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

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>News
theonyxpath.com/release-roundup-april-2017/
paradoxinteractive.com/en/white-wolf-partners-with-focus-home-interactive-for-a-video-game-adaptation-of-the-world-of-darkness-storyteller-game-werewolf-the-apocalypse/
This week's Monday Meeting Notes:
theonyxpath.com/a-purr-fect-start-for-monarchies-of-mau-monday-meeting-notes/
>Question:
How often do you improvise as a ST?
>5th editons cliffnotes
pastebin.com/cp0r59da

Other urls found in this thread:

forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/main-category/main-forum/the-new-world-of-darkness/mage-the-awakening/1094513-news-on-the-faq/page5
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

We are never going to see the Mage FAQ, and even hoping for the promised cut antagonist material and Legacy updates is a fool's errand.

I just hope Signs of Sorcery is released before the end of 2018.

forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/main-category/main-forum/the-new-world-of-darkness/mage-the-awakening/1094513-news-on-the-faq/page5

It's one dev who could possibly work on it, he's got to make a living, under contract he can't accept payment from anyone other than Onyx to work on Mage stuff, it's unlikely they'd start a kickstarter for it, he's apparently had a lot of stuff to deal with in the last year, and he's also the main dev on another gameline that's still in development.

What's more, a bunch of the entitled shitheads from the Onyx Path forums start bitching about the company's policies such that it further discourages DaveB to spend his already precious free time on an unpaid project.

I'm just happy that the last Monday Meeting notes mentioned that he's getting caught back up on Mage, and that things are looking up for him.

Be well, my lord Exarch.

The fact that the FAQ isn't paid work makes me OK that there isn't one at the moment (I've never felt like I needed one, to be honest) but pretty miffed that Onyx Path apparently doesn't consider something like an FAQ to be worthy of paid work. Something like that should be paid work, full stop.

Also I do wish he could post at least the Sisterhood of the Blessed writeup which he did for his game.

I'd honestly just like another point of reference for developing my own Legacies.

The creation rules work nicely, and I can kinda see how they did it in the example Attainments, but I'd like another example (perhaps with some atypical Attainments) so I can have another example from the devs who wrote the system.

Also because the update I did is mostly garbage and the Mages are almost always better just casting the spell versions of the Attainments.

Thing is, even if you consider yes, the FAQ should be paid work.
It's not in Onyx Path's interest to put out that stuff (paying money for something they'll likely not make a single buck off of) when there's other paying projects they can get their devs to do.

Personally I really just appreciate the work DaveB puts in on the forums occasionally helping answer questions.

Also let's not rehash that discussion here please.

>How often do you improvise as a ST?

All the time. It's like the first rule of GM'ing your PCs will do the weirdest shit. Hell the players in my current game decided the best way to change the resonance in the bad part of town was to summon Batman from the Temenos to terrorize criminals.

Isn't that by design? If you want power and utility cast a spell. If you want something that just works use an attainment.

I love Temenos summonings.

That being said, when trying to destabilise an authoritarian Scelestus's "perfect Abyssal society" I did take a few Wisdom hits when I summoned a small horde of about 20 Rank 5 Goetia of various aspects of antiauthoritariasm, antiestablishmentism, contrarianism, and my personal favorite, teenage rebellion.

IMO, If you aren't risking wisdom occasionally you're really not playing mage correctly.

It doesn't matter if Onyx Path can make a buck off it or not, if you're doing developer things, you should be paid something for doing them.

I get the reality of the situation, it is what it is, but damn.

>Make a Werewolf character
>He is a shadow lord
>Call him Konrad Curze, also because the ST is a WHfag like me
>He is Romanian
>Time to play
>They ask my Werewolf name
>Oh shit, I forgot about it
>Spend literally 2 seconds to think of a name
>Think of my language corrispective of "Heart of Darkness" for some reason
>I Finish the campain
>A few minutes ago I decide to google the name out, because I always felt it was telling me something but I couldn't remember what
>I find the book of the same name, the translation was even the same
>See the author's name
>Joseph CONRAD
>I almost fall from my chair
>HOLY FUCKING SHIT

We have a house rule that you have to fuck up truly spectacularly to lose the last dot

Didn't he already answer shit in the FAQ thread?

Just trawled through his posts in that thread, and the only questions he answered were fairly simple rules questions. And very few of them, for that matter.

Also experimenting with tracking wisdom and integrity seperately

I also like to use a more 'granular?' approach to wisdom loss. So hijacking somebody's body or mind with Life 2 or Mind 2 would be Hubris at wisdom 7 but it wouldn't necessarily be so at wisdom 4 unless you're doing something utterly egregious.

For just mages or all supernatural splats? Seems like everybody would be a quivering wreck after a couple sessions.

Given that that's what causes your soul to almost irreversibly crack and start leaking magic everywhere, an action that can really only happen caused by something on the level of eating someone's fucking soul without Wisdom-protection...

That's not unwise.

Basically "Don't kill dont steal dont do crack" are tracked by integrity rather than wisdom. you can lose all your integrity and still have high wisdom. Of course, you're a "serene bastard" type character like that.

Or we may just say fuck integrity and make wisdom the sole stat only covering magic shit.

1E mechnaics worked better for it. now it's just like general groupings

Do the concepts of Awakening and Ascension exist within the astral realms?

Kek

Unrelated, someone in the last thread suggested that Vamps should be more powerful than Mages. My retort is that Vamps are so powerful that Mages all disappear from paradox before a Vamp chronicle even starts.

There are certainly realms relating to Ascension and Awakening (the concepts held by mankind) in the Temenos, and there are probably kernels of Supernal truth you can find in both of them amonst all of the crap about people floating up into the heavens and people falling to their knees, their eyes glowing with magical juju.

However none of them will be objectively true, and each will merely contain the single communally held thought of mankind.

DaveB is too pure for this world.

>How often do you improvise as a ST?
Right now. One of my PC's wants to hire a hit man to take care of a problem character in the local neighborhood. He has all the right connections and allies and resources, he should totally be able to do it. Just don't really know how to handle something like that.

Indeed, which is how he managed to Ascend, and join himself to the Iron Seal of Prime.

Seconding this, absolutely. Improvisation is the first, second, and third skill to improve as an ST. Planning shit out is good, but being ready to change it is super-necessary. Players will rarely, if ever, take the path you planned.

Especially if you're playing Mage...
Though that require creative players.
And I've had a few who couldn't cast their way out of a wet paper bag.

Who cares if its unpaid or not. Throwing your toys out the pram and threatening not to release the faq because people ask about it on a forum is immature.

Even had it been paid, it probably still wouldnt have been released by now anyways cos "problems" so meh

I cast a fireball.

"How?"

Well, I have Forces 3.

"Yeah, you can manipulate forces. How do you make a fireball?"

I... I make fire. And then I throw it.

"How do you make fire?"

I... I make the particles move really fast in the air?

"How do you do that?"

I... look, man, can't I just cast fireball? What's your problem?

fuck ascension, fuck paradigms.

Get yourself Forces 4 as fast as possible, then abuse the fuck out of Transform Energy.

It can turn a lake into an exploding icecube.

Vamps should be nowhere near as powerful as a mage but as he posted here It would be cool if they could steal some powers through diablire & power them by feeding on more Mages, or drain a Changling & gain access to their Contracts or other Glamour powers. It make for a far more interesting crossover potential than anything in Beast. A vampire would still have to find a way to kill said Mage or Changling which is no easy feat. & it would not be permanent

Why, you just ask what he's making it out of? Ex nihilo casting requires prime 2 or matter 2 to make it out of the air.

I run a ton shit of ascension i have never run into this. Paradigm is more the player defining the hammer with which he will hit everything as it were nails.

>So i got fire magic as my paradigm.
>Ok, but the guy is bleeding, how will you help him.
>with fire.
>.....can you expand on that?
>I will cauterize his wounds.
>....oh, ok sure.

or
>So you see your enemy and...
>FIREBALL!
>So now you see this technocracy agent.
>FIREBALL!
>So now, this HIT MARK appears and its made of primium, so he got counterspeling so....
>FIREBALL, to the building over it, so chunks will fall and crush him.

Interesting. My PCs are surprisingly straight edge.

Aren't alternate methods of safely relinquishing spell control coming w/ signs of sorcery? If it ever comes out.

This. I've never had issues with Paradigm either, it's just a little RP flavor for your magic.

Yes. Including a large section on Mage Sight to make it clearer how exactly it works.

For example, peripheral Mage Sight is triggered by photographs of a supernatural event, and can tell you what specifically is being affected by the phenomenon.

So you can imagine that at any gathering of Mages, there are probably going to be ground-rules on whether people are allowed to use Magic, and for what purposes.

Because peripheral is your first warning sign of something going wrong, and having that triggered first by someone casting a spell to get rid of their bad breath, followed by everyone else activing Active Mage Sight to see if they're in danger or under attack, will likely drive everyone mad.

I'm also very excited about the merits which modify Mage Sight to tell you the "Arcanum" of what triggers your periphery, and which lets you determinine similarities between phenomena viewed in Active Mage Sight.

Such as permitting you to see a Vampire's Dominate effect, and realising it for what it is, having previously seen a Mage's Psychic Domination.

dont quite get how a photo triggers MS but whatever..

Eh, representation of a thing carries its symbology, and Mages are all about reading and detecting symbology, or whatever. Basically, it's a neat tidbit. Because you can't see it in Active Mage sight, so all you know is somethign weeeeeeird happened then, and that'll drive you mad and send you off to hunt whatever it was down.

So a Mage who sees a Photo of a Sin-Eater, and who has Death 2, will detect the presence of the Geist within the Sin-Eater through his Periphery. And if he has the merit which permits you to know information about the nature of things in your periphery, he'll also be able to tell that that was triggered by a "Death" supernatural effect.

PMS is triggered by the active use of a supernatural effect, how is that coming from a photo of said effect?

Sounds retarded. Just give out photos of supernal effects to every sleeper, or print them in a magazine for lols then, constant pinging PMS??? aids!

Photograph of an active use?
You've also got to remember that Death, Mind and Spirit 2 grant you the ability to detect the presence of Ghosts, Goetia and Spirits in your periphery.

Also while it's not yet been stated, not all things in your periphery and active as as obvious or strong as each other. A mere photo of a very weak Ghost isn't going to do more than slightly tickle your brain, though a few thousand of them pasted all over a room could be a bit stronger.

And almost nothing compares to the "sound" of an Awakening, an Imperial Practice cast by one of the Watchtowers themselves.


Also sure, yes. That could be a simple plot-hook. Who's posting all these picture of Ghosts. Why?
Are they Awakened? Do they know what they're doing? Is it some human under some influence?
Does the God-Machine somehow need 100,000 pictures of Ghosts spread across the city to summon a powerful Ghost-enslaving Angel?

You'd think w/ how bloody useful the sight is gizmos and gadgets that expand what arcana a mage could interpret with the sight would be worth their weight in gold.

Ok. This HAS to be Dave.

Which is why you can get an Imbued item containing Shared Sight for 1 merit dot, or even better, borrow one from your Order with even the most casual membership.

You can even keep it, at Status 3.

So how does active/focused mage sight work with other splat powers?

Say you got a mage chilling in a bar having a beer when something pings his PMS. Some lady at the end of the bar is doing something magical (e.g. the dominate discipline).

Assuming he has the merit he'd know it's related to the death and mind arcana. Otherwise he'd only know the woman is doing something supernatural and would have to flip channels on his sight hoping he has the right arcana.

Say he does have the correct arcana. Active sight wouldn't tell him anything useful if this is the first time seeing a phenomena other than the lady is doing something to the frat boy chatting her up.

So if he focuses his sight and does some Scrutiny/Revelation would he now understand approximately what the Dominate discipling is and how it works?

>If it ever comes out.
keep on whining

PMS tells him she's doing something, and who she's doing it to.

He probably activates both Ruling Arcana in active Mage Sight (or all 3 if he gets a third from his Legacy), to see what all of the fuss is about.

He sees the dominate under under one of his Arcana (probably Mind or Death) and he sees some representation about what's happening. Probably some mystic link between her and the person she's influencing, meaning he can immediately read it as a Mind power, given it fits under Mind.

However he can't tell if it's telepathy, mind-reading, domination, or whathaveyou without the merit, so he he pulls out Focused Mage Sight and stares at her like a total creeper. Scrutiny tears away all of the Opacity, and then when he performs Revelation he discovers she's using some kind of mystical undead blood power to hypnotically dominate the mind of the other person.

>would he now understand approximately what the Dominate discipling is and how it works?

Under Deep information, there is.

How the Arcanum used relates to the Mystery — for example,
using Death Sight to scrutinize a vampire’s ghoul will
reveal Deep Information relating to the undead blood in
the subject’s system, and any powers the ghoul has gained
from it. Using Fate Sight to assess a changeling’s powers
will reveal that they are formed by mystical bargains

no Pms tells him something happened. It doesnt reveal who did it or who it was done too.

He then has to active Active mage sight and see if he can see it via whatever arcana lens he is viewing it through, if he is using death/mind (?) he then can see the dominate.

he can then use focused mage sight to tell its a mental dominate effect, what the person has been commanded to do, blah blah blah.

From the Signs of Sorcery document linked with the "I can see for miles and miles" Open Dev blog post

"Peripheral Sight does not give the mage insight into the nature of the phenomenon, but the location of the effect is apparent: if a vampire activates one of her Disciplines, for example, any mage watching would know that there was something supernatural about her. If the source of the effect is invisible (such as a ghost in Twilight), the mage knows where it originates from even if she cannot see the ghost. A mage can even see the presence of a Mystery in a photograph or a video, or through a scrying window or reconstruction of the past via Postcognition or the like."

quoting something that will never appear, good job.

>Nor does Peripheral Mage Sight give any >clues
>as to what just happened — only that magic >is
>afoot

Actual book in print

I'm happy to interpret that in light of the blog post as reading more talking to the qualities and innate nature of the phenomenon, rather than its geographic location.

The sight seems to be the strongest aspect of the mage template. Knowledge is power and all that.

It's the cornerstone of the entire gameline.

I don't see anything here implying the target of the discipline could be known.

I want to run a game but I'm kind of intimidated by the scope of the system. I've been running a mortals game for my friends to teach myself the core system.

I may take the plunge when Signs comes out.


I love the mage shit posts. It's actually kind of educational

>when signs comes out.

2034 m8

>The sight seems to be the strongest aspect of the mage template. Knowledge is power and all that

Don't forget that mages cannot turn off PMS.

Whether they like it or not, they know about EVERY little active supernatural event in their vicinity. Within the CofD, particularly any decent sized city or active area, the pinging would be incessant. There's a reason why mages are usually ornery and paranoid. Other splats should be thankful that mages are usually more curious than violently aggressive.

Also, if a wizard is staring at you, run away as fast as you can.

>riggered first by someone casting a spell to get rid of their bad breath

Halitosis serves the Lie.

One does not see the Truth of reality and command it with a whim, and then forget his Tic-Tacs at the Consilium meeting with at least some repercussions.

Signs of Sorcery also talks about the limitations of PMS. Unless the phenomenon is happening within your normal sensory range of perception, it has to be an extremely potent event to trigger.

Such as an Awakening, the summoning of a Supernal being, or the Manifestation of a high Rank ephemeral entity.

However Mages are still going to be massive busybodies, so use your powers in public at your own peril. If there's anything worse than fucking with the Masquerade (or whatever it's called now), it's an EXTREMELY interested Moros getting all up in your undead guts.

>Unless the phenomenon is happening within your normal sensory range of perception, it has to be an extremely potent event to trigger.

ANY active supernatural phenomena, event or power in a mages sensory range will trigger his PMS. Bigger event will trigger a bigger "ping."

Don't mages attract oddities/mysteries related to their paths as they grow in Gnosis? (So a Moros would be like a lightning rod for ghosts, a Thyrsus for spirits and cryptids, etc.)

That's... What I said.

That's a potential aspect of your Long-Term nimbus.
However you could just as easily as a Moros find yourself accumulating meaningless transitory wealth, or have people fawn over your hot body or have people frequently physically confront you as a Thyrsus.

Your long-term nimbus will have narrative effects on those around you. Your Wisdom and level of sympathetic connection will determine who will be affected.

At 6+ Gnosis, the effects of your long-term nimbus start to have more impactful results.

For instance, an Obrimos' home might tend to be very hot or cold, or you cell phone reception might range from nonexistent to receiving signals from across the globe. At Gnosis 6+, if the mage stubs his toe in the shower, it may trigger a minor earthquake or tornado in his neighborhood.

Paradigm just means don't be lazy, fluff your shit. In my game for instance, the Hermetic player can only scry things with a reflective surface or by drawing a circle somewhere. He's used everything from the rearview mirror of another player's truck, to a puddle in an alleyway for this purpose.

Another player uses powers based on Shinto and Buddhism. She meditates and carries around ofuda.

Another player uses powers based on Aztec mythology. He does Jojo poses.

Its usually "ST may I" bullshit. You get a fucking shit ST and your boned right from the start.

Well thats not how its supposed to work and that's stupid. Its supposed to just mean "Be thematic" so not everyone with Mind 3 plays exactly the same.

It has begun

if you have a shit st you should probably just leave the group anyway

You get a fucking shit ST and your boned right from the start.

Isnt that true for all games ever?

why would i ever play ascension??

Why would you ever reply that to my post?

has mage supremacy a concept within the Temenos?

Milwaukee storyteller from a couple of threads here

Campaign said there was 10 on 10 combat between two milwaukee anarch gangs (blood brothers + the union) and even though i simplified it to 1 on 1 combat with every "wound" killing an combattant its jsut AWFUL

I really really dislike the combat and i dont think my players enjoyed the combat scenes either

How do i deal with this?

Just skip the combat in the "by night" book?

Paraphrase combat scenes or shorten them (like i did before)

Any advice?

Also why the FUCK are the values of the weapons not in the V20 corebook im so triggered

Are there any official rules in V20/D20 for getting free physical merits with Vicissitude? Player is asking and I'm not sure if I should still make them cost XP or not

Important aspect: Having a Shadow Name makes it so that the Nimbus leak targets your mystical life, rather than your mortal one.

... Pentex controls kermit? NOOOOOOOOO!

What do you mean by 'values'? Like, the damage ratings?

No, Vicissitude does what it says on the page. If it doesn't say 'gives Physical Merits' then it doesn't give Physical Merits.

damage ratings + how much ammo it holds + weapon range

Those are in the book bro look harder.

And by look harder I mean it's on page 281, sorry for being rude

Thanks man

I was used to having a list at the end of the book from cthulhu so thats why i looked there

Reposting this from the old thread

So in V20 if I'm playing a Tremere that's managed to learn Visisitude, could I use the Blood Penny ritual on a bunch of those flat glass marble things you find in craft stores, hide them in my body to draw out later when I cast the ritual that condenses my blood to artifically increase my generation? Could i wear sub-dermal armor like a steel plate on the breast bone & kevlar/stab-proof material. What other bullshit could I pull off? In the idea of making myself a unholy terror/super prepped blood god.

Don't suppose anyone here would know what kind of sunglasses these are? I'm talking about some specific brand which resembles them the most, to be clear.

I'd let people use Vicissitude as an excuse for how they got some supernatural merits or something but they'd still have to pay the XP cost.

Matrix Top Heavy Sunglasses are a close match in style.

Bit too rectangular, IMO. These seem to be more oblong in shape.

helena a shit

toreador a gay

The thing I was looking at from the first picture was the wide frame especially above the nose. The second picture is an entirely different design of sunglasses. Regardless, I doubt there's a brand that is 100% a match, I wouildn't think Bradstreet referenced real fashion for his pictures.

Might as well ask the man himself then.

Pretty sure those're supposed to be Ray-Bans my dude

why i hate masq players

You can do anything if your storyteller allows it

Dark Ages 20th companion has rules for simplified combat.