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

>Garou's biggest problem is they keep making the same mistakes over and over again.
>The shapeshifters biggest problem is that they can't change.

I believe that to many, killing the various Fera would be considered an act of mercy considering how badly most were written.

*cough* Black Furies *cough* *cough*

WoD vs CofD is a matter of preference.

World of Darkness has the advantage of being extremely written out. The game has lots of culture to work from on everything from the Clans, to the Tribes, to the Traditions, to even the Kiths and Houses. For both better and worse though Classic World of Darkness is a product of its time, and while sometimes it can be fun to goth it up and blast 90s kid music while you rage against the machine, it also had its fair share of needless edge. As well, being a very written out setting, there was a lot of metaplots which were hit and miss, specifically Gehenna. Gehenna was an interesting idea, but by focusing so much on the fact that players could have been in the end times you pressured GMs into either having to explain why they aren't the end times, as well as making them ignore lots of helpful material that is only available if it is the end times.

cont

Chronicles of Darkness, however, takes a more hands off approach and tries to patch up problems that Old World had and people complained about. There is very little metaplot flavoring the world and no major, mandatory plot pieces other than that which gives the GM tools to run the world. Each city becomes its own blank slate for a GM to fill in and flavor any way they like. Even the established factions can be interpreted in many lights: The Circle of the Crone can be anything from Militant worshipers of the Virgin Mary to Spiritual Hands Off Pagans celebrating traditional gender roles, with the only mandatory thing about them is that they are blood mages and occultists. Every faction in Chronicles has something like this, from the Mysterium to The Blood Talons. It gives you freedom to make your own setting the way you want it, while still giving you enough to work from. The problem arises though when you scrutinize further than the surface: Lots of GMs simply will not have enough time to fluff out Everything, and there simply is not as much material as World of Darkness has. Unless a GM is very good at improvising, the world won't seem as "alive".

The greatest explanation I've ever heard on the difference between the two settings is that its easier to ignore bad material then write good material.

Its much easier to just ignore half the supplements and bad ideas in the World of Darkness then it is to supply tons of new ideas in the Chronicles of Darkness.

Especially when much of the new materials feel very generic compared to the interesting, if often pulpy and stupid, oWoD. Awakening got rid of the fantastic Ascension for some weird platonist Atlantis Spirit Science shit that really didn't refine itself until things like Imperial Mysteries and 2e came along and started minimizing ATLANTIS in favor of fleshing out magic and metaphysics a bit more, as a concept.

Calling off the Impergium was a huge mistake

I don't get Furies.
They are obviously dominatrixes but the author won't cop to it.
It really kind irritates me.

SJWs and PC tards can't write for shit

I'm sorry

then they have all these spiral dancers pretending to be s&m freaks. its total bull, spiral dancer's are serial killers, not kinksters.

I know, I know
>crossovers
But how would you balance a game with Hunters, vampires, and werewolves? Beef up Hunters? Tone down the biters and doggos? Try and have their areas of expertise different?
I trust my GM on most things, but this screams unbalanced cluster fuck to me, and as the human, I am afraid it's going to be the "Poor little white boy" of tabletops.

What about mages?

I think the problem today is that peoples are terrified of identifying with leftist ideals because they don't want to be labeled as a sellout. Ever since the right co-opted the counter culture movement people have seen left thinking ideologies as a poison pill.

ay white man get up against da tree

If hunters were any good at what they do, there wouldn't be any supernaturals, now would there? Hunters were a joke.

Real controversial opinion there, friendo

>mentioning Spirit Science in a bad way

Someone's clearly a Martian.

We don't need more than one human splat.

Mages are enough.

Sometimes the truth hurts

There are always exceptions however

You'd need at least a platoon of ordinary humans to take out a garou pack with any hope of success. 5-6 garou would rip a full squad of hunters to shreds.

Besides, garou really don't kill indiscriminately, almost everything they do has a indirect benefit to humanity.

Its only the loners and black spirals who pose a problem.

Honestly? Model the supernaturals using Dread Powers, and if you want, give the Hunters some Skill Tricks and Conviction from the Mirrors supplement.

>We don't need more than one human splat.
>Mages are enough

Think of mages a Human+. It's kind of insulting to refer to them along with the unwashed rabble.

Seriously, none of this would have been a problem if the garou had never called of the Impergium. If they had continued to keep humans numbers in check, people would still be living in relative harmony.

The modern era has brought nothing but misery to the WoD

>garou really don't kill indiscriminately,

Except when they're angry, which is a helluva lot.

EVERYTHING IS DA WYRM HERP DERP

Use OHunter

>The modern era has brought nothing but misery to the WoD

The Technocratic Union is their only hope/.

think about the kind of people who benefit from modern society. Moral relatavists, the weak and sickly, people, who, in a just society, would have either been made strong or fallen by the wayside.

It may be somewhat taboo, but I think a lot of garou are actually looking forward to an apocolypse, and many are afraid there won't BE an apocolypse, which could be a lot, lot worse in the long run.

Garou see the world through shit covered sunglasses. Unfortunately, the brand name on those sunglasses is "truth"

their fucking weaver madness is what caused that shit in the first place. Endlessly driven to consume when they already had everything they could ever want or need.

I'm still proud af of this post

At this point Apocalypse Fever is the only thing holding the Garou Nation together

Think about it.

Do you "need" a cellphone? All it does it make you weaker, more dependent on technology.

Does your cell phone make you happy? Does your job, or your shitty 2 bedroom apartment? Is it worth living in a state of existential agony?

What's the alternative? Living outside? There are bugs there!

When the end comes, you really think its going to be the garou who suffer? The garou thrive on conflict. Its ordinary humans who suffer.

You think your nations are going to exist in perpetuity?

Every generation thinks, "Surely not I. Surely not this generation."

You think people saw the great depression coming? Do you think they foresaw the holocaust?

The writing was always on the wall, yet everytime, people are 'astonished' when it happens on their watch.

I'm not sure I agree with that statement. While yes, you can and easily SHOULD ignore the worst material of the World of Darkness, World of Darkness is still a setting with tons of baggage.

Chronicles on the other hand is a setting that deliberately tries to have as little baggage as it can while still following the theme of fantastic urban mystery

Also, yeah, we don't talk about Awakening 1e's hardon for Atlantis. The best things that happened for Awakening was Imperial Mysteries which got away from Atlantis, and Tome of Mysteries which explained creative thaumaturgy

Also, I'm just gonna say this: Mechanically, Chronicles is the better game.

and that is why ordinary humans die to a stiff breeze. They have been enfeebled by technology.

You ever wonder why mages are stuck in a perpetual cycle of misery? It is because they are constantly trying to reshape the world into their image. They refuse to content themselves with the gifts they have been given, to adapt to their environment.

No change will ever satisfy them. No power is so great that it will allow them to experience inner peace, it is an endless cycle of ambition and misery that will never cease.

It is not the garou who never learn.

So throughout all editions of Ascension the Order of Hermes has been repeatedly declared apex when compared to the others.

1. Having refined magic further than any other and defining it for the rest by a massive margin
2. Most organized of the Traditions with numbers exceeding even that of the Akashics
3. The Order boasts the greatest number of Chantries, Masters, and Archmages
4. Most extensive knowledge boasting the greatest arcane libraries in the world
5. Created more codified magical theories than any other group within the Council
6. Responsible for the first codification of magickal study, the formulation of the Spheres, and, indeed, the formation of the Traditions themselves

Is this western bias? Not a fan.

Have you ever seen "The Gods Must Be Crazy"?

>Comparing the setting
Every single world of darkness setting ever has been dogshit. The rules are the only semi passable thing about it.

Bull.
Choristers are more powerful, more numerous, and more organized by a wide margin.

Not in canon they aren't!

Though the Hermetics are waning. Maybe in the future, yeah?

>Is this western bias?
No. Because historically speaking Europe has dominated scientific thought by a shit ton.

If wizards exist, you can damn well be assured that westerners would be the greatest.

>Not a fan.
Deal with it.

Well, even you have to admit they have more temporal influence.

>I have written a thesis describing the basis for all magick!
>May I see it?
>No

No, I expect them to die.

We've had lots and lots of practice at unfucking ourselves. We rebuilt from a goddamn world war in only a decade. Made friends and mended fences. Crime rates continue to dwindle. No one wants to go first, and the interdependant nature of international relations around the fucking globe has changed the way things work.

The werewolves and fera are still butthurt over things that are no longer in living memory except for a few craggy-ass antediluveans and archmasters. I said it once and i'll say it again, Werewolves are incapable of real change.

Magick is the ultimate adaptation, dofucker.

Actually, everyone who's not a Singing Christer treats them like poison because they still cling to the delusion of Unity while being the single most fractious group in the council.

Gee, I wonder what the Spheres are?

Hermetics are a bunch of bullshitters if you ask me. I don't even understand how their paradigm is supposed to function in the modern world.

They also have numerous ties the technocracy.

we really need world of darkness spurdos

lol, you have trouble running a 10 minute mile and think you are going to survive the zombie apocolypse. Good luck with that buddy, better work on your cardio.

Its because Hermetic Magic IS magic, to most normal people. The western esoteric tradition is, IRL, the concept that most normies identify with the idea of magic. Scrying globes, chalk circles, magic words, wands, wizards, are the concept of magic for the entire western world. Awakening loved the Hermetics so much they basically turned all Mages into pseudo-Hermetics, making their Platonist/Gnostic/Alchemic system THE system of magic for the setting.

The Order of Hermes is predominant because their paradigm is synonymous with magic to much of the world. Most people don't think of ray-guns or even prayers when they think of magic, they think of Faust or Merlin [piss off Verbena he's ours] or King Solomon, or pseudo-Hermetics like Gandalf [piss off Chorus he's ours] or Harry Potter.

Plus it befits their pride that they'd be the predominant Tradition. Hell is arguably their fault the Technocracy rose to power in the first place. If they'd been less interested in esoteric lore and more interested in the Sleepers, and if they would have listened to the fucking Taftani when the Scourge hit then ideas like chemistry and Newtonian physics would be being derided as pseudoscience and the superstition of a less enlightened age right now.

Well duh, Werewolves were meant to preserve something, not change things.

cause spheres mean so much to a dreamspeaker or cultist of MDMA right? Like you invented the concept of time, space, matter, ect. get real white boi

Does this count? Made it for one of my PCs.

Precisely this

>Merlin [piss off Verbena he's ours]
I love you

They still use them

:^)

yeah, and all that shit is about as relevant as the cotton gin is today.

If it wasn't for symbolism being as prevailent as it is today, the modern world would have no use for hermetics whatsoever.

They take shelter in academia and hide their eccentricities, but they are being co-opted into the technocracy.

Its only a matter of time before the distinction between a hermetic and a technocrat is the tweed on his jacket.

>historically speaking Europe has dominated scientific thought by a shit ton

I declare total and utter bullshit, sir!

Either you're a dumbass or a Technocrat in disguise

You're right but not for the reason you think you are. Its not the Hermetics who are changing to adapt to the world, its the Technocrats who are becoming everything they initially rebelled against.

The Order of Reason was founded, in part, to stand up to the Order of Hermes. A group of ancient old men who ignore the masses, control them, and obsess over the minutiae of their lore. And what is the Technocracy right now?

A group of ancient old men who ignore the masses, control them, and obsess over the minutiae of their lore.

The sand niggers of space/time would like to have a word with you..

and yet you say its the garou who can't change

You're right. It was an understatement. I'm sorry.

I should have been more thorough.

The truth is that the will of a lone mage is enough. How the hell else do you think the crazy-ass unique paradigms of Orphans and Marauders work?

>zombie apocalypse

Into the trash you go

tbf hermetics never so much as controlled society as they secluded themselves from it and gave it a gentle push now and then.

After all, they were still at the mercy of the feudal system, which was ultimately controlled by the vampires.

>How the hell else do you think the crazy-ass unique paradigms of Orphans and Marauders work?
uhhh... they don't?
They just isolate them in their own quiet and leave them jabbering with their own hobgoblins until reality decides to let them pull a couple more rabbits out of their hat.

>"Whether measured in people or events, 97 percent of accomplishment in the scientific inventories occurred in Europe and North America"

This is gold.

says the graph written by european historians who speak one language and never traveled outside the british isles.

And the Orphans?

The author (Charles Murray) specifically went out of his way to document the world's achievements. Even procuring their own areas in the book, separate from the West.

His kids are half Asian.

the distinction between an orphan and a marauder is largely academic. They find their way to one sect or another eventually, once they get tired of reinventing the wheel.

"nihil novi sub sole"

>His kids are half Asian.
that must be the good half ;)

And yet its M20 that won't shut up about feminism and gender and other nonsense.

In all fairness, we did have a bit of a head start with the scientific method. Give it time.

t. hermetic

Honestly it's not as bad as beast save for the occasional Brucato fuck-up.

The Order of Hermes should leave the losers, has beens and hippies of the Council, and join the Technocratic Union. It's long past the time the Order should have received the appreciation and respect that was more than earned in blood and tears.

Let's see how the Council fares after they don't have those "arrogant, nasty Eurocentric mages" to complain about and accommodate to any more.

The Dreamspeakers, sorry.. the Kha'vadi, and the other wretches of the Traditions can burn in a pyre of their own self-righteousness.

And of the 97 percent, 99 percent were men.

That book is hilarious. More so because it's entirely true. Perfect bait because it's not an easy thing to refute.

Europe was still scientifically dominant when East Asia was the apex civilization on the planet.

The white race is somewhat of an anomaly.

I guess I would give the Hunter more XP to start out with, and generally be more generous with Beats/XP, so that he could be a sort of Batman character.

>Charles Murray

All this over over Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950?

Heck, nobody better bring up The Bell Curve...

I actually like the Gnosticism. Although, yeah, removing Atlantis from the spotlight was one of the best things 2e did.

If technocracy thinks its going to play world police with its flabby weekend warriors and legions of rice farmers in grey pajamas, they are welcome to try.

They know whats waiting for them.

>a sort of Batman character

That role is already taken.

>Kill The Batman

The Bell Curve was also an interesting read. Human IQs have never been on equal footing.

Of course /pol/ was pissed over the Jews (Ashkenazi) having the highest.

>Of course /pol/ was pissed over the Jews (Ashkenazi) having the highest.

Where are the Lions of Zion in M20?

>(Ashkenazi)
ask him what?

... sigh. Histrionics again.

So isn't Micronesia just a modern day equivalent of Atlantis?

We Wuz Kangz
>in4 muh pol boogeyman

Like I said, now that they have the scientific method, give it time.

The Hermetics basically created the traditions. They'll stand behind it until there are no more traditions. And what exactly would they do in the union with all their cracker-ass mysticism

The Void Engineers have the single largest paranatural fighting force in the entire world of darkness. They train in de-activated power armor, having to haul that shit with them without the servos to do the work for them.

And that's not even counting the superhumans of Iteration X and the Progenitors, with NWO doing Intel work and Syndicate obtaining whatever they might need or want while denying the enemy the same.

>Like I said, now that they have the scientific method, give it time.

That really doesn't mean anything.

>HIT Marks
I've seen more impressive animitronics while riding the pirates of the carribean.

What's really unsettling is that whites have declined in intelligence since the Victorian period.

>syndicate
>thinks it controls the money supply

The giovanni would like to have a word with you

Why would i?