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

I only care about Unmaking

Don't really care about patterning or unraveling, could easily do without fraying and weaving, ruling, shielding and veiling just don't matter, compelling is a thing of the past but I really (really) love unmaking

Gangrel would need to be made more inherently monstrous in order to fill the same niche as Nosferatu. There's all sorts of unpleasant vampires in media that would go without a clan to cover them if the Nosferatu were eliminated.

>What other niches could there even be?

According to oWoD, there's seven.

The Brutish Clan
The Animal Clan
The Insane Clan
The Sneaky Clan
The Social Clan
The Magic Clan
The Leader Clan

>It is immoral? Vampires, by and large, are amoral.
Yeah, it probably would have been better to just ask whether it could cause a drop in a Humanity.

Where do Followers of Set and the Giovanni fit in?

I guess that Lasombra falls into the Leader Clan archetype.

The non-Camarilla clans more filled specific niches created by the oWoD itself. But the seven Camarilla clans were designed the same way the five Requiem clans were; each is based on a vampire stereotype.

Sure they have some niches, but most of them have been usurped by gangrel and Mekhet.

Nosferatu used to have more spies and mysterious things in V:tM. For example, I'd classify the Morbus as more of a Nosferatu bloodline than a Mekhet one.

Now Mekhet are the spies and the mysterious vampires. A lot of ways to take them.

Gangrel are the phsical vampires and also embody bestial vampires. There are also a ton of ways to take that thing.

Whereas Nosferatu have been stripped of most of their 'features' or paths. They've only got 'scary' going for them. There are only so many ways you can do unnerving and scary, especially when things like plague and the brothers of ypres are apparently Mekhet territory.

Nosferatu are my favourite clan, but I feel like they need one other defining aspect to make them a bit more... i dunno prominent, have a place. You can say they're the outcasts but Gangrel are also outcasts/loners and Mekhet also stand apart from other kindred.

Animal and Brute can be combined very easily, making the nWoD Gangrel. There's no real need for them to be separate.
There's no need for a specialist Magic clan, all vampires use some sort of magic in VtR.
I don't really recall any sort of vampire in media that revolves around insanity, except for Malkavians from VtM. There's no real reason for that niche.

Which leaves:
>The brutish, feral clan.
>The artistic, social clan.
>The regal, ruling clan.
>The sneaky, spying clan.
That covers most sorts of vampires you find in media, except for the monstrous, horrific looking sort of vampire that's blatantly an inhuman monster. Which leads the creation of:
>The nightmarish, monstrous clan.
Nosferatu are sort of a fifth wheel and don't work so well with the rest mechanically, but this does a good job of getting rid of unnecessary niches that don't really fit vampires.

You'd need to understand and internalize all of those to be capable of unmaking though.

Clan is still important in a mechanical sense, if not in the same setting degree as VtM. Broad archetypes are good for people new to the system, with Bloodlines being a special bonus for people who get more comfortable with the game and want to specialize.

>Animal and Brute can be combined very easily

Sure, if you like, but then so could Social and Leader, leading me to ask why you'd bother with the Daeva and Ventrue at the same time? There is no less overlap between the two archetypes than there is between the Brujah and the Gangrel.

There's a pattern in nWoD/CoD splats.

>Come up with a character idea.
>Choose one out of a number base templates that best supports the character idea. These could be Clans, Paths, Auspices, Seemings, etc. These affect the mechanics of your character and the foundation of your character's identity, which you can then build on.
>Choose one out of a number of social groups that your character will be affiliated with based on its attitude. These could be Covenants, Orders, Tribes, Courts, etc. These define who your character will be interacting with in the game, how they will be interacting with them and helps detail their personality.

Covenants, Tribes, Orders and so on are meant to be the more important thing that you care about a lot more in the game and define how you socialize with others. Clans, Auspices, Paths and so on are just meant to be helpful bases and foundations for you to build your character from. They might occasionally be a roleplaying point, but there's no reason why they should be the focus of politics.

There's a distinction between those two archetypes of vampire in media. Ventrue are the regal, domineering Bram Stoker's Dracula sorts that dominate others and sway those around them with their presence while Daeva are embodied by Anne Rice's Lestat, who is much more whimsical, playful and seductive and far less regal and commanding.

Meanwhile, there's evidence of more bestial sorts of vampires in folklore and media but there's nothing that Brujahs really mesh with. Are there really any stories out there about vampires that are passionate but brutish firebrands, in comparison to the number of stories about brutal blood-sucking beasts that haunt the night?

Throwing out some musings I have had on the WtA tribes and looking for feedback.

Silver Fangs and Shadow Lords are entrenched deeply in similar themes of leadership, differing on their choice of method, but also historically, they are heavily based in slav and eurasian royalty/nobility. With that in mind I am considering a soft retcon of Shadow Lords being a Silver Fangs splinter or possibly a Silver Fang lodge that went hard against the grain and became a full-fledged Tribe after they failed to usurp power and the monarchists failed to eradicate the Shadow Lord usurpers in turn. Basically a bunch of werewolf dukes and barons going off doing their own thing when their king proved to be too ineffectual to stop them.

Glass Walkers and Bone Gnawers should be rebranded back into one single tribe; the Iron Masters. The division comes more from focuses on the strata of human class structure than any full blown tribal identity; to that extent, they're both more like two ur-Lodges working within the same system but unofficially competing against each other. At the end of the day though, they're the only wolves sticking it out in the Weaver tainted, Wyrm corrupted hell that a lot of metropoli are, and they stick together like one big dysfunctional family. Also, a bigger emphasis on their presence in Asia.

Fianna, Get of Fenris and White Howlers all typify the 'warrior tribe' ideal. I can't see enough huge distinctions between them to make each a seperate Tribe, especially the Fianna whose focuses have been limited to Ireland and parts of the UK. They have a lot of ties to (proto) Celtic/Germanic/Nordic peoples. Basically all the major enemies of Rome.

(Con't)

Silent Striders should have a deeper Eurasian connection. Asia has roughly ~55% of the wolf populations in the world, it feels very weird that Garou have such a limited presence outside of North America and Europe. Possibly strengthen their connection with the Stargazers? Both tribes occupy this weird spot where I don't even consider them Tribes but more an affiliation of non-eurocentric Garou. Emphasis on both tribes exploring the depths of the Umbra for answers over facing the reality of the materium.

Children of Gaia are much maligned thanks to their Revised tribebook. Dial them back to their 2e literature. Place more emphasis on them being WARRIOR-diplomats. Explore the seedier nature that comes with taking in every stray, lone wolf and Metis and indoctrinating them. Children of Gaia only place nice on the surface; they would not have stopped the Impergium or survived to the modern day in Garou society if they were meek.

Black Furies no longer a tribe. Works better as a free-wheeling lodge or similar affiliation. Drop the man-hating militant feminist crap, focus on their role as guardians of sacred sites, protectors of relics and ancient lore. Keep the mythology of them having ties back to the Amazons. Take some cues from Wonder Woman? - basically an order of lady-paladin-werewolves led by ruthlessly cunning crones. Kinfolk Sorcerers uncomfortably common, possible ties to Mages. Ties to mythological components like Brigid or Medea. Cut out crazy Wyld worship.

Red Talons double down on the Wyld instead. Less anti-humanity and only-partakes-of-the-wolf, more violently anti-Weaver. Wants to bomb everything back to prehistoric levels. Have an uncomfortably close working relationship with Ratkin. Spends too much time in the Umbra.

>I don't really recall any sort of vampire in media that revolves around insanity
I believe that draws to some the compulsory acts like having an addiction to counting, so that you can trick them by knocking over a bag full of lice

>I don't really recall any sort of vampire in media that revolves around insanity, except for Malkavians from VtM. There's no real reason for that niche.

There is Drusilla from Buffy, she has prophetic powers as well so she's definately the closest to the idea of a Malkavian.

>Are there really any stories out there about vampires that are passionate but brutish firebrands

Lost Boys and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV series) spring immediately to mind, or at least I'd class them as being much more "Brujah" then "Gangrel" using oWoD terms.

Your distinction between Ventrue and Daeva, as well, seems somewhat artificial and predicated on the era in which the stories are being written, rather than a meaningful distinction. It also leaves something to be desired: the original Dracula would more easily be described as a Nosferatu (for the terror he constantly inspires and the sense that something about him isn't right that everyone gets on meeting him) or a somewhat crafty Gangrel (for his shape-shifting, mastery over animals, and fundamentally brutish nature) than a Ventrue, while the classic cinema depictions of Dracula could slide comfortably into Daeva as much as Ventrue.

My point is that it's not wrong to decide to blend oWoD's Brujah and Gangrel; it's just not any more "natural" than leaving a divide between Ventrue and Daeva. There's plenty of room to split the nWoD Clans.

You're going through the same 'musings' the writers of Werewolf the Forsaken have. Just steal the tribes from WtF and be done with it.

Blood Talons for fighty werewolves.
Bone Shadows for magic werewolves.
Hunters in Darkness for sneaky werewolves.
Iron Masters for modern werewolves.
Storm Lord for leader werewolves.

That's the logical conclusion that your 'musings' would eventually take you to. You're wasting effort and should either go ahead and merge all of the tribes into their obvious niches or you should respect the existing politics of WtA and leave them untouched.

It is undoubtedly also inspired by characters such as Renfield, even though they're not vampires themselves.

I don't know, I kind of like some of user's proposed changes.

That's a fair distinction. In which case, you could easily boil vampire archetypes down into three groups, if you want to reduce the number of clans as much as possible.
>A clan of bestial, physical, brutish vampires in touch with their predatory nature.
>A clan of seductive, domineering, social-engineering vampires that manipulate the minds and hearts of mortals.
>A clan of mysterious, mystical and monstrous vampires that plot and machinate in the shadows.

But I get the feeling that White Wolf thought that five was the magic number around the time they made nWoD.

Boiling things down to three also matches up to the Attributes rather nicely: you've just described Physical vampires, Social vampires, and Mental vampires. Of course, once you've reached *that* point, then the question comes up of why bother to have vampire clans at all when you could just have players decide for themselves where their points should be spread.

I still say Requiem would be better served by doing this - dropping Clans entirely, and simply having Covenant and perhaps Bloodlines be paramount.

They still wanted flavorful distinction between vampires and for them to play differently and in interesting ways, which is why the different clans have weaknesses that require a variety of playstyles.

They didn't want to water it down too much. Otherwise, you would've ended up with an even blander mess of homogeneous vampires, whose only difference from each other are how their stats are arranged.

I think Mage: the Awakening is also much better without Paths.

I'm new to Requiem and I haven't read up on all the stuff, so I really just made my Gangrel with the help of the GM and a few people, so pardon me if my question sounds very newbish for the setting.

Can vampires love another vampire? I asked in the previous thread if a Daeva can love another vampire, because it seems like a Daeva from our group seems to be building up to something with my character, and I'm not entirely sure for what purpose. Me being a natural paranoid fuck (in-character) leads me to suspect human blood no longer sustains her and she just wants a convenient blood supply.

If a Daeva can love*.

Sorry.

>she just wants a convenient blood supply
Does she understands that she is going to be blood-bonded by your blood?

Stun Gun (melee) or Stun Gun (Ranged)?
Context: I'm a psychic mortal in a blender game. Probably going to die, but I'm wondering if I could make myself useful by stunning enemies for my major template buds.

What would someone with 10 Resolve be like?

Can there an ongoing mutual blood bond? Because there was one time when my Gangrel had to take an emergency sip from her, and this was well before my paranoia kicked in, so now every encounter that might leave us out of range of some fresh blood has me acting very, very cautious.

Man with Mind of Steel.

Yes, of course, but canonically it always ends bad for both parties involved. It also may be illegal in your domain, so be careful.

Okay, thanks for the warning and info.

Guess this'll just add more neat tension to our group.

I don't know why, but I really love it when it's not just a get-along kind of group that's playing, but they don't have to inherently antagonistic towards each other, just have different goals in mind.

>Can vampires love another vampire?

Yes, though vampires (especially as they grow older) have harder and harder times maintaining feelings and affection for others besides themselves (vampires are by their nature self-centered), and it's not helped by the fact that undeath itself can be quite an obstacle to overcome.

So it's possible, it's just really, really rare.

Faced with this lessening of their emotions, most vampiric lovers either "end" their relationships in one way or another, or they commit to mutual blood bonds as a way to express their love for one another, since they often find themselves unable to show or appreciate love without it.

So it's rare indeed to find vampires who can maintain true love for one another indefinitely.

Paths are a good limiting factor and a better balance then alright you can be a fate/mind mage with matter as your worst path. It also gives an external interaction with a character.

Acanthus and Moros isn't example of good balance, m8.

>Paths are a good limiting factor

How exactly have you used the Moon Court from Changeling the Lost?
I mean to me it seems like it would be hard to develop any sort of group that feeds off of disgust without being either edgy/silly about it.

Which is a shame because I really like the Sun Court.

I found it works well for smaller freeholds with shame and disgust competing for social resources like charities and other larger endeavors.

Disgust and the like aligns well with how people feel about the homeless. And how Sun would treat those people with those views, by making them publicly shamed.

What is the Wyld like in oWoD?
I don't think I've ever seen anything about it or those forces loyal to it. I don't even know if the Wyld has things like Fomori or Drones.

do you want unfettered Mage supremacy? Because this is how you get unfettered Mage supremacy

I've skimmed through the links and they're not there so I have to ask - does anyone have Tribe Novel Saga for Werewolf the Apocalypse? I can't seem to find the damn things anywhere, especially the first and sixth novel.

It has, they are called Gorgons and are mostly animals or plants

But what is the Moon Court doing with those resources?

It mostly has insane servants becuase of all the wyld energies. Def the best arm of the triat.

Attempting to deny them to the sun court. I also forgot I had the Moon court running the criminal world and spreading reasons for people to feel disgust. It's been a few years since I used. Basicly playing crime and the downtrodden against charity and the downtrodden for how the downtrodden are viewed and treated.

No unfettered mage supremacy is when you observe that it wouldn't take much for a master of spirit magic to flood the shadow with locuses with a KILL WEREWOLVES resonance.

The difference between Gangrel and Brujah is an individualist/social dichotomy. I think this is the reason White Wolf decided to separate them to begin with.

In a different game, them both being brute and ferocious would be enough of a similarity. But Masquerade is very social and political (or at least attempts to be). In a game like this, a clan that just want to be left alone (Gangrel) and a clan that actively search to push their agenda (Brujah) are brutally different, you could argue that Ventrue, Tremere and Toreador are more similar and interchangeable.

When discussing vampire archetypes too, regardless of games, it's also important to separate the social vampire that is a predator only figuratively from the solitary vampire who lives apart from society and is a literal hunter of men. In this sense it's Brujah and Toreador that are similar and should be mixed. In fact, I don't know much about Requiem but it would make more sense for "Brujah" to be Daeva than Requiem Gangrels.

Nah, I just find Paths poor-written, poor balanced and boring.

I figured criminals would be the best thing going for the Moon Court.

I'm pretty sure Nossies exist because of, well, count Orlok and some players want to play the physically monstrous vampires that aren't really represented in vampire fiction post-Dracula or even post-Carmilla. If you go basing clan archetypes on folklore, Nosferatu have a very important role.

>In fact, I don't know much about Requiem but it would make more sense for "Brujah" to be Daeva than Requiem Gangrels.

give it a read

>I think Mage: the Awakening is also much better without Paths.
Why? They're a big part of the lore and mechanics. You'd have to change a lot to get rid of them. How would Awakenings happen without a Watchtower? Will all spells cost Mana or only the more powerful ones? Or will you find a way to keep Ruling Arcana somehow? What about all the themes and character concepts associated with each Path? Just gone? What about Legacies? Will they just have prerequisite Arcana instead of being based on Paths?

Explain how things will be better without them.

>What about all the themes and character concepts associated with each Path?
They're shit user

No, thank you. Just unmaking please.

You got other Clans screenshots like this?

Also, how do you take these screenshots to begin with? Just a simple Copy Image doesn't take it well.

...

Ok. You don't have to use them though. Even the books explain that they're stereotypes at best. So what about everything else?

Just freeform pick two to be Ruling and one to be Inferior. Doesn't seem like it'd be a big change. It'd just change Paths into something more like individualized Paradigms, probably.

>Why?
>How would Awakenings happen without a Watchtower? Will all spells cost Mana or only the more powerful ones? Or will you find a way to keep Ruling Arcana somehow?
There is several ways to do that; my favorite is there is no distinct Supernal Realms, just one really big Realm, containing all truth-symbols. There is only one Watchtower as well. Each Awakening is ultimately different Mystery Play; every mage has his own "Realm", which is the way for him to understand Supernal and seed of his future Lustrum. So you still have two Ruling and one Inferior Arcana and your vision of Supernal with them along.

>What about Legacies? Will they just have prerequisite Arcana instead of being based on Paths?
Yes, they just require a certain Arcana and will to shape your soul in certain way. I would also make them much more rare.

>What about all the themes and character concepts associated with each Path? Just gone?
Yes, and I fully agree with on the case. Those themes aren't connected with Arcana at all (for example, "witch" concept is much more Life and Matter for me than Fate and Time, for example), and their attemps to peg all mage stereotypes in five holes are laughable at best.

>those obvious formatting errors

Everything else is so trivial they were covered in the Chronicler's guide.

I'm running Chronicles of Darkness for the first time and currently in the process of throwing together my own fictional city. What supernatural factions shall I stock it with?

A lot of the ACTUAL distinction from each clan is kiiiinda entirely roleplayed out, like so much else of Requiem 1st and 2nd. Ventrue are also stated to slowly become arrogant and domineering as their new nature overtakes them and it only gets worse with age till they sound an awful lot like a Dark Eldar. Daeva pretty well slowly turn slaanesh over the course of the same time. Mekhet are supposed to become deeply obsessive about a particular kind of knowledge, either academic or occult or what have you. Gangrel are supposed to be played to being perilously close to dropping the ball at any moment. nosferatu....I don't know what to say about them.

For what game?

Lods of Beasts, everyone loves Beasts

sadly I don't think so. you can't even buy some of them on drivethroughfiction.

Chronicles of Darkness 2E, running my players as plain old mortals to begin with an aim for them to become Hunters.

Ok, yeah, that sounds more like a MtAw take on MtAsc's Paradigms, so that's pretty neat. I might run a game using that setup sometime.

Where is this fictional city?

>I'm running Chronicles of Darkness for the first time and currently in the process of throwing together my own fictional city.

How autistic are you going with city building? Because Damnation City might be worthwhile to check out.

I've only skimed over it but except for the guy depicted in art they look like regular Gangrels, not Brujah at all (and the guy in the pic looks brujah but could perfectly be from half of the oWoD clans). They don't even got presence.

There's the curse, but in oWoD you could get that as a weakness and always seemed a bit random to only give it to Brujah (like it was weird for Lasombra to be the only ones with no reflection).

Going to keep it vague, but roughly analogous with America, coastal, planning to have districts ranging from heavily built up financial to quaint suburbs, and everything in between.

Then yeah you should definitely go with Beasts. Beasts literally have no redeeming qualities as the lessons they teach are nothing but pure hogwash and only work from the Beast's perspective.

is running a game of werewolf and a game of mage with two different groups and having the groups be each others antagonists without telling them feasible

>There is several ways to do that; my favorite is there is no distinct Supernal Realms, just one really big Realm, containing all truth-symbols. There is only one Watchtower as well. Each Awakening is ultimately different Mystery Play; every mage has his own "Realm", which is the way for him to understand Supernal and seed of his future Lustrum. So you still have two Ruling and one Inferior Arcana and your vision of Supernal with them along.

You basically just want to play mini-archmages, and ignore the significant thematic and mechanical limiting factors of the Paths that were purposefully part of the setting.

Your complaints that Paths are "shit" amounts to little more than whining that the setting doesn't incorporate the exact mage build that you prefer.

Open-ended creative thaumaturgy creates more than enough difficulties with actually playing Mage, with no need for open-ended Paths to create even more complexity both in character creation and play.

Of course, you are free to do as you will in your own chronicles, but eliminating Paths entirely upends the Mage setting and mechanical balancing.

Anyone willing to share Night Horrors: Conquering Heroes and Beast Mortal Remains? Thanks.

>paths
>significant mechanical limiting factors
stop it user you're killing me

>upends the Mage setting

I can see that, sure

>mechanical balancing

Would freeform Ruling/Inferior selection really mess things up that much? XP values don't change, Legacies remain the same, etc.

Then keep supernatural factions isolated and relatively week. For example have a small gang of vampires, a cult of mortals lead by a hedge wizard, a few aristocratic vampires opposed to the other group, a couple of lone werewolves, etc.

If you kept it to gross/subtle ruling combinations it can't be more broke than core.

Probably gonna be majority vampires, maybe have some werewolves chilling out in the suburbs, a community of Changelings who's frerhold encompasses a college campus, every once in a while a promethean shows up, his disquiet stirring up drama all over.

Everything else can shift as you see fit

>significant mechanical limiting factors
>stop it user you're killing me

It is a significant mechanical limiting and balancing factor *among mages.*

The point of Paths is certainly not to make mages "weaker" for some sort of crossover balance with other splats. Paths attempt to mechanically and thematically balance mages amongst themselves and create and enhance the mystery of awakening itself after the Fall. This is proven in Imperial Mysteries, where the very few mages who manage to surpass the Threshold forge their own unique (and far more powerful) Paths.

>werewolves chilling out in the suburbs

Nobody likes those bridge and tunnel werewolves.

>It is a significant mechanical limiting and balancing factor *among mages.*
you're a real kidder buddy but this joke is getting old fast

>Legacies remain the same, etc.
They don't actually. In user's above mentioned "One Realm" alternative where Mages can just do their own bullshit paradigms there is no need for Legacies, because Mages all have a more personal and narrower understanding of magic, essentially putting them in a Legacy of one right off the bat.

>implying the suburbs are chill for werewolves in CoD

No, i think the current balance is good.