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

Mages would be the best at this, but I'm not sure what example to write out.

Ban is a perfect counter against Werewolves.

Most of the time at least.

Besides Mages who have a kind of universal POV with the Arcana but their interpretations aren't always right the only ones I can think of who even would give a stab would be Beasts who view everything magic as degenerate kin.

Mages would probably conceptualize things through the arcana and not get function wrong necessarily but the how and why likely would be way off the mark. I doubt any could guess about Wolf by looking at a werewolf and just going 'oh wow you're spirit and flesh at once, how fascinating!'

In oWoD, Werewolves see vamps and Nephandi Mages as being corrupted by the Wyrm, and Technocrats as being agents of the Weaver.

oWoD Changelings see Technocrats as Banality incarnate.

Technocrats, of course, have decided that "hemophages, shapeshifters, and dimensional intruders" are Reality Deviants, who will be dealt with once they get the Traditions, Nephandi, and Marauders out of the way.

Prime 2 is arguably the best 'invisibility' effect if you go by the literal interpretation of the example spell.

If you have someone w/ Time 1 you can figure out what you'll be facing and tailor your spells towards that.

I know that's vague but it's really hard to give general advice on what to do without knowing exactly the lead up to your cabal getting the hell out of dodge. Because the consequences will be different. Firebombing some vampires is acceptable if they decided to attack you out of the blue but not so much if they're trying to get you to pay your overdue bat tab.

There would be splat experts among the Orders, I reckon. Individuals that know precisely where other such supernaturals stem from.

No need for such theatrics they're still living creatures. Have the Thyrsus or Mastigos put them to sleep for a couple hours.

I'm always a fan of Vampires in oWoD meeting Mages. But only if I'm running Mage, because its only hilarious when its someone else's day you're ruining.

Case in point, imagine you are a heavily minmaxed 400 lb Mexican cartel member Brujah. You run drugs for pretty much the entire city and beyond. You are, through Disciplines, the single strongest, fastest, and most durable thing you have ever seen. You are an inhuman horror living in a pseudo-Biblical backdrop.

One day a cowboy who looks like Chris Hemsworth and a japanese girl in full Sohei armor teleports into your room, paralyzes you with an Ofuda, communicates telepathically at length about what to do about you, kills you [on accident] when you try and escape, somehow managing to keep up with you despite running like 80 miles an hour, and then call up your spirit from Hell to interrogate.

Its a "What the shit GM?" kind of feel.

>a cowboy who looks like Chris Hemsworth
>a japanese girl in full Sohei armor

This is why people hate Ascension

It is pulp and I will not apologize for that.

If you want to fight cyborgs in space with kung fu and magic spells, you play Ascension.

If you want to play Scooby Doo Mysteries, you play Awakening.

I'm pretty sure its actually why people love it.

fuck yeah pulp wizards

...

I ran 2 games of CoD Mortals set in 1950s Cairo
One serial-killer murder investigation found online, and one taken from Urban Legends with crocodiles in the sewers
It went pretty well but I think that my lack of knowledge of the setting may have hindered my GMing

i thought technocrats literally didn't care about fairies at all since they'll be exterminated when the technocrat paradigm wins as a byproduct

Yeah. Go see the Q and A on their channel.

63 minutes.

42 minutes of people shouting variations of "PROBLEMATIC!" while LARPing Buzzword: The Buzzwordening. 21 minutes of actual questions.

Is it really THAT bad?

You can fight cyborgs in space with kung fu and magic spells in Awakening, and you can play Scooby Doo Mysteries in Ascension.

Are you surprised at all considering the last few books?

Link?

>You can fight cyborgs in space with kung fu and magic spells in Awakening,
not without massive setting hacks where as
> and you can play Scooby Doo Mysteries in Ascension.
Can be done natively, because its a far more robust gameline.

Food porn makes a robust gameline now?

Pretending M20 is the whole gameline is retarded.

Bioelectric Prosthesis are already a thing in real life. Enchanted Objects and Perfected Materials are things. Boom, sleepwalker cyborgs.

Adamant Hand and Law of Embodiment are also things. Boom, magic kung fu.

This little tidbit under Space 3... gee, I wonder what they're talking about.

Pretending ascension isn't retarded.

>.25ft^2/min

lol

Yes sir, if anything teleporting around the universe is easier in awakening 2e than ascension.

The only "problem" I can think of is that there's no canon details on whats out there besides occasional mentions of the god machine and the few idigam who haven't hitched a ride to earth yet.

Nigger, M20 *is* Ascension now. Outdated editions don't count. It's healthier just to accept it.

M20 literally references other books by name you fucking retard.

I imagine there are several cabals trying to get their fingernail clippings on the next mars rover.

I'm sure mage 5e will be a total trainwreck

>This little tidbit under Space 3... gee, I wonder what they're talking about.
I was pretty sure that had to do with Ban which was on the same page, and how long it would take someone in there to suffocate.

youtu.be/8fhpXrrLBsI

So is Co-locate.

One of the differences between Ascension and Awakening is that magic in awakening isn't mechanistic - IE, concepts & intent matter. Ban, like Shielding, has to do with "protection." Trying to "protect" someone from oxygen is asinine.

>Bioelectric Prosthesis are already a thing in real life. Enchanted Objects and Perfected Materials are things. Boom, sleepwalker cyborgs.

Transhuman Engineers are also a thing, and becoming cyborg wizards would be a dream come true for them.

>This little tidbit under Space 3... gee, I wonder what they're talking about.

Its about how you can suffocate people by using Space magic. Specifically, the spell Ban, which makes it so that nothing can leave or enter a certain area.

Well in Ban they explicitly say that without other arcana, neither light nor air gets in. I've used Ban in a game to trap and knock out someone before. My character got a pizza and drank a few beers while trying to guess when they'd be passed out finally.

Magic is all about creativity in use too.

>My character got a pizza and drank a few beers while trying to guess when they'd be passed out finally

You sound like an asshole.

This was a break in to his own home, he was deliberately being an asshole because he was mad.

Mages are supposed to be assholes, right?

At no point does it say I can't use a space rock and a matter enchanted spacesuit to co-locate to another planet

In fact I imagine that Celestial Masters and Thrice-Great do this fairly frequently

This is why people hate Mage players.

Poison.

You totally could do that. Have fun trying to not get sucked into the portal though.

The portal isn't always open. You have to willingly cross it to bring yourself or move things through it. Otherwise it is basically a window.

Hes saying its a window to the vacuum of space, you'd nominally get sucked in.

Only to overrule them. :^)

Yes but it isn't an open one. When you co-locate normally you smear two locations over one another that in no way interact but mages with Space sight can interact across both or step from one to the other. When you make a portal it is just you make it two dimensional where it touches but it still doesn't interact any more or less without willingly going "I step through the portal and want to go to space" or "I reach through to get that moon rock and bring it back" but it doesn't open a giant hole for atmosphere to leak through

Doesn't work like that.

Mages are the batshit looney secret masters. When people rant about the Illuminati and they aren't full of shit, they probably had a run in with mages.

Not their fault most people don't know there are different factions.

>you had me until this point
The writers of the books were writing from a different stance on those kinds of topics; the Traditions were undeniably the author chosen protagonists of the setting. The heroes, even, written to be good and in the right, and fighting the good fight. They're the diverse ones full of love and fun, behind Woodstock and the Civil Rights Movement and Rock and Roll and everything 20-somethings in the 90's loved.

The protags were typically those who gave up everything good in life to have the freedome to overdose on anything and everything, while fucking in the mud like dogs attending Woodstock. At least the ones who weren't Kung-Fu action wizardz.

Wizard space pirates.

When the Traditions say that the Technocracy is the cause of all this badness, and when the Technocracy blames the Traditions, they're mistaken, because everyone were at fault by letting it happen. So I guess trying to make the world a better place by punching the Technocracy in the face is off the table then? Seems like a bit of a mean rug-pull; three editions of the same gameline setting up the Technocracy as the enemy that, if defeated, will allow the world to become full of joy... and then, nope, everyone's fault, destroying the Technocracy won't change a thing. It seems weird, to reify the problems of the world in the Technocracy, and then claim that defeating the Technocracy won't fix the problems it represents.

A reminder that the Traditions what us to embrace a form of Mystic-Primitivism that sees the magically empowered few as the ruling class. That'll be a hard sell to make toward many sizeable demographics.

If all the playable supernaturals had formed into a single unifying government, would the Mages be the ones to run things?

They're too busy chasing their obsessions to really govern for shit. It'd probably wind up being Changelings since their experience with contracts and bargaining might make them good mediators between groups and keeping everyone from murdering one another, while the more powerful splats all have their own shit to deal with. Mage obsessions, mummies hunting relics and fighting Deceived, and Demons pretening they don't exist so the God-Machine doesn't notice them

Guide to the Traditions has a segment where they sell us on the whole "It's not white and black hats" thing. Trads have used tactics including terrorism and mass murder in the ascension war, just like the Technocracy.

Also I think mage should have ditched the Metaphysical Trinity. It's roughly crowbarred in at several points and takes me out of the game. "Oh, each of the factions embodies this element"

I recall in the Virtual Adepts book when they discuss the OoH, they mention that if the Hermetics had opened up the system to everyone, there wouldn't be a Technocracy, there'd be an Order.

If the Virtual Adepts can't drag the Trads into the 21st century

OWoD - They already do.

NWoD - Only the Free Council would have anyone interested in a government of supernaturals. Other factions would be more interested in using it to pursue their obsessions and ignore it when it's in the way. And if the government gets uppity....

If the Virtual Adepts can't drag the Trads into the 21st century, there won't be any more traditions for better and worse.

>He wants a magickal serial killer nihilist who worships Cthulhu to sit on the throne.
Get a load of this guy.

Why not have a... representational government composed of the members standing to fairly represent the interests of all represented members, to be overseen by a single elected official?

>to fairly represent the interests of all represented members
I meant just THEIR members, hence subdivision into comities and congresses.

Is there an equivalent or similar to nagaraja in NWOD? I dont care about the powers, just the flesh eating part.

>Not their fault most people don't know there are different factions.
Mages are not taught about other factions until they are ready to learn the TRUTH. They are only taught as much as it is convenient to keep them tied to their master(s) as chattel. And even then, they are often fed with lies... to protect them from the truth, of course, if not to test them. (Further lies)

M20 tells you to play in any part of the metaplot and what-not, you filthy doublewulf.

>Nigger, M20 *is* Ascension now. Outdated editions don't count. It's healthier just to accept it.

>The Akashayana: Renouncing the innate chauvinism of its westernized name, the Akashic Brotherhood formally adopts its insider name as the default form of address.

>The Kha'vadi: Abandoning its "slave name," the Dreamspeaker Tradition assumes its longtime "spirit title" as the group's official honorific.

>The Chakravanti: Striking the entire notion of death from their name, this revitalized Tradition returns to its Sanskrit roots.

This is a spineless cop-out. Brucato is an author with the limitless godlike power of authors. If he wanted to use less, as Onyx forums would call them, patronizing western names for the Traditions, he could have simply ret-conned it all out and said: "the Akashayana were always named the Akashayana". This, claiming that the name chosen by White Wolf in 1993, was somehow in-universe racism, places the blame for real-world racism at the feet of a fictional group, effectively washing White Wolf's hands of the entire matter.

There wasn't even a sidebar going: "Well back in 1993 we were kind of ignorant and did some stupid and ignorant things, so a lot of the original Tradition names reflect our Eurocentricism -- we've chosen to change them". But, nah, just blame it all on a bunch of fictional dudes.

M20 was a mistake. Letting Brucato, the Lucas of RPGs have free reign was an even bigger mistake.

Actually, mages who would be a better fit for a different order are passed along. Because it's better to give them up than to create an enemy who knows your secrets.

The only good thing to come of it were the Technocracy chapters.

Tell me how oMage is not a great ol' game of Mother May I?

Exactly how to determine the number of successes necessary to accomplish something with magick is somewhat difficult, since it uses a table of examples. I've never really found examples and descriptions to be good guidelines for determining other things; 5-10 successes are necessary to create simple life-forms -- what is a "simple" life-form, and what distinguishes it from a complex life-form? Is there a standard for this? Do I have to count base-pairs in their genome? Distinct organs? How often they're used to "disprove" evolution on creationist talkshows? -- blowing up buildings, summoning Otherworldly creatures, having absolute control of a mob of people... but what can I do with Time magick at 5-10 successes? Entropy? Prime? For that matter, how big is the mob in question? It's somewhere between 2 and 200 people, but no further guidance is given.

The problem with using inexact language to describe in-game effects is that it easily creates a situation where two people have different opinions on what something means. To Alice, "a mob" is about 12 people. To Bob, it's about 70. So when Bob reads in the rules that he can command 70-ish people, he comes across a situation where he thinks "right now, I'm going to use my magick to command as many as possible in this group of 100 people". Then Bob's ST Alice sees Bob roll 10 successes and says "you now command 12 of them". And this is a shitty situation to place Alice and Bob in, because Bob feels disappointed and Alice can't really go back on it. Well, she could, but Alice knew that Bob could mind-control 12 people and made the group number 100; if she knew Bob could mind-control 70, she might have made the group number 550 people. Besides, having to do this negotiation over every single power that's ambiguously described takes a lot of time.

Yes, Alice, Bob, and their friends could all sit down ahead of time and work out exactly how many people 10 successes can mind-control, but a) that's what the 700-page book on playing MTAs is for, and b) the book makes no indication that they should do this.

>Why not have a... representational government composed of the members standing to fairly represent the interests of all represented members, to be overseen by a single elected official?

Even in a democracy, monkeys and baboons don't get to vote. I will not accept any undead vermin or poodle voting on my rights.

-Any mage ever

Later editions and supplement materials give you more examples and flesh out the system, but it is still very freeform even on the best of days.

When I started running Mage I basically had to staple together and entire system from scratch to make it work, and alter a lot of things in the rules and the fluff to make it do what I wanted.

The upside to its being so freeform though is once you've codified the number of successes it takes to do something, and what each Sphere actually covers, its a very very versatile system. My PCs have given legitimate thought to building their own planet [albeit, King Kai sized], and I don't think there's any other system I've ran where that was an option.

I've experimented before with the idea of making oMage have more defined lines for how Sphere Ranks work, sort of like 2e Awakening Practices, but I've never gotten it working 'quite' as well as it does now just using eyeballing and precedent.

Family: Namtaru
Hunger: Prey
Life: Shy + Scholar
Legend: Unexpected

Mental Attributes: Intelligence 5, Wits 3, Resolve 5
Physical Attributes: Strength 3, Dexterity 5, Stamina 4
Social Attributes: Presence 6, Manipulation 4, Composure 3

Mental Skills: Academics (Holidays, Literature) 4, Computer 1, Crafts 2, Investigation 3, Medicine 2, Occult (Beasts) 4, Politics 2, Science 3
Physical Skills: Athletics 4, Brawl 2, Drive 1, Firearms 0, Larceny 2, Stealth 5, Survival 2, Weaponry 0
Social Skills: Animal Ken (Canines) 2, Empathy (Fear) 3, Expression (Oratory, Singing) 4, Intimidation (Shock) 5, Persuasion 3, Socialize (High Class) 4, Streetwise 1, Subterfuge 2

Merits: Area Of Expertise (Fear), Encyclopedic Knowledge (Academics, Occult), Eye For The Strange, Indomitable (Advanced), Interdisciplinary Specialty (Fear), Library (Academics 2, Occult 2), Professional Training 5 (Socialite: Expression, Socialize, Academics), Double Jointed (Advanced), Iron Stamina 2, Parkour 4, Allies (Several), Contacts (Several), Fame 1, Fixer, Inspiring, Iron Will, Resources 4, Retainer (Zero 3), Status (High Class 4), Striking Looks 2, True Friend (Sally), Iron Skin 2 (Advanced 2), Hunger Management 3, Dark Walker 3 (Advanced), Find A Vein (Glamour 5, Essence 5), Wandering Soul 4

Willpower: 8
Defense: 7
Initiative: 8
Speed: 13
Health: 18
Lair: 9

Atavisms: Alien Allure, Dragonfire, From The Shadows, Infestation (Shadowy Bats), Looming Presence, Needs Must, Relentless Hunter, Shadowed Soul, Siren’s Treacherous Song, Unbreakable

Nightmares: Behold My True Form, Run Away, You Are Not Alone, Fear Is Contagious

Horror Traits: Power 12, Finesse 12, Resistance 10, Size 14, Health 19, Defense 8, Initiative 11, Speed 29

Lair Traits: Crosswinds, Echoing, Fog, Poor Light, Sealed Exits, Thunderous, Mirages, Wondrous

Which he didn't even write, which makes sense given hes so completely computer illiterate he couldn't figure out how to post on reddit.

Everything you said is true. People love this game for their Kung Fu wizard fix. This game is literally magic. It can afford to play fast and loose with the rules. People play it to have fun.

We argue about what we care about.

Believability Difficulty M20:
>No fucking way! 3
>Hard to swallow 4
>Implausible 5
>Possible 6
>Probable 7
>Likely 8
>Too damned likely! 9

In addition to the usual problems I have with holistic descriptions like this, "probable" and "likely" mean the exact same thing . They're synonyms. Probable is "likely to occur or prove true", while Likely is "probably or apparently destined". Unless you use the definition that has "likely" as "very probable" but I feel the fact that these definitions are not consistent only underlines my point. This table is useless and something inside me dies a little every time I see it.

Similar problems plague the table for determining how powerful magickal illusions are; at three successes you can affect three senses. At four successes, you can affect several senses. At five successes, you can affect multiple senses. At six, the illusion gives "full sensations". Now, tell me, how many senses are included in "several", and is it a different number from the ones in "multiple"? I can guess that it's supposed to be more than two, implicitly (but it would be nice if they used words that just mean "more than one"...), but it's no help to ST or player. This goes back to my example with Alice and Bob; Bob thinks that his 4-success illusion affects about 5 senses; sight, hearing, touch, smell, and balance, while forgoing the less useful ones like taste, nociception, thermoception, and propriception. Alice meanwhile thinks that "full sensations" is supposed to mean the five traditional senses (sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell), and says that 5 senses is way too much for a mere 4 successes. All of this could have been avoided if old-school White Wolf authors didn't have a crippling phobia of hard numbers.

I threw out most of the suggestions and just set my own measure for successes, taking into account ONLY the modifiers for damage/healing, number of targets [though I doubled it] and so forth.

Most everything the rules say about successes needed for an effect I just outright ignored and wrote my own rules for.

I love the Sphere System, but it is horrifically explained and the rules for different effects make no sense.

>The best parts of the book were the parts which were unspoiled by his hands.
Exactly.

Have you even read M20? M20 had turned out that it wasn't a book for people to get into oMage, it was a book for Mage fans.

>"We have a game-line that is weird and confusing and has bad rules so we're going to release a cleaned-up definitive edition that makes the game playable... but if you're new to Mage, you can't use it. You have to buy these other, older, shittier books first."

M20 was the Cheerleader Effect in book form. I made the mistake of buying it, flipped through it a couple times because I wasn't actively playing, then I started seeing the Veeky Forums and went back to it. Pic related when I read it end to end.

There is an, honest to god, reason for why this is shared commonality with virtually everyone. The writing for a lot of these book are afflicted with Early White Wolf 200-Page Supplement For Every Gameline Out Each Month Syndrome. There's tons of unnecessary stuff and spoken cruft that could be cut to make these things a lot snappier. Brucato's writing still suffers from this even after all these years.

Cut out all the unnecessary sidebars, rants, off-hand comments, and excessively flowery language, and the books would be almost half their current length. Half.

>They have writers that can write.
>Geting payed per word.
>Need to pad out the word count;
>Need to reach that word count.
>Game testing? Playing on company time?? Payed to play??! Hell Nop.
>Noticeable quality decline is noticeable.
If they can keep delivering dat dank lore and suppliment the habbit, then it'z all gud.

Now user that sounds dangerously close to making a book that isn't shit. How would the players know that pizza is evil? or that playing a nephandi will make you literal hitler? Where will the incest fiction go?

Number one thing I hate, number one thing, is when I read a supplement, and it introduces a new skill for something already covered by a core skill.

Like "Vampire Knowledge" or some shit. Its like, so what, no everyone who had Occult can't do this without it?

I was reading M20, and I saw things like "Hypertech", "Dreaming", "Jetpacks", and.

Fuck that.

Hypertech and Jetpacks where in a thing in Revised too

I know, but I still dislike them. Any action a character can do should be covered directly by the core skills listed on the character sheet. If someone has Technology 5, he can at least a get bead on what a given Technocratic Device is supposed to do. If you have Coorespondance or Forces and you're an Etherite, you know how to fly a jetpack.

There doesn't need to be a Flying Carpet Ability. If you're Taftani, Hermetic, etc I will assume you can pilot it with Drive.

The magic system in Ascension sucks ass still to this day, especially in combat. Magic(k) is either too piss difficult to or crap easy when cheesed.

>wants to cast fireball
>must wait 9663786 turns while doing stupid ritual
>too late. you died.
or
>wants to cast fireball
>hang spell(s) beforehand and hoard them like a bastard
>proceed to beat everything thrown at you

Dumb fucking system. Awakening is better.

That's not how it works. You roll Arete and every success deals 2d10 Aggravated Damage, with +1 damage for using Forces. Sometimes you have to spend 1 Quintessance to do it [I ignore this personally]

Killing someone with force lightning isn't that hard.

VTM teaching people about selfish and traitorous strategies in-game and to play politicking. Often they become turbofaggoting prima donnas who are self-limiting because such people do not understand the finer, more intricate advantageous points of cooperation. More successful players excerpt dictatorial strategies from afar.

M20 literally opens with incest fiction and child abuse. The comic book power-fantasy game often has no place for that. More to the point, many RPGs have instructions for GMs, telling them to be tactful about topics raised in-game, and to be savvy about what their players are comfortable with.

>it introduces a new skill for something already covered by a core skill.
This. I do however understand if a player wants options to go into specialising a character and is looking into that. But there is such a thing as redundancies. Hypertech as a skill, isn't that for a non-Awakened character to be able to use the Technocracy gizmos without it going haywire? (Kinda handy playing a muggle to keep reality-warpers from pulling shinanigans.)

Good luck trying to get a good damage spell off in one turn, buddy.

OK, real talk here. What is genuinely bad about Beast? I'm talking from a game design point of view, not a personal taste one.

The consensus seems to be:

1) A lack of its own plot hooks due to excessive reliance on crossover for telling stories
2) The crossover in most scenarios stretches disbelief. Most other supernaturals would despise Beasts, even if the latter have Thicker Than Water as a inherent power. And the rewards for crossover are mostly for the Beasts. The other supernaturals are helped by the Lairs, Atavisms, Nightmares, Mother's Kiss and Skeleton Key, but that's it.
3) The Beast vs Hero dynamic should be portrayed as this Ragnarok-like fated duel where each character has their side of the story, with neither being necessarily more correct. Instead, they framed it as "Oppressed vs Oppressors", which is not analogous to mythical heroes fighting fantastic monstrosities. The book also goes out of its way to excuse the bad actions of Beasts while it makes Heroes seem like total assholes (it even has a sidebar saying "there are high Integrity Heroes but we're not gonna talk about them because they're not interesting").
4) Apparently the powers of Beasts are broken? Nobody has really explained this to me in detail. They seem thematically fitting, but mostly weak until higher Lair.

Any other major problems? Any suggestions for solutions?

>Apparently the powers of Beasts are broken? Nobody has really explained this to me in detail. They seem thematically fitting, but mostly weak until higher Lair.

Read the FATAL and Friends review; it goes into detail on the mechanical failings of the system.

One of the major issues is that it was only half re-written and contradicts it self on how beasts become beasts several times. Same with Heroes, who in addition are so mechanically pathetic they could never be a threat to anything.

Okay.

"I spend 3 Quintessance lowering the DC of the Effect to 3 from 6. I then spend one WP."

*rolls*

"I have Arete 3 and scored 3 successes. Counting my WP that means I roll 8d10 Aggravated Damage."

*rolls*

"Minerva bani Shaea chants an invocation to the angel Raziel, causing a sheet of flames to consume the attacking Brujah. He takes 5 aggravated damage and is now Mauled."

That was so fucking hard. And that's not even the most powerful way I could do that, its just the most intuitive brute force method.