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

Tell us more, please.

Also watch out for Angry Birbs.

Stats: pastebin.com/f51TiHTj

Feedback welcome.

Was it a crossover?

No Tremere though
Big old flaw in the system
It's okay though, I like the Stryx

Don't say I never did anything for the thread

Three of the Covenants do Blood Magic of some form.

Tremere are Mages in NWoD. In other words, they succeeded where the original Tremere Failed.

What is the best option for running a Jojo's Bizarre Adventure game in CoD: creating a Micro Template, or waiting for Geist 2ED and making a setting hack for it that is more about the Weird than the Gothic?

They're still a group of fuck ups. Continuing the proud tradition of the Tremere for being the short bus of magic users.

Can Vampires smoke?

The Tremere in CofD are hardly on the short end.

They're an altered Template, and still considered Mages.

I think they can. I don't think it does anything for them.

Why is WoD so devoid of splat balance?

Mages are humans not monsters. SO shouldn't they be under vampires and weres?

>Mages are humans not monsters.

There is more debate about that than you think.

Mages are the Only actual humans in the setting. Sleepers are nothing more than animals that look human. Calling a sleeper human is an insult to the entire species

Because the splats aren't supposed to be balanced? This isn't a hard concept. If you're playing a game of Vampire, you're not supposed to be fighting Archmages, you're supposed to be fighting Vampire antagonists.

Mage's powerlevels make sense for the story it's trying to tell: you play a human who has been granted access to the source code of reality. That is a cosmic-level story, and it is not supposed to crossover with street-level stories like Werewolf and Vampire. Crossover is a bad idea in general, but Mage is very clearly not supposed to crossover with anyone.

The biggest monsters are almost always human.

Give said humans phenomenal power? Yikes.

>Mage is very clearly not supposed to crossover with anyone.

I disagree. They do a far better job than Beast.

Yeah but the new blood magic has no academical aspect to it, it's basically dark catholicism, naked witches in the woods,, or Dracula wannabes & any filthy degenerate bloodline can use it.

>They do a far better job than Beast

This is true, but second-worst is still pretty bad. Like I said, none of the splats are "good" for crossover, but some are worse than others.

The World of Darkness is anthropocentric - Blatantly so in the new game. Which is probably why Aliens were never a splat, or were Mages as well. (The old WoD never gave a satisfactory answer on that end, the Ka Luon are supposedly Mages or something like Mages in "Not with a Bang," which was pretty horribly done)

All splats are defined by Humanity in some way or another. Therefore Humans with Big-league Power are the strongest combination.

The OD is pretty academic in it's behavior. Have you actually read their splatbook?

Mage and Demon mix pretty well in my experience. Then again, I use the Crowded Shadows model, so it's likely you'll at least bump into another splat at some point. How it goes down depends on the game you're playing.

Is there anything the Gentry could offer mages in return for raiding a freehold and capturing as many changelings as possible?

I have a Seer NPC in the works who trades sleepers to the Gentry for all sorts of goodies. Privateering is more dangerous, but I'm sure the rewards would be better too.

Then again, I'm trying to come up with characters that highlight the depths to which Seers will sink.

Remember kids, if it doesn't involve using Magic, it's not a sin against Wisdom! Or it shouldn't be, anyway.

Hedge-beast servants, goblin fruit, generic "favors", secrets from the ancient past.
It'd really only be Seers, or perhaps some jackass Mystagogues who would accept such a deal though.

Even the Scelestus have lines they won't cross, and shit like this might have led them to think maybe we need a different reality then our current one. In fact, I think I have another character idea for an antagonist in that side story - A Scelestus who wants to erase the Gentry.

Thing is, Scelestus don't just think "maybe we need a new reality" they're committed, wholesale, to the destruction of reality by the Abyss.

Some will see this is because the world is such a horrifyingly awful place, ruled by tyrannical Exarchs, where even death is not the end as souls are (ostensibly) recycled back into new bodies. Only destruction by the Abyss will permit a new world to be birthed from the complete lack of existence as anti-reality and reality collide and erase each other (this argument has NO objective truth btw... or does it?).

However others just want to destroy it all.

You don't have to be a Scelestus to want to destroy the Gentry though.
While the Underworld and Shadow seem to be a 'natural' part of the world, the Hedge and Arcadia seem almost like a parasitic attachment to it. A "lesser" lower depth which has somehow taken root and connected to reality.
I wonder what element it would be argued is missing from Arcadia though.
Certainty?

The Wyrd is essentially living fate. It's not an entity per se but it runs off of strange logic correlating to stories.

I have a changeling the lost game coming up and I'm honestly in a bit of an rpg slump atm.

Have any of you guys got any good source material (or just flat out ideas of your own) that I could use to get those creative juices flowing?

So the missing element should be "choice" or perhaps "truth".
As a story is nothing but a lie we tell ourselves, and Changelings entire morality-stat is about their perception of reality and "truth" crumbling.

I liked the previous mention of an Archmage creating his/her own version of Arcadia within a Chantry.

Would really make you wonder just what "flaws" the Seeker would correct in relation to the real thing.

>I liked the previous mention of an Archmage creating his/her own version of Arcadia within a Chantry.

How many dots would this require?

Yes they are a bit bookish. But they are boring Dracula wannabes.

Where is the cool blood penny ritual? The Mind over Matter Path? The ritual to create an aggro weapon? Blood changing flasks?

For the real deal and not just some sandbox reality?

Fate Transfiguration

Practice of Dominions is required to create a Chantry, with Fate you could probably make it rooted in the Hedge, much like Mind can create one that effectivley mimics the Astral, Death the Underworld, Spirit the Shadow, and Matter the "material" world.

Would the Gentry be angry that some wizard created a superior Wyrd / Arcadia though?

I mean think about it. The Archmage is capable of spawning his own infinity of Gentry, without any of the previous drawbacks such as iron or hospitality.

Actually, to create an entirely new Arcadia, you'd need Assumption.

Using Transfiguration, you could just temporarily command Fate to do whatever you wanted.
When the spell ends though, the state will reset, but not anything you did.
The practical effect of which would be you could destroy every single Gentry you encoutered for the duration of the spell, peel back the hedge's encroachment, and decrease the probability of more Gentry arising and having such easy access to mankind when Arcadia births more of them.

So ultimately, to make a new Arcadia? Likely Assumption.

Possibly even an Ascension rite to absorb Changeling Arcaida "into" Supernal Arcadia, purifying it and properly re-incorporating its bastardised symbols.
Also retroactively erasing every Changeling from history but eh, whatchagonnado?

What would that add to Arcaida though?
Would all stories suddenly start to resonate with Fate?

The effects of Transfiguration are permanent.
If you so desire.

It would only take a moment to create the spark of a duplicate-Wyrd and let it run its course.

Set it in high school. Don't worry about using kid rules, just use adult rules & squint.

The Courts are clicks, so the Jocks are Summer, the Goths are Autumn, the Nerds are Winter (along the lines of being logic over emotion) the Stoners/party dudes/sluts are Spring. Flavor for taste if you don't like my suggestion ed clicks.

Plot Hooks
Girl goes missing, her locker was a hedge gate

Dude who was a lower suddenly gets really good at a sport, like swimiming, starts to become star athlete, is he a Changling? Did he make a deal?

Is the new Principal (or other authority figure) a huntsman?

Musical Episode!

School play starts to bleed into real life

Kid makes goblin fruit brownies, for the bakesale

Kid makes goblin fruit Drugs

I can think of more if you like

Is it correct to assume that all Ascended Mages are under the effects of Assumption?

They can't leave the Supernal, but I would imagine that they could still affect the Fallen if they were inclined.
Awakening to one of the five Watchtowers is an Imperial spell at its core.

No. Not at all.
For one, you don't even NEED to have achieved Archmastery to Ascend.
What's more, Ascension through a 10-dot practice is only one method open to Archmasters, amongst Ascension Rites, Exarchal favour, and so forth.

Well the seers have to get all that money and power from somewhere, right? Too busy doing the Exarchs' will to turn a serious profit.

The capabilities of Ascendants is a wonky topic. Supposedly they're ludicrously powerful but I've yet to see examples of how they'd defend what their symbols represent.

For instance, how would they defend the Phenomenal World if their Ochemata fail?

There's far, far more Idigam than could ever fit onto the Apollo rockets, they were pretty clear on that. Even if close to a hundred or so came back per lander, they still have a minimum metaphysical space they can occupy, and the number originally imprisoned is supposed to be in the thousands I thought?

Occasionally one or two of them manage to hitch a ride on particularly complex radio wave reflections and the like. They're fucking desperate to get out of there and if you open a portal they will come fucking running.

Mages would be far less thematically rich if they were weaker. The Mage story is about suddenly not only being powerful enough that a small slip-up using your powers could result in the death of everyone you know, and also of no longer having the sense of security that comes from being beneath the notice of the truly terrifying things that control the universe and crush civilisations like ants.

Vampire meanwhile is about having a shitty fucking awful time after having effectively sold your soul for immortality, and honestly the presence of Mages as essentially humans cartwheeling about enjoying their godlike powers seemingly consequence-free only adds to the deep regret they are supposed to be feeling over their choices.

They would have a set of definable conditions that would result in their Ochemata being summoned to the phenomenal world, and if another ascendent infringes their symbols, then they would resist that, realigning their dominion over symbols as the encroachment occurs.

But the thing that really makes this confusing is that its questionable as to whether they actually 'think' in any way we could understand, or whether they simply ARE. Their Ochemata can strive for things, it is a component of that ascendant's grip on reality that those Ochemata will appear at specific times with specific objectives. But they already know whether those Ochemata will succeed or not, since they are beyond time.

>how would they defend the Phenomenal World if their Ochemata fail?
Highly unlikely. They can spawn an infinite amount.

Other than that I don't know. They can probably cast Imperial magic at a whim and without Quintessence. Just a guess.

I'm actually a player I'm trying to look for something that *clicks* for a character concept.

To be clearer, not all Archmasters are Siddha. Someone who achieves Ascension by Assumption has a supernal identity strongly centred around their chosen Arcanum. But strictly speaking there's more ways of chopping up the eleven dimensional supernal pie than just down the lines of the arcana, as evidenced by other supernaturals.

As mentioned by there's plenty of other ways to ascend, and should you do so, it's likely that your specific supernal dominion and symbolic inscriptions wouldn't be centred around a single arcanum but rather some other domain of control. I dunno, maybe you are the dude who made it so that food gets better when you cook it. This entails being related to heat, meat, plants, fire, light, chemical bonds, proteins, even the sensations of taste and the sociology of culinary professionals. And honestly you probably have a hell of a lot more dominion over those specific things than those who associate directly with say, the Force, Matter, Life or Death arcana themselves even though those are ostensibly the root origin for the phenomena according to the traditional taxonomy of Mages, which precedes the advent of archmages.

If an Ascended's Ochemata fail, it already, and for always, knew that they would fail, but they were fatalistically summoned because that is simply the type of god that they are, that they would intervene if those circumstances came up. They can't really CAST onto the fallen world as such because that implies that a reality alteration is necessary. They simply are. They aren't observing things in real time.

PERHAPS though, there was some loophole that was always concealed within their domain to screw over those that threaten them. Going back to the Ascended Cooking Guy, maybe it's a more fundamental law of the universe than you would expect that those who like raw, bland food are shunned socially by everyone around them.

Or in a more extreme scenario, the sensation of tasting good food from the fallen world actually implants an undetectable, imperial strength compulsion that if anyone ever truly is at risk of threatening the fundamental nature of food, you will turn on them and kill them, no matter how closely allied to them you are, no matter how precious they are to you. It just turns out that noone pushed those boundaries up until now.

Any defensive measures that the Ascended have, already are, and always have been.

At least, that's my perspective. They get to understand the entire world in its entirety once, and they can set up some bulwarks and countermeasures against it to stop it from threatening them, after which they are a part of reality and their defenses are unfathomably powerful but effectively autonomous, since they now always were a part of the nature of reality. They can't "change their mind" because they realise that those defenses weren't effective enough, because to change their mind would immediately destabilise reality itself, since they are supposed to be serving as an eternal symbol that creates it in their image.

How do you impose mystery or investigation elements into your games?

What game line?

CofD and Hunter. Mostly doing mystery without That Guy messing it up.

>That op pic
Did I miss another stupid mage debate last thread?

It's an artifact of the fact that high power content is being provided to what was never really meant to be a high powered game. Archmages are supposed to be crazy powerful, but we don't have a single instance of anyone ever doing anything relevant to my knowledge.

Yeah. Last few threads this week have been filled with mage wank trolls.

Ech it wasn't even that bad last few times until yesterday someone started the topic.

I have little advice user but tell us about your local that guy

Track down the CofD Jojo fan supplement. I remember it being pretty good.

Is there a way for Vampires to eat?

There are some thaumaturgical shenanigans which allow the vampire to eat food (among other things) without immediately chucking it back up, yes (The level 5 ritual "Gift of Life" in the "Corpse in the Monster" path, for example).

In addition, at character creation you can select "Eat Food" as a merit, which allows a vampire to eat and drink regular mortal food and even savor the taste. They still need to throw it back up before the end of the night though.

All 15th-generation Thinbloods get the "Eat Food" merit for free, and they can even force their bodies to digest it (in case they're unable to throw it up), though this costs blood.

I remember reading about a fan-created thinblood inceptor (vampires that can make new disciplines), and how his unique discipline was basically "Eat Food 2.0", to the point where he could eat and digest food without spending blood and gain some nourishment from it.

If its mage you dont :P Or you at least accept the fact it will get solved fast and move on to the Why and what are we going to do about it and thenot How part..

wow eat food discipline, my unlife is fulfilled.

Hopefully he got crisped when other vampires found out cos what a faggot.

Eh? Mage is all about investigating stuff but mystery needs to be hidden behind magic or stuff they can't strong arm throu without putting work in

Well, I mean, yeah.

It's canon that most "new" disciplines by thinbloods are either absolute crap or just slight variations of already existing vampiric traits (sometimes they're just weaker versions of already-existing but largely unknown disciplines)... but the Elders are still wary because there's a LOT of thinbloods out there, and they're shtitting their pants at the thought of one of them discovering some form of "instakill and/or diablerize ALL the elders" discipline.

I mean, they're never gonna find such a thing, but the Elders don't know that, and are scared shitless.

So elders need to eat all the poor pe....thin bloods

NWoD question.

If I lose the 10 again quality on all manipulation rolls, but have the 9 again quality on Subterfuge rolls

When I roll a manipulation + subterfuge roll do they cancel each other out? Do I only reroll 9's and not 10's or do I get the full benefit regardless of the prior penalty?

That's... A very particular question.
I'd probably just say the two effects cancel each other out.

I'm making a VtM campaign, so I decided to draw characters to show to the players.
What do you think? Is it any good? He's supposed to be Toreador.

And she's a Ventrue.

Loosing ten again and gaining nine again in mechani ally the same as ten again, one in ten numbers explode so it's really the same thing, and I'd just say tens explode for easiness

I thought beast was made for crossovers? Are the devs truly so incompetent they make the worst crossover while actively trying to make a good one?

Both look pretty nice and match the typical clan look.

It was. But the way they went around it is awful.
Rather than making it so inoffensive it could work with anything, it's essentially the autistic kid who talks too loud at parties and thinks he's fitting in.

Listen to Darker Days radio podcast of it. They talk about some of the problems with crossover mechanics and other problems with crossovers in beast

WtF 2ed The Pack is good crossover book thou

Need some ideas about DtF campaing. Not very strengh enemies, becouse PCs is new

Do you mean this one?

forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/main-category/main-forum/the-new-world-of-darkness/1071380-chosen-of-the-ripple-a-jojo-s-bizarre-adventure-game-for-chronicles-of-darkness

Tell me about the setting. Time period, location, etc. I'm good with concepts.

Here is a few ones

You could play a kid who literally ran off too join the circus, but it was a front for one of the Gentry & they kidnapped you to play in their own personal circus, making you perform.

A character who spent their time in Arcadia as a game piece in some Gentry's parlor. Chess, checkers, 40k, Foosball, etc

You are a tin soldier, taken from your job in the military when you were badly attacked. The military thinks you KIA, but you have warred for a thousand years, at the behest of the Gentry

The Gentry thinks themselves a fashoinista, you are her manniquin

& here are two of my characters you could use

One spent years as a horned hound of Hearne the Hunter, chasing down fleeing changlings, until he & his pack were able to escape

A male model, who was stolen by Leanansidhe to hold up a marble pillar & look like a Roman statue

>Lancea Sanctum is Lasombra-lite
>Ordo Dracul is Tzimisce-lite
>Invictus is Camarilla-lite
>Carthians is Anarchs-lite

This is what bothers me the most about VtR's covenants.

>Why is WoD so devoid of splat balance?

Because this isn't a mutliplayer fighting video game. Not to mention, the splats aren't meant to crossover directly and blatantly. If they do, they tend to be watered down versions for the most part, and in some buffed ones.

Is that supposed to be a cigarette? Because it looks more like lipstick.

See I never understood this point off view. Covenants are their own things and mix various things from both old clans and sects. Using your logic VtM Ventrue are etchnic Lasombra/Tzimisce.

Blah I ment Lasombra and Tzimisce are etchnic ventrue

when i sit down to play a nwod game its usually because i want to explode the themes or that particular game, if some fucking special snowflake wants to play something else then i hope my ST (or me if im ST) would say no.

Its not even about balance, if we were playing mage and somebody wanted to join playing a vampire, then hopefully he would be told to fuck off, (why do we want to carry that fuck and only do shit at night anyway).

how many people actually run crossovers? Ive never played in one for the above reasons, is it as common as it appears, is every game people run a open house of play what you fucking want???

Typical poor player attitude. When he plays, he looks to win, and his characters reflect that too. Min Maxed, no personality or flaws, and if one thing goes wrong with his character, he blames the GM. We've been playing with him for a couple of years since he is a decent person, but his tabletop manners are lackluster.

>how many people actually run crossovers?
Too many. Because it should be nobody.

maybe, im sure its mostly just assholes who moan about "X splat is better than my fav splat" but have never actually played in one.

Please somebody tell us stories about the fab crossover games you have been in, and how everybody contributed to the plot....I DARE YOU!

apparently enough that Beast was supposed to focus on it

Beast is full of stupid things.

Crossover is an immensely tempting idea because so much of our current urban fantasy fiction primes us for it. Weirdly enough, it's a harder sell to present a world where only one kind of supernatural and their related creatures exist as opposed to a kitchen sink type setting, at least from personal experience.

Personally, I'd just pull out Urban Shadows if a group I was in really wanted crossover. The WoD/CofD conversion fansplat isn't comprehensive but it is not bad at all.

Carthians are better than Anarchs in every fucking way and I'm an OWoD Vampfag.

Anarchs are so one note but the Carthians have a whole goddamn peer reviewing system for any alternative form of political movement you could imagine.

Unlike the Anarchs they have a fucking purpose.

There's an Urban Shadows conversion for WoD/CoD? Where?

Didn't the concept for the Tremere come from Ars Magica anyway?

I'd link but apparently the creator trashed it to give it another editing pass a few weeks ago, and I never downloaded it. It's called World of Darkness: An Urban Shadows Suppliment, so keep an eye out for when it hopefully resurfaces.

Yeah but they weren't vampires in that