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

BRUCATOOOOOOO!!!!!

Brucato isn't the only one. Old WoD is filled with really cringy 90's edge lord shit.

What page?

The real question is if you can give autism to already awakened people by conning them into a yearly flu shot...

Back in the 90s, it was kinda cool to be heroic anti-vaxxer Trads fighting against the dry and dusty science and establishment types.

Come 2017, the concept hasn't aged well, which leads to a lot of dissonance between players and text. Conspiracies of a global academic and scientific intelligentsia attempting to destroy humanity and post-truthism is something that is actually believed by a large amount of people and having real world consequences. All the chaos and confusion compared to the stability of the 90s also means that people are more sympathetic to the Technocratic Union rather than Trads.

So if Mage were to get a 2020 game, who's winning: the Trads or the Nephandi ?

Has anyone played game in with players go from the bottom to the top? Like neonate>ancilla>elder or novice>adept>master? How did it go?

>Progenitors
>giving people autism
>not the traditions

Giovanni Chronicles

I might incorporate elements of the Technocracy into a game, but Mage's... unique take on existence and the cosmos is one that's best left in its quarantine game. Cutting edge tech that seems like it's from scifi? Could work, just replace Paradox with the complications of maintenance. A secret society that wants to use tech to combat what it thinks is an existential thread? Sure. Science is magic and belief is reality? Please see the door to your right, and don't let it hit you on the ass on the way out.

How long before changes in the shadow trickle over to the real world?

For example say I chase away spirits of vice or crime from a public park with a bad reputation. How long before the park cleans up/ public perception of the park improves.

Notice how NMage is basically Science and Magic teaming up against Faith?

What? There is no science involved in NWoD mage.

>1e supplement

Are you retarded? There are so many ways to reflexively counter other supernaturals as of 2e. Having the capability to counter other splat specific powers was a thing even before this.

...

muh balance
y u no exist

So do people here actually play Mage in either of its incarnations or do you just shitpost about "My splat can beat up your splat" without actually playing anything?

I shit post AND play mage. Though I usually get stuck running it instead.

You can make an argument about techno-arcana with the free council and their interpretation of mankind and the supernal.

You could, except it doesn't work that way mechanically regardless of the free councils view towards tech.

My splat can beat up your splat

Really? Why not share stories of the games you run then instead of shitposting?

I don't play any of them, so I'm completely impartial.

Based Komodo exarch.

Ars Nova, Techgnostics, Threnodists, and so on. A scientific approach to Awakening is far from impossible, as is any other approach.

However, it's acknowledged what you're doing isn't conventional in any way shape or form.

Do I have to be an asshole if I want to play Mage?

>taking the ascended fanboy's word for it

you don't think the other devs are thinking "hold the fucking phone" at all?

>Really? Why not share stories of the games you run then instead of shitposting?
Because I'm bad at summaries and text based communication. Shit posting is much easier. Also I haven't gotten to play or run anything in the last 6-7 months due to health issues killing my ability to function as a human being so everything I'm planning on doing is still in the development phase.

No, but it helps.

>you don't think the other devs are thinking "hold the fucking phone" at all?

No? Dave has written for every gameline except Hunter. I think it's rather obvious he knows what's up.

>muh balance

My lack of investment in the CofD makes it seem like I dodged a bullet here...

Its not like you are magically forced to use mages or anything.

It still looks utterly baffling to see.

It's really not. It's how Supernal magic works.

You probably need to incorporate time skips and/or torpor to make this work properly. You could tone that down a bit by playing Sabbat and have them Diablerize, but you'd still need time jumps to make them believable elders rather than just low-gen upstarts.

Why? Do you expect your precious favored splats to be untouchable by sorcery? Special snowflakes aren't a thing in the WoD.

Mages are special snowflakes

Hey all. You know how much we enjoyed Beast when we reviewed it, well we recently reviewed Conquering Heroes. podcast.darker-days.org/e/darker-days-radio-episode-77/

Also we will be at WoD Berlin and won't be pulling punches with interviews.

ur a special snowflake

wat is dis

Except Beasts

muh revenge porn

Two questions for you faggots

What the hell is a Caern exactly? Some kind of mystical building, a pile of rocks, or not even a real place?

Would a Mage with Time be able to bend the flow of time so to make Temporis ineffective?

>Some kind of mystical building, a pile of rocks, or not even a real place?

Can be any of these things. They cover the gamut of "place of power" archetypes.

>Would a Mage with XXXX be able to XXXXX so to XXXXXXX?

The answer to this question is almost always yes.

It's a locus

what the hell is a locus

wat wat?

World of Darkness Berlin is the big convention that White Wolf is holding in Berlin from the 11th to the 14th. DDR is the official podcast for the event, and will be running the podcast live there, and giving a talk.

M8 that's just terrible writing.

>Shielding spells, sometimes called Warding spells, offer protection against phenomena under the Arcanum’s purview. A Shielding spell might protect against a ghost’s Numina (Death), make the mage immune to fire (Forces) or disease (Life), or allow her to survive in a caustic atmo- sphere (Matter). Mages protect themselves from general harm through the power of their Arcana with the Mage Armor Attainment rather than Shielding spells.

It also flies in the face of everything the Technocracy is about. They want more people to Enlighten, and they want ascension. More people enlightening means more Scientist, and more Scientist means more power and a better timetable. In fact, society producing less and less Enlightened is a source of angst for Technocrats in M20.

I think that, because of the cultural dissonance between the 90s and now, the Technocracy should be revised to be a bit more like the Seers of the Throne.

No

Turning them back into the 1E Union would be worse in my opinion.

Why? The concept really doesn't work well anymore, and the Seers are, in my opinion, a bit more interesting anyway.

Because cartoon villains are boring and inhuman. Its fine that you like your villains simple, I just prefer more complexity

Technos shouldn't be any more villainous than Trads really. They should both be valid and justifiable, but conflicting paradigms for the world. Trads do some pretty dickish things too, like Hermetic elitism, Verbana human sacrifice, or Euthanatoi thought policing. In a broader sense, Trads often end up treating Sleepers in the same way that Neo and Trinity regard those still stuck in the Matrix; as in, collateral damage ain't a factor.

I find that people don't have a problem with the Technocracy being the antagonists (because having Terminators and Agent J and K hunting you down is cool), but they do have a problem with them being evul villains.

The Seers aren't cartoonish at all, any more than the Mafia, drug cartels, or Putin are.

I think the thing for the Technocracy is that they don't give a shit about anyone who doesn't buy into their paradigm, and that they'll do anything at all to ensure that it's the only paradigm in the world.

The Technocracy was always meant to be villainous. Things changed a bit later on.

A lot of their higher level Devices and Procedures, such as medicine, television, automobiles, and fridges, require consensual reality to work. If consensual reality breaks down, then those low level Devices and Procedures won't work unless you're awakened yourself. Sure, paradox wouldn't be a thing, but technology would only be for the Awakened mages instead of humankind. Now, if a Trad manages to get his Paradigm as the new consensual reality, things would keep on trucking (after a century or two of bad times). If not, then you're back to the pre-enlightenment middle ages.

I think the Technocracy would be absolutely fine with that. It turns them into the perpetual philosopher-kings of humanity, and ends any sort of Awakened competition to boot.

In fact, something that also strikes me as fitting is for the Technocracy to have a Plan Zero that would be enacted if it ever starts to seriously lose the battle for humanity's hearts and minds: the slaughter of the vast majority of the world's population, with the Technocracy being the only option left for rebuilding.

Philosophy is dead.

>I think the Technocracy would be absolutely fine with that
The Technocracy wants an orderly, rigid, stable cosmos.
Not merely for their tech to work.

I actually think the Technocracy is worse then the Marauders or Nephandi. Unlike the other bad mage factions, they don't have the excuse of being crazy, they know what they're doing if wrong, but still continue because they're greedy assholes. They don't have ideals to fight for, or beliefs to stand for; just they're own hunger for power. They've done far more damage to human kind then any other faction in the World of Darkness.

>They don't have ideals to fight for
You mean apart from the ideals espoused all the way across all of their books?

The Technocracy doesn't own science or technology though. They just co-opted and took credit for them. The fact that you think that the only reason why you get indoor plumbing and vaccines is because of Technocrats is because of how good their propaganda is. They don't really create new things, at least not as a central aim. They CONTROL things. They aren't sitting around in a laboratory making wonderful new cancer cures and fixing the rainforest. When they do research, it's always towards nefarious ends, like spreading autism through medical procedures. You can thank the Technocracy for shit like AIDS. What good tech they do get they suppress or keep it all to themselves to fuck over the Sleepers.

The reason the Technocracy gets so many supporters is because the Mage-Technocrats get treated as quacks by the book and everyone loves fascism as well as moral ambiguous cruelty. It makes people feel dark and edgy. Being an MIB is cool, more so than being "you plus powers."

>precious favored splat

I already punched out. You obviously weren't paying attention.

It's cosmic on a level that the CoD wasn't conceptualized as being when it was released. It's another leap from street level to bizarre realms of power and influence that the other splats don't seem to care about, so it stands out like a sore thumb.

A caern is a sacred site where Gaia's power spills over into the physical world. It bridges the gap between the physical and material and allows the material, basically, to exist from nourishment from the spirit. Mages only see them as nodes because Mage is a different game and their perspectives blind them just as much as they reveal things to mages. Hence, Garou and Fera tearing mages apart if they approach said sites.

That they have more of that in other WoD games may be why they don't really appear in such strong roles outside of Mage.

That is also a worrying possibility for some Technofans.

>That they have more of that in other WoD games may be why they don't really appear in such strong roles outside of Mage
It's also because the Technocracy is ultimately a mortal institution, with no (overt) backing from super-powered mystical entities.
I mean, they have to make budget, and avoid pissing off the Syndicate, who writes their cheques.
Also because if they were powerful enough to really take effect outside of Mage, then the universe would be pretty boring, with the reality-cops intermittently turning up to tell you to stop what you were doing or get sanitised.

I mean, this is mentioned in the 1e Guide to the Technocracy book.
Other books might like to reference them as a monolithic, tyrannical entity.
But there's just as much factional division and shit going wrong within it as any other group.

I mean, the "Ethical Compliance" wing of the Progenitors could be considered anything but, however they do their best.

>so it stands out like a sore thumb

Hardly so

>Namefagging
Hello newfriend.

I have to say, these threads are a fascinating case study in internet tribalism.

Fag

Faggot

Fag

Whats the most thicc thats ever been in a piece of book art?

...

What. The. Fuck.

Welcome to werewolf

>Excessive length 14+"

What fucking size queen wrote this?

Brucato has a writing credit on the book, but its hard to say who wrote that particular power.

Yes, a 22 year old book with material that got passed over forever after. Prime representation.

Er only know that present-day Satyr wrote the intro comic story. Apparently, he had been working retail in shoe sales beforehand...

Hello there, I'm a ST that is about to master a oneshot of oDemon with 5 players total, I want them to face some "thugs" as their first encounter, how many of them shall I send to them to make it a "challenging" encounter without making too hard/easy? Shall I apply the "Extras" rule by giving them only 4 Health Levels? They are normal humans with normal weapons, the shit will hit the fan later.

Probably. Also remember that they're "thugs".
Unless someone's got a gun to their heads, they will neither fight to the death, nor the last.

So if the fight swings enough in the PCs favor, then don't worry about mopping up, just have them freak out and try to run.

Also if one takes a serious hit, they'll likely either play dead, or duck and run.

This is old Canon. They had started moving away from this portrayal by second edition.

Unsupported assertion. Early Ascension had a very "All Conspiracies are True" vibe and the Technocracy was very much straight out of 1984. Uncle Phil may gorge himself on only the finest fair-trade, locally sourced, organically grown cocaine but I don't think he's an anti-vaxxer.

They were never portrayed like this. Again, it was very much a battle of "Freedom vs. Control"

Fuck you.

In oMage, mages are simply the natural and fully actualized state of humanity. Something that we forgot how to be. Imagine that humanity is in a jail cell. The technocrats are trying to fix the toilets, do their time and chase out the rats. The Traditionalist is fiddling with the lock but only when the technocrat isn't looking because if the technocrat sees him with the pick, he'll shiv him.

This.

Contrary to published fluff. They don't always introduce innovations but they often do and they have warehouses full of future tech to be released in accordance with the timetable.

It's because every oWoD game is also part of a different genre. Vampire is a crime game at heart, Werewolf is a military action game and Mage is an Espionage game and no one typifies that better than the technocrats.

Brucato sold shoes prior to becoming a game developer. He regards it as the most miserable, destructive time of his life.

The Seers manage to combine the most evil aspects of the Technocracy and the Nephandi without the redeeming features of the former, the horror of the latter, or the style and flair of either.

They were sent by the actual Cultist Group (Disguised as a firm in the city) to stop/make the demons reveal themselves, and they were paid a LOT of money to do that, combine that with the "Creepiness" emitted by the Cult Leader (aka, you DON'T want to disappoint that guy, he has that look of the one that would eat your heart), So how many thugs shall I send? 5?6?

Enough money to die for?
I'd also have them as low-ranked members of the Cult itself.
That + money + boss'll kill ya, should be enough to make them fight to the last.

I'd throw 6-7 at them.
That being said, I have no clue how powerful oDemon is.
Feel free to fudge dice in the PCs favor though if they're doing poorly.
That is, assuming you use a screen.
I always do.

oDemon can be utterly powerful (One of the characters can manipulate air pressure to deal damage by crushing people insides. for example), the problem is if you don't transform into your "demonic form" you cannot soak lethal damage, so you are quite squishy, also only one of the character is combat oriented, but two of them are cops so they have access to (standard) guns. I cannot cheat dice because I'm playing online with my group sadly, and it would be weird to hide dice throws on simple attacks.
I like the idea of the Low Members, I guess I will use that to not make them shit their pants when the first transformation will occur. I will throw at them 7 members with 4 health levels, if they are doing great and stomping I can make them run away so they could "Inform" their master (and then die, of course)

Jesus christ. I just finished reading Beast. I thought you fuckers were exaggerating. Which dumb motherfucker designed this shit heap.