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

Mages will leak Mana out of their noses, and Silver Fangs will leak Gnosis out of their noses

Kuei-Jin. At lest the True Black Hand got bulldozered by the end of Wraith.

I like Kuei-Jin.

Anons, I'm currently writing a Batman fanfic set in the WOD.

I'm writing him as one of the last living Camazotz kinfolk, and in his childhood after his parents' murder he had a truly absurd amount of willpower. He stumbled upon the Batcave beneath Wayne Manor, in this story a powerful umbral site/node.

It's there that he encounters the Wyrmish Bat Totem, and in his anger and will he manages to subdue it in a test of supernatural will. Gaining Gnosis and Gifts from a now-reformed (Weaveric?) Bat Totem, the transformed spiritualist Bruce Wayne is set on the path of becoming the Batman.

After finishing a quiet life at school, he leaves home at 18 under Alfred's protests to travel the Americas, visiting the ancient and often destroyed or corrupted old caerns of the Camazotz. He sidesteps into the Umbra, facing twisted abominations, learning to fight and with from the Bat (who gives him great gifts alongside boons of supernatural strength, stealth, and knowledge).

Come his return to Gotham (New York?), he does the usual Bat-Gearing-Up, and heads out to face the supernatural as a Spirit Hunter, with the sigil of the Bat upon his chest. For kicks it can even be the scratchmark version like the Camazotz sigil.

Whaddya guys think?

Gotta agree. They were quality antags in VTM:B and that proved to me you can do them right.

It's only sensible that Asia deserves different myths and splats than the Euro-American centric splats. Vamps especially are rooted heavily in christian myth which makes no sense in China.

Anyone have that image in that particular resolution, without the text blotting out the lower half?

Seems likes a good take. How would you do his rogue gallery?

For what it's worth, the Joker is frequently mentioned in relation to Marauders.

>Joker
>Not a Malkavian

Son, i'm disappoint.

Since the story will generally be set in NY we've got a pretty good idea of the general background (Wartorn Supernatural world - Cam and Sabbat still squabbling, unable to gain full control. Technocrats looking over the Financial Areas and a handful of free mages in certain locales in the boroughs. Sept of the Green in the middle.) for which these characters can take place in.

Joker is a Malkavian, possibly replacing Auspex with Dominate so he has Dementation, Dominate, and Obfuscate. He's of an unusually (some might say disturbingly) low generation, but a tendency of his kindred to fail in killing him has left the Prince and Sabbat alike content to leave him alone.

Scarecrow is a Nephandi. His horrific monster form in Injustice is actually a real warform in this story, his use of Life/Mind allowing him to twist into horrific shapes and reshape the world around his foes into a house of their greatest terrors.

Ra's Al Ghul is instead called Ravager-of-Ghouls. He is an ancient Camazotz given fully to the Wyrm and takes the role of both Man-Bat and Ra's. He and his 'Assassins' are instead the last of the Camazotz, abandoned once more by the Wyrmish Bat when young Bruce destroyed their connection to it in his redemption. He hates Bruce and everything he stands for, and will attack the Batcave/Wayne Manor directly.

Poison Ivy is a Verbena tied directly to the Sept of the Green, with a section of the Tellurian holding her 'nest.' She's easily the most powerful Life/Prime mage in all of NYC, but her obsession with the Green is actually a form of Mad Quiet. Hobgoblins that take similar guise to Swamp Thing torment her daily, and often harry the Werewolves trying to still use the Sept normally.

They can't exactly expunge her without ending up turned into toads or strangled by aggravated spiky vines.

Bane is actually an Extraordinary Citizen, utilizing a 'serum dispenser' Device provided by a NWO operative. It soaks the permanent paradox. ctd.

>Have you ever played up the Exalted connection?
The devs themselves didn't play up that 'connection' for more than like two months didn't they? And then one throw away paragraph in hunter?

>Have you ever played up the Exalted connection?

Please no. We had an entire thread ruined by magefags and solarfags duking it out.

Cross fiction power level fights is still the lowest depths of autism this thread has sunk to. Like that's deviant art level I'll tell you what.

>Scarecrow being a Mage
>Joker being a vamp.
Joker would be a Marauder. The level of handwavium he has is nothing short of a Mage.
I could buy Scarecrow being a Formori of some sort.

Agreed, but if they ever brought them back they gotta do some better research into myths across Asia and rely a lot less on weeby stereotypes.

It's hardly cross fiction. The splats correlate.

>The splats correlate.
But they don't. Like five books in oWoD dropped hints that they might, but both nWoD and exalted beyond second edition dropped it like a bag of bricks when they realized shit don't make sense.
Besides, that wasn't exactly my point. There might be some connection there if you want there to be, but it's impossible for them to actually crossover and keep themselves the way there are. Like, there isn't a supernal in Creation, and there isn't Essence (or at least not the same type of essence) in WoD. Somethings gotta give somewhere.

Continued Here

Topkek user!

As said Bane is an Extraordinary Citizen and the Venom is just a rote. He doesn't really have any magic of his own. As a Technocratic agent he's primarily concerned with taking down supernaturals or legends like them. He can't fight a Werewolf, but a fledgling or any number of minor creatures from the WOD books are his domain. Batman included.

Deadshot is actually Hitmark 494. Hyperlethal. Ungodly Accurate. Wears an armored suit so nobody can see his cybernetics. Primarily tasked with wiping out individuals that threaten consensus such as unprepared Mages or even mundanes with catchy ideas.

Deathstroke is actually an Imbued. Like Batman he has 10/10 willpower and Vengeance as his primary set of edges. I don't know hunter that well but 'Creates weapons from thin air' sounds like Deathstroke alright. In this he's the Reverse-Batman.

Two-Face, Zzaz, Black Mask, Anarky, Penguin, and Riddler are all mundane criminals. I don't know slasher so maybe that fits Zzaz. Riddler has supernatural intelligence traits and tons of knowledge skills (including Occult) but focuses entirely on his riddles and gadgets therein. Black Mask is a criminal lord with a weird S&M Mask. Anarky's just some guy in a mask with a nice voice to draw a crowd, a good pawn. Penguin's a snarky mob boss who's too useless to make a good ghoul himself. Two-Face is a psychotic DA as is appropriate.

Clayface is actually a unique Wyrmic Bane that infests people. The Wolves hate it but while semi-powerful only does bashing damage, and seemingly can't be killed without the usual freezing treatment from the comics. Werewolves usually don't pack that kind of gear, Batman does.

Kite-Man, Condiment King, Calendar Man, Cluemaster, Killer Moth, Firefly, and Mr. Freeze are all Extraordinary Citizens that worship a Mage figure known as 'The Owl', who lives in Chicago and has caused lots of trouble there. They appear in New York to challenge Batman for him.

*exalted beyond first edition

No. They do correlate.

The metaplot for OWoD is entirely semi-canon and the relative gamelines for CofD were made to compliment each other, disregarding balance of course.

Exalted 1e and 2e and cWoD were part of the same cosmology, nWoD and 3e aren't. This isn't a difficult concept.

Fanficcer here again - Joker can't be a Marauder because Marauders are like a walking Horizon Realm on Earth. Their after-effects are limited to nonexistent, which just doesn't fit the Joker's MO.

As a Malkavian with Obfuscate/Dominate/Dementation he can emulate the toxic laughing gas, be stealthy, and control a large gang despite his insanity. His bombs and stuff are all usually quite mundane.

Shit, in TDK he doesn't need any of that stuff and still manages to mindfuck people. I make him a Malkavian mostly to have people still working for him, which makes no sense given how crazy most Jokers are.

It also sets up a heroic Malkavian Revenant Harleen Quinzel.

Wait wait, are you saying the WoD splats correlate or that exalted and WoD correlate? Because if the second [citation needed] since I can pull up dev quotes right now saying the contrary.
That's what I was saying. Except only Exalted 1e, I think they dropped it well before 2e became a thing unless I'm getting my dates wrong.

>Exalted 1e and 2e and cWoD were part of the same cosmology

This was dropped by the actual authors relatively quickly. It's more of a nod.

>Wait wait, are you saying the WoD splats correlate or that exalted and WoD correlate?

The former. Exalted is no longer connected to WoD.

I have a curiosity question. Whats the single largest WoD book ever published in terms of page count?

I'd have to guess one of the X20 cores, if only because of how much they're cramming in there.

Is transitioning WoD characters into Hunter characters a rough process?

youtube.com/watch?v=UdWKXvlt0do

Exalted 1e and oWoD were intended to be the same setting. Somewhere between Exalted and WoD, all the exaltations got chopped up to be even smaller, Creation became a sphere, space was invented, and a bunch of other shit changed

Solars become Hunters
Abyssals became Vampires
Infernals became Demons
Dragon-Blooded became Kuei-Jin
Lunars became Werewolves
Sidereals became Mages
Fair Folk became Changelings
Alchemicals didn't exactly make the transition, but I vaguely remember WoD having something about a planet called Autochthon(the machine-god who the Alchemicals live on, in Exalted), which orbits the sun opposite Earth, and is inhabited by robots

The Ebon Dragon married the Scarlet Empress; she became the Scarlet Bride.
EVERYTHING from Exalted can be connected to something in WoD, except for actual locations in Creation.
Even Malfeas is still around in the early editions of WoD, iirc

(For what its worth, this idea was probably jacked from Earthdawn and Shadowrun, which did it much better, since Earthdawn's Barsaive is literally just modern Ukraine, and the Blood Wood is the Chernobyl zone of exclusion)

In both cases, WoD/Exalted and Shadowrun/Earthdawn, the connections were dropped, but you can still spot the connections if you look for them(Re: ED and SR, you can even spot the same fucking dragons in both games, although they go by different names)

I'm not sure I understand. Hunter characters are WoD characters, do you mean like having a hunter undergo a change into a splat?

I'm still new to WoD, so I'd rather ask the silly questions. I wasn't sure if there would be a template change or not.

Do you mean nWoD/CofD mortals into Hunters?
Easy as shit. Just add the 'career' field, let them select some asset skills, and add a free specialty(plus the ability to risk Willpower and learn/use Tactics)

oWoD mortals/hunters hunted people/whatever into capital-H Hunters? I'd say just leave them at their current XP and either start allowing them to buy stuff from Hunter, or add all the stuff a freshly made Hunter would get that they didn't start with as mortals, but I don't really know much about oHunter

The former of the two options was what I was getting at. Thankfully it is that simple.

Yeah, except the point being made is that Exalted no longer equated to WoD as a whole.
The authors went from "ancient past" to "a subtle nod"

It's no longer considered canon, certainly no more than the semi-canon metaplot.

I'm nearly positive that Mage 20th tops all the others at 700 pages. Vampire 20th is only 488 pages long.

Wow. 700 pages to say nothing of worth.

>700 pages
>350 pages of culinary advice, 'don play bad guiz or u becom bad', and memes
>200 pages of 'how the fuck does metaplot work'
>150 pages of actually useful info for playing the game

Even that doesn't really help the whole exalt vs whatever else thing though.

Kindred of the east had this story in it somewhere, describing how reality was constantly going through these highs and lows. It specifically noted that miraculous powers and what not were easier and harder to use, weaker and stronger as the cycle turned. In theory this was a prototype for the exalted into WoD thing, but what it means is that even if you took a 1e exalt and planted them in WoD land their powers would likely be weaker than they are in creation simply because of how reality had changed and lessened. It's also why archspheres weren't intended to be a thing initially, because that sort of power in what's supposed to be a low period of the cycle makes no sense.

>It's also why archspheres weren't intended to be a thing initially, because that sort of power in what's supposed to be a low period of the cycle makes no sense.

Except the Archspheres make perfect sense
Whether you like it or not, unlimited power is just that.

You can say it all you want, doesn't change the fact that game devs have outright said they were never intended as part of the original vision.

One game dev.

You misunderstand. I mean if we assume that wheel of ages thing is true then the archspheres violate that idea. It's probably one of the reasons they decided to start getting rid of any inherent connection.

100% of the devs to comment on the topic.

Splat philosophies differ greatly, user. The wheel of ages isn't absolute.

Phil Brucatto doesn't account for 100% of the developers.

You'll notice I never said that. I said that the only comment from an original mage dev we have says they were never intended to be a thing. And yes that is the comment I'm talking about.

A few have called the Archspheres necessary, I believe.
But that's not the same as "they were always meant to be"

Just food for thought.

>Yeah, vampires exist and they kill and torture us for their amusement. Whaddya gonna do eh?

Not as well thought out as it could be eh

Were there any changes to Tremere in second edition or is stuff in left-hand legacies still on point

Only crunch changes.
According to Dave, they're getting an altered template, to combine with their Legacy "houses".

Not that Mage: 1e wasn't also full of autism about the evils of science and rationality. The only big difference is the culinary advice and the inclusion of gender studies wankery in the general leftist-anarchist wankery bucket.

Don't forget the unnecessary exclusion of the Archspheres.

It's a human gift to be able to blatantly ignore horrible shit going on right next to you. There's a condition that I can't remember the name of, where people ignore danger more the closer they are to it.
Add in the Invisible Gorilla phenomenon and I wouldn't put it past people to wave off Vamps eating people as "Yeah those gangs are getting really violent lately, the cops should do something."

Acting like that is not limited to mortals in wod/cofd. There are subsects among Carthians that insist that there is nothing supernatural about vampires and others creatures existing in cofd.

"Nothing magical about literal blood sorcery and undeath, right guys?"

>Look we all watched Blade. What more is there to know?

Which arcana are the most fun/interesting?

Matter and Forces grant the greatest capacity for creative thinking.

is that fun tho?

yes

Personally i think space/time is most fun/intresting.

being able to travel to virtually anywhere and see any time is super intresting.

Being able to make fires bigger and turn shit into whatever isnt..

Fate is always a good one.

But that's usually done as a way to cope with something unchangeable - if even Joe schmoe has a decent idea vamps might exist, Im certain the CIA knows. Why not just kill them? I prefer thinking the masquerade is effective even if it requires some hand waving to "yeah humans know but they seem cool with it"

What do you think of Prime?

So you want to be a tourist? Neat.
The other Arcana will be here when you actually want to DO something cool.

Useful if you need to dispel magic or investigate magic/supernal stuff but fun and intresting on its own in a vacuum? Nope.

Yeh cos time travelling isnt cool.

Your face and anus have changed places and now you're getting your ass kicked by five or six different bi-locating versions of the same mage

I tend to play masquarade in requiem in a "johnwickish" way. That there is behind the scenes world that also has large number of "normal" people catering to it. In normal circumstances I would probably run with assumption that every major agency is run by supernaturals

Hombre, Time and Space have awesome applications, but you named the most basic bitch versions of them.

Going places and seeing stuff.

Get fractal with space, trap people in loops, redefine your history for fun and profit, collapse potential futures around an action to ensure it's success, collapse 3 items into the same spatial plane and switch between them as you need.

Your Magic itself should be fun, not the stuff you find with it.

Using magic to find and investigate mysteries is fun, using magic for the sake of using magic which im sure can be fun for a limted about of time is meh. You've seen one person trapped in a loop you've seen them all...

Id rather not sit around playing with myself/magic and actually use magic to find something intresting.

The seers were right all along

I prefer to run it that the major agencies around the world that matter have a quiet truce with the supernatural world, ie you don't fuck the status quo, we will not fuck you.
Especially that in the course of NWoD, where it is a unspoken rule that no single supernatural creature, or group of them, has power over humanity that exceeds a strong grip on a single city, it makes more sense to allow supers to simply go about their existences quietly, rather than declare an all out war that you can't reasonably justify.
Supernatural leaders are generally aware of this truce and it's implications, and will not step in the way of humanity eliminating individuals that are rocking the boat, lest they be tossed overboard with them.
>this came up hard in a werewolf game I was running, where after repeated incidents of going hog wild in populated areas, they were brought down and put under the leash of TF:V
>the pack appealed to other packs and the local elders for aid, and were turned out wholesale, and at the end were exiled from the state on pain of crippling

I like this concept. Has anyone here ever bothered to play with it?

Yeah I see what you say. In my vtr game sire of one of pcs runs a hotel with roughly 40 crew most of with are perfectly aware their boss is a vampire and are down with that. However outside of people working for supernaturals directly I tend to keep both worlds separate in most ways.

>here to empower the clans
>badass visuals

YES dude I'd love to have another discussion about how an image of a man with a nosebleed dooms the line forever, please go on

Eh, that gets a little too ridiculous - the more non-supernaturals you meet who're in on it the more it stops feeling much like a masquerade at all.

I prefer playing it as the mortal world simply doesn't know about their existence, and the only government agents who do are the ghouls specifically placed to keep it that way.

>"Yeah those gangs are getting really violent lately, the cops should do something."

"Yeah, vampires are getting really violent lately, the mages should do something."

>lawnchairs

>See, e.g., Dresden Files

There was a prior discussion? I wasn't aware.

>The seers were right all along

Was there ever any doubt...

>yfw posting this

Prime was good back in M:tAs since it gets combat spells the soonest out of any sphere. Typically you need 3 in a given sphere to get a 'fireball' equivalent while Prime both lets you make other stuff from nothing and make raw Quint weaponry including magic missiles, magic swords.

?

And now it's kinda lame?

>I said that the only comment from an original mage dev we have says they were never intended to be a thing

Brucato clearly admitted that archspheres were indeed intended to be a thing at many points in the gameline, only that he personally never wanted them when he was the developer. Moreover, he also explicitly concedes archspheres are still canon in M20, only that because his feelings were hurt, he's an obstinate douche and he used too much page count with his culinary demands, there weren't included in the M20 corebook.

RichT making Phil the sole developer and author of M20 was a colossal mistake. Phil will be Phil, and the problems with M20 are the fault of RichT, the purported Creative Director of OPP who was apparently asleep at the wheel during the production of game.

>Douch20: The Brucatoing.

If Signs of Sorcery is ever published (and at this point it's a big if), and Dave listened to the confusion and concerns about nuPrime, the supplement will fill in the gaps and expound upon the Arcanum. However, I'm not particularly optimistic.

>Dresden Files
Where the most knowledgeable wizard in the world about vampires gets greased anyway, and the vast majority of them stopped going out at night for fear of being ganked?

Mages in the Dresden Files are nearly as powerful as those in CofD, and the Red Court vampires are not the equivalent of CofD vampires. The Black Court vampires are comparable to Requiem vampires, and they're almost extinct in the Dresden Files setting.

If it wasn't for the arbitrary and ridiculously prohibitive DF Rules of Magic, wizards would rule the planet.