and surgical strikes by Blank Badges and other anti-Seer factions?
That depends on a city in question, because big and powerful cities will invariably be claimed by some Tetrarchy, and said Tetrarchy will fight tooth and nail for their turf.

>Creating a city where there's not even a single fucking clue about the existence of the Seers other than conjecture.
You know that isn't the Requiem, right? Mages can travel with ease, and there is no reason for global mage community not to exist.

Isn't Atlantis like, a metaphor? I mean, it was basically the same thing as the Tenth Sphere in Ascension, wasn't it? Like, the whole idea is that once there was a community of willworkers and wizard-kings, then everything went to shit. Whether there was a physical Atlantis is sort of besides the point.

Also, Requiem for Rome is a great campaign. If only the players could do, well, anything.

No, I dislike both versions of Mage but I find the Technocracy a more appealing antagonist than the Seers.
Well, I prefer antagonists who are at least vaguely sympathetic to make conflict with them a bit less shallow, since Mage is never going to be a serious horror game anyway.

>Isn't Atlantis like, a metaphor?
Not in 1e, no. Which is why I don't like 2e that much - at least 1e had an idea in setting. 2E is literally "lol, make your shit up".

Yeah, and if it existed it probably wasn't even named Atlantis. That name is canonically taken from Plato as something that has Supernal resonance with "the time before" which wasn't so much an ancient civilization as a previous iteration of the universe

>Well, I prefer antagonists who are at least vaguely sympathetic to make conflict with them a bit less shallow
Well, I don't think that makes conflict a less shallow. IMO it makes it even more shallow, because nowadays there is more poor misunderstood villains with good intentions than honest rotten to the core bastards.

>since Mage is never going to be a serious horror game anyway
I find it hard to imagine Mage not being a horror game. Why do you think Mage can't be a serious horror game?

>Well, I prefer antagonists who are at least vaguely sympathetic to make conflict with them a bit less shallow
Seers are vaguely sympathetic, you tool. I just gave you a whole list of very human motivations. They don't do what they do because they're evil and like being evil, unless you want them to be that way in your game.

And answer my question. What the fuck is "pretentious pseudo-Gnosticism and cave myth allegory"?

Have you read anything on Awakening aside from skimming the 1e corebook?

> I find it hard to imagine Mage not being a horror game. Why do you think Mage can't be a serious horror game?

It's harder, because of the sheer power of Mages. For instance, vampires can't really deal with - let's say - the Strix, because the Strix's only weakness are the same thing that vampires fear.

But Mages are extremely varied and extremely powerful. More, Mage stories don't usually have go toe-to-toe with combat monsters like in Werewolf chronicles.

>Isn't Atlantis like, a metaphor?
Not in 1e. It was meant to be taken the same way as Caine and the antediluvians in Masquerade. Like yeah, from a character standpoint it COULD be a myth, but as players we all knew it was real.

>It's harder, because of the sheer power of Mages
And for all that power, they aren't protected from the Exarchs or even more powerful Mages.

The horror of mage isn't about fighting horrible gribbly monsters. It's about one day finding yourself holding the knife above a human sacrifices heart because this spell needs a bit more umph and realizing that you have no idea how you became this.

I find most of the evil bastards antagonist to be shallow, because they have no motivations beyond being evil bastards. It's a vicious circle, really.
>serious horror game
Because for me most horror relies on certain feeling of powerlessness compared to the antagonist (if there truly is one) and a relatively small scale. Yes, Mages are weak against the big evil of say the Abyss, but I don't find it relatable since they can blast away/circumvent most common threats and challenges with relative ease.
I don't think they are. If for example they as a group were trying to avoid more people reaching Exarch levels of power or even suppressing all magic (including their own) to protect the stability and the common man they could be, maybe. I only see backstabbing social Dawinists that make the Nazis look united and competent.
>cave allegory
"The world as we see it is actually a poor copy of the supernal world were everything is perfect, and a select few have seen the world how it truly is and with this knowledge can fight the Demiurge."
I haven't read much of Mage because it doesn't interest me very much and I'm likely never going to play it. I can't spend time reading game lines that I don't like hoping to eventually enjoy it.

Thaumaturgy isn't a real Discipline.

Of course it's not. The Tremere aren't even real vampires, how could they have their own real Discipline?

>I don't find it relatable since they can blast away/circumvent most common threats and challenges with relative ease
...so don't give those common threats and challenges? The main enemies of mages are other mages, powerful spirits, paranoia and their own hubris. You can't make a horror game with common slasher after your mage, that's right, but you can make a horror game with Tremere liches after your soul.

>because they have no motivations beyond being evil bastards
That's there you wrong. Seers are good, because they have simple and very relatable motivations - they want to use their magic for their own gain - to get money, power and live a good live. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

>I don't think they are. If for example they as a group were trying to avoid more people reaching Exarch levels of power or even suppressing all magic (including their own) to protect the stability and the common man they could be, maybe. I only see backstabbing social Dawinists that make the Nazis look united and competent.
So for you to consider bad guys sympathetic they have to Technocracy 2.0? Basically good guys? That's retarded. You don't have to agree with bad guys for them to have sympathy, you just have to see where they're coming from.

>"The world as we see it is actually a poor copy of the supernal world were everything is perfect, and a select few have seen the world how it truly is and with this knowledge can fight the Demiurge."
None of this is true. The Fallen World is not a "copy" of the Supernal Realms, poor or otherwise. They used to be together, on the same frequency, if you will, and the Fall separated them and put the Abyss in middle. This is why Demesnes nullify Paradox, because the sympathy of a Mage's soul stone puts that area back on the Supernal frequency.

And there is no fighting the "Demiurge". The Exarchs have won. It's game over. Has been for all of the Fallen World's existence.

>I haven't read much of Mage
Obviously. All of your opinions are misinformed. How you can even hope to be taken seriously when you admit that you have no clue what you're talking about is beyond me.

Where I live, a kid got beaten to death while on the way home from a LARP.
Media took it and ran with, and claimed it was likely a vampire-satanistic ritual killing.

I seem to recall that it was a bunch of kids who bullied him in school, who, while drunk, lacked restraint.

(Kid in this post refers to teens, btw.)

The news loves to sensationalize shit.

Let's compare the Seers to the Camarilla or the Invictus. Many members of these organizations aim more or less to gain power and wealth by screwing over the next guy, but for me the Camarilla and the Invictus are more compelling because they were founded for a reason other than that: fear of being killed by rebellious neonates, the Sabbat/Strix or vampire hunters. The Seers instead decided to flock to the Exarchs, hoping that they reward them, and that nuance makes them completely different.
I paraphrased the core concept of the game, and I think it is a somewhat valid description of it. The exact nature of the "perfect world" and the demiurge is not what I was trying to define.

>The Seers instead decided to flock to the Exarchs, hoping that they reward them, and that nuance makes them completely different.
Great, more reductionist bullshit. As previously stated, the Seers serve the Exarchs for various reasons to various ends. I know this, because I've read the books and played the game. You haven't. You literally do not know what you're talking about.

>I paraphrased the core concept of the game, and I think it is a somewhat valid description of it
Debatable, but either way it's not the whole story. The concept of the game definitely is not to fight back against the Exarchs, and it's focus isn't so much on the last world being perfect as it is this one being a lie.

Please stop spouting misinformed and vastly generalized opinions. It only makes you look stupid.