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

You didn't, actually. That's why I prefer how dice work in oWoD and it dovetails with what I previously said. It forces the players to juggle multiple considerations rather than consulting a single, simple, chart or memorized set of values.

Fiend Clan is Best Clan. Degenerate nobility + Freaky ass powers + Classic movie vamp tropes = Pure win.

I ran a fiend in my last game. San Francisco Anarchs rushing to clamp down on a camp of extremists who are threatening to overturn the masquerade. She was un fiend-like in that she was basically in line with Anarch ideology but at the same time, VERY protective of China Town where she made her haven.

I would imagine Tzimisce is disembodied consciousness, akin to Malkavian Madness Network, except still retaining sense of individuality rather than becoming a collective.

My party refuses to play sabbat or anarchs, so no

Too bad, because anarchs are may favourite

Thought this was new Deviant art for a second.

I wonder how to came to this conclusion.

faggot

?

Do you mean how *I* came to this conclusion?

No, i meant
>how did they come to that conclusion
But me brain no work so good

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strawpoll.me/12861316

Where's the option for "I hope you get stabbed on your way home one evening"?

The obvious answer is the ST's super special self insert OC. Because let's face it, the only time this is ever going to happen is if some grade A autist is running the game.

Fate 3

I wonder which side made this poll.

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>evident way to know just how many cainefags lurk in these threads

But how does that actually improve play? The obfuscation of probability doesn't add anything to the system thematically, and mechanically it only adds on a vague complexity. There's no real psychological benefit, either; it doesn't make the game scarier or the attempt any more dangerous.

If the issue is that players might math out the system, the slight delay in system mastery that might occur with Storyteller as opposed to Storytelling still doesn't justify its jank.

It only takes six dots to subdue Caine, not sure why people are voting for him.

Must be spite.

Well, most Masquerade players haven't actually read anything Ascension related. You can't blame us for sticking with what we're used to.

I can certainly blame you for being ignorant and biased.

You expect me to research the various ways an archmage could overtake Caine? I can admit it's a certainty, but I will not waste effort or time.

Prime 6
>Strip Caine's access to Vitae and the Disciplines, whilst deleting the seven-fold curse
Correspondence 6
>With three successes; send Caine through space at the speed of light or drone strike him into the Sun's core
Spirit 6*
>Enslave God and continue from there

*assuming he's a Celestine as Apocalypse suggests

Then you don't have a valid opinion.

>Vampire, Hunter and Demon all state that God is far more powerful than a Celestine
>but nah let's go with the furry version of events

why?

...

>but nah let's go with the furry version of events

Ascension also has this in spades, user. The supreme entity according to their cosmological views is an extradimensional collective consciousness; an amalgam of Ascendants.

God is just a facet of what the Chorus preaches.

Hey, I would change my vote if I could!

Then why can't this consciousness be the one to curse Caine?

Before you ask why such an entity would be interested in what a single ape does on a grain-sized planet (to him), the answer is that we'll never know

...

>human genome is the true name
Nobody better blame the Technocracy for this shit.

>Then why can't this consciousness be the one to curse Caine?

God is definable for what he is, despite being divine in comprehension. What lies outside the universe explicitly never interacts with the material and the mundane, otherwise the Oracles as plot points would be invalidated entirely.

Either you Ascend and 'fuck off', or stay behind and help others achieve what you willingly denied for the better of all, supposedly.

It never ends. This is your home now, get used to it.

What is the best splat for fleshcrafting monstrosities aside from Archmages?

I think the two best might be Tzimisce Vampires with Visccitude and Mages.

Unless you have practise of Entities (which is an Archmage thing) I don't think you can really create that many monstrosities as a Mage. However, you can take control of Spirits/Ghosts/Supernal Entities/Abyssal Monsters/anything that has the Claim manifestation and force it to possess and Claim something. Also you can also summon up personal Goetic Demons from your mind (and some might possibly have the Claim manifestation as well.)

Possibly, some werewolfs with spirit powers could use Spirits to create Claimed monstrosities as well.

>I don't think you can really create that many monstrosities as a Mage

Ummm, no. Life can be all about this. Even more so than the Tzimisce. Life 5 can flat-out Make horrific monstrosities from nothing. Add in Mind and you can give it a consciousness of its own.

Mages with Life 4 can turn a lifeform into any other lifeform they can conceptualise.

Horse into a living hot air balloon made out of skin and bone? Done, just fit it within the scale factor.
Bumbleblee into a 20ft tall duck? Scale factor, and you're fine.
A giant redwood into 20,000,000 wasps? Probably add a reach for a "multiple beings" end result, and you should be fine.

Yeah but can it teleport and breath fire?

>send Caine through space at the speed of light or drone strike him into the Sun's core

Not sure you can do all of that. The speed of light would guarantee an auto-win on anything.

>It's another "fags compare Mage's cosmic powerlevels to Vampire's street-level powerlevels" episode
Why does nobody ever compare shit between Vampire and Werewolf, or Mage and Demon? You know, the stuff that's actually comparable?

Add in Space and Forces, sure.

Because then they'd have flashbacks of Chad giving them wedgies or dunking their heads into toilet bowls :(

Did you play Changeling 2e? How dark did it went? I am planning in doing Changeling short campaing and need ideas to make It totally dark

Add in Spirit 5 to make it part-Spirit, or Prime 4 and either Forces or Space 4 to make it a living imbued creature, and yes.

...

Because Mage is the most insufferably arrogant gameline.

Mage and Demon is only comparable until you throw in Archmages.

What were the writers thinking? This is basically the "I win" ability. Three successes is nothing and only mages get access to Correspondence Wards.

Was oWoD metaplot good?

>metaplot

That archmages are exceptionally rare plot devices?

It has some pretty great NPCs

It's not slight. It adds the risk of catastrophic consequences should things go wrong as well as evening out the probability curve for the reasons that I listed here, here and here. It's more gambly and doesn't allow the players to have a complete lock on one aspect of the game. It allows for the possibility of the unexpected much better than nWoD despite that system being more streamlined to run.

As for the jank of the system? They aren't that different. I would like to see Storyteller adopt Storytelling's damage resolution mechanic to speed up combat. That's the only real difference besides the botch mechanic and floating difficulty, really. I'd rather that, for fifth edition, they patch oWoD with nWoD fixes because nWoD is WAY too gamey in how it handles it's mechanics.

Yes, but that's just six dots. I find it annoying. It should be something like ten, not six. You can't fight back against the speed of light.

>You can't fight back against the speed of light.

I bet Caine could. He can do anything.

Aberrant when?

Can mages actually kill the first vampire or is this just theoretical talk

youtube.com/watch?v=3c6vDxvOXhQ

What are your thoughts on the M20 paradigm shift for the mystic Traditions to a more technologically inclusive form? Stuff like a rise in urban shamans, House Verditius using electronics, and the Akashics embracing the Do of the internet. Do you include this shift in your games? Why?

Personally I'm fine with it. I feel like the shift makes sense for Mage in the 21st century. If I'm playing a Hermetic, why would I not want to convert a grimoire into a PDF and share it online for free so Hermetic ideas get spread?

>Kill
That worthless sack of blood ain't alive.

Both.
They can in that the mehcanics are there
It's theoretical talk in that it would never actually happen at a table.
Also it gets kind of weird when you consider oWoD sort of has a canon timeline with its metaplot that ends in one of a few end of the world scenarios.

>Can mages actually kill the first vampire

An Archmage can.
Nothing under that.

>Nothing under that.
Doesn't having the 9 lives merit inherently beat the 7 fold curse?

That stuff was all there in revised and started half way through second edition.

Any move away from "technology is evil" is good to me.
Also it provides more grounds for cooperation or at least mutual non-agression between the Traditions and the Technocracy.

They're still reality deviants who are actively ruining the progress towards an orderly, human-controlled, safe and secure cosmos.
But at least they acknowledge the good that we're doing and aren't likely to just burn our vaccine production facilities to the ground because they're pissy that their crystals and leaves don't work.

That's nine lives, not seven times.

Would be easier to throw out a force exceeding the latter in at least equal measure.

Caine's a vampire, he's already harder to kill, the seven fold curse just makes him basically untouchable

...

You first need to ask yourself if Caine is able to defend against an angry universe being thrown at him.

Because that's what Archmages do. Have you taken into account just how big the universe is in comparison to our little itty bitty planet?

>the seven fold curse just makes him basically untouchable

By normal means, you mean.

How the fuck has this been going on for four months?

By normal and most supernatural means.

Yeah you can throw a fireball at him but then you're going to have either

>a fireball seven times bigger thrown your way
or
>suffer a loss equal to 7 times the pain he felt

Makes sense for everyone but the Verbena. They were always the hardcore anti-science trad. But a lot of shit about the Verbs makes no fucking sense.

Depends on the hostility entirely. Mages are experts at subtle and indirect death sentences.

It's not a hard thing to bypass the seven-fold curse.

Even a normie mage could bypass the seven fold curse, but only an archmage is going to be effective.

There is no subtle or indirect death sentence- if you caused his death, both your pawn and you are going to get hit

Not sure if even the seven fold curse is going to penetrate the absoluteness of the contingencies / defenses an archmage can upkeep, as a lot of them don't work based on damage or potency.

No one is talking about archmages.

It's all about normal mages

I think you're overestimating things.

Very true, but M20 and the post-Avatar Storm books seem to push this further (or maybe its just me).

Agreed, from what I've read that anti-technology bullshit in the first Mage books was terrible. I just wish they'd pull their head out of their asses with the SJW shit. I agree with most of the social/politcal ideas they talk about, but they are just so in love with themselves for being so goddamn progressive. We get it. You went to a liberal arts school. Now tell me how Prime 3 works.

A gem from the $yndicate book on how the convention views the Hollow Ones.

Except he/she is correct. Forces 9 is the bending of the entire fucking universe.
The Earth isn't even a grain of sand compared to this capability. Our planet is so small to the vastness that is the cosmos.

It's not something you can win against.

Does anyone have the Digital Web PDF? Mega is lacking

Wtf I love the Syndicate now

But how does that improve the game? WoD's horror doesn't really come from the possibility of the unexpected, at least not in the form that a single dice roll is going to directly create, and despite what you believe, the slight added gambly aspect adds no real tension or interesting mechanical wrinkles.

At the end of the day, it's a small shuffle of the probability that's only a little harder to math out than CofD is in the long run, especially by higher dot levels. If trying to block system mastery is the goal, a player on the Storyteller system still has plenty of options to gain it because you've only blocked off a general 30% chance of success per die.

So why do people suck Caine's dick then?

Season 19 of South Park touches on the ideas of how the market/neoliberalism co-ops forms of rebellion and feeling good rather than being good with the Whole Foods stuff. Seriously, that whole season is a goldmine for $yndicate ideas. Also just really good in general, definitely recommend it if you haven't seen it.

Wait, are hollow ones leftists or libertarians?

yes

They're nihilists

They're basically all the bad stereotypes of 90's WoD games. Edgy, using magical trappings with very little understanding or meaning, and just trying to show how smarter they are than everyone else because they're cynics. Think punks, emos, and goths who have read some bullshit pseudo-mystic articles online.

I hate the HO though and I absolutely recognize that I'm biased against them. They do have philosophical ties to romantic and Gothic writers/thinkers, but imo they're just circlejerking to how edgy they all are. Seriously thought they were a joke faction the writers put in to be self-aware.

Okay, check it out.

This is a game about consensual reality and being able to change the rules. That's just what mages do.

On one hand, the technocracy has a point when they make the argument that sanitation is neat! But it's neat because their paradigm makes it a necessity. If you come at that from the default assumption that we live in a mechanistic universe that always worked on such principles then yes, the Technocracy is objectively correct.

But that's now how the WoD works.

What it comes down to is this: Humanity is in a jail cell. The technoracy is trying to chase the roaches out and get a working toilet. The Traditions are actively attempting to pick the lock when the technocracy isn't looking because if they see the trads attempting a prison break, they'll shiv them.

The traditions hold that being a mage is the default, fully-actualized state of humanity. Yes, what the technocracy provides IS nice but they're a bunch of authoritarian fucks while the Traditions want to bootstrap everyone up to their level which would make the things that the technocracy offers unnecessary in the first place.

This is actually one of the end scenarios in Ascension. Universal, mass-awakening.

I'm sorry, but can you read?

If a system is easy enough to game that there is no challenge in a given arena, and nWoD just is that easy to game, then canny players are going to figure it out and fixed difficulty just makes that easier. It removes challenge and it removes the stakes.

Nowhere did I ever say that the horror of the setting came from the unpredictability of the setting or from the mechanical aspects. I simply said that it provides a upon the players to make it so that they can't run the tables with an almost total guarantee of success. oWoD has checks against that, nWod barely does so. That's why nWoD fails despite all of it's streamlining.

They streamlined the wrong things.