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

>Hunter is further behind Geist

How do you figure? Geist has had fuck-all for Open Development whereas Hunter is already talking mechanics.

How many more bullets do you have?

None.

Has there been any major fluff change on the underworld?

It is just the paint being used on the canvas I bet.

The important thing is going to be infected werewolves, mages, and vampires doing crazy stuff.

Like pointed out to me, it is from that hunter 1e book that predates all the GM/Demon stuff so maybe it has nothing to do with the GM.

Dumbasses. God tier shitheads can alter Templates. Archmages can do it, why not the God-Machine?

Whoa, whoa, calm down hoss.

Well, the announcement explicitly calls out Infrastructure being infected, but it makes it seem like whatever the Contagion is it's fucking up the God-Machine just as much as everyone else. The Hunter stuff mentioned is an alternate universe full of weird human harvesting machinery and scary biomechanical stuff.

Good job, must have been an endgame enemy for elite hunters.

But now you gotta tell me how the hell you got a bullet blessed by a god.

Well if we have to put down another shitty awakened master we can always ask the Vengeful God for another one.

Are there any books like Werewolf 2e's "The Pack" for Changeling? Detailing potential interactions with non changelings?

Wasn't it proposed that an Archmage might have built the God-Machine as a way to raise it back up to godhood?

>Mage Supremacy behind the Contagion

I bet the God-Machine did more of its stupid dimensional gateway opening, and someone broke open the door on our end or theirs.

So the contagion-verse is leaking.

>needs a god to deal with mages

I guess that's ok. It just makes Mage seem even more powerful.

I see your god and raise you one archmage

Any reason Deviant isn't in the pastebin?

Onyx Path themselves said Geist 2e is now the next corebook release following after Changeling. Geist 2e has also been in the development stage on the monday update notes for weeks while Hunter's still only in redlines. They already had a lot of the stuff worked out for Geist 2e apparently, the dev has teased quite a bit of info regarding it on their forums, but hasn't done any open development blog posts at all. Probably too focused on wanting the book out rather than talking about it.

Well not much has been revealed but I guess. There are no more Deathlords, but instead there are now "Cthonic Gods" in their place, to get rid of Exalted confusion. Cthonians are the Underworld's natural inhabitants and ghosts are basically immigrants. Ye Olde Sin-Eaters/Bound also used to be attached to Cthonians rather than Geist.

Not that it hasn't been mentioned before but there are many, many rivers of death. There's also that the entire Underworld used to be flooded as the Ocean of Fragments back in the day but the water level kept on sinking and still is apparently, leading it to the state that it is today. It is a mystery as to what caused the drain, but hey it might be tied into Age of Piracy Geist & Mage.

That's about all the major 2e Underworld related info so far.

It hasn't been released yet.

Because it's not fucking out yet?

So are ghosts like spirits but worse? I'm not entirely sure what they can do.

Please tell me your sniper risked. That'd make victory so much sweeter.

Actually, that made me think of another question. Do you tend to risk for what's the most thematic? Or do you try and use it in wise places to regain your willpower strategically for maximum efficiency?

>May be tied to Age of Piracy

I mean, probably not too much. Evidently it was already draining way back in the Neolithic era. So the draining is 'natural'?

If someone is causing it to do that when it shouldn't, then man we sure have taken a long time to look into that leak.

Huh. Could have sworn it existed. Thought I saw some people post about them playing it.

Oh well, thanks guys.

They share some mechanics. Thematically, no. WoD is an animistic world - it's why it's just a shitheap. Spirits are spirits of things and places and concepts and interested in empowering those. Ghosts are echoes and fragments of living beings. They share the same state - Twilight - but a different 'wavelength' and a different afterworld (The shadow vs the Underworld). They tend to respond and possess strong emotion - repeating the same thing over and over again, for example.

Ghosts as a rule will probably be a lot more killy than most Spirits, but that's a thematic thing. Eventually they take on a 'life' of their own. Old ghosts can be pretty unpleasant things, especially if they haven't broken the 'early life' conditioning. A rank 2-3 ghost haunting a building is bad. A rank 5 one is a real fucking problem for everyone.

The Underworld was already draining back in the prehistoric era. I doubt the difference between now and the 1750s is huge.

Yeah you bet we are elite and yeah that mage was out endgame foe. We only even learned about him because one of our players girlfriend was a mage and her cabal was having alot of trouble with this rogue master.
It wasn't really a God. It was an extremely powerful and extremely angry abyssal entity that held a personal grudge against the rogue mage that foiled a ritual that would have summoned him into the fallen world. Basically he gave us a bullet made of pure paradox.

Isn't the underworld also supposed to be broken? Whatever was supposed to happen to the ghosts of the dead isn't happening.

From the sounds of it the draining isn't natural. I think one of the mentioned things for Geist 2e is looking into history and lore of Sin-Eater, Geist and Underworld culture which has been lost to time.

Not only did he risk but if the bullet failed to hit the Mage the Abyssal entity gets to use his body as a portal into their world

In that it's draining, yeah. Diving into the ocean and letting go of everything is your fate as a ghost.

Good point. The Neolithic section in Dark Eras talks about how as the bits of land rise from the ocean, the ghosts all cling to it and stay there instead of sinking into oblivion.

Now they have whole continents down there, packed to the brim with ghosts.

Not a good situation. No wonder so many of them just don't pass on, and stay in twilight.

Oh that was probably me in the last thread, I had a DM that liked the announcement news of Deviant but was too impatient to wait for the game to come out so a game was homebrewed in what he imagined Deviant would be like. Funny enough I think all the stuff we did in that campaign would probably be very easily converted into the main game.

How many ghosts can a Moros have under his/her sway? Is building an army of the damned a feasible goal? What about Thyrsus and spirits?

What's the maximum rank of a ghost/spirit a mage can enslave?

Masters can enslave rank 5s

> It wasn't really a God. It was an extremely powerful and extremely angry abyssal entity.

Damn user, your cell is really playing with fire there.

How elite of Hunters are we talking, my highest exp Hunter ended the game with 153 regular and practical experience (CofD 2nd edition exp rules, so this was with beats) spent on himself. Not counting the practical exp we spent on tactics. Admittedly he started with like 30 exp/prac total, already seasoned.

>he thinks an abyssal entity wouldn't eat non-magical normies

boy, hunters are fodder to the things mages deal with on a daily basis

>How many ghosts can a Moros have under his/her sway?
As many as you can reasonably cast the spells to enslave, or convince you're friendly. You quickly find out that needing to cast spells over and over is pretty disgusting.
>Is building an army of the damned a feasible goal?
Sort of? Might be a better idea to ingratiate yourself with the Carthians, or find a draugr nest. You could concievably take up Prime and a Hallow and learn to imbue something that feeds off the hallow to raise corpses, *then* create something else that helps maintain the spells.
>What about Thyrsus and spirits?
See above. Thyrsus have it a bit easier in that they can fuck with and create hallows, as well as muck with the gauntlet.

Loci, not hallows. Oops.

You would have to keep casting the spell? Even if it's Indefinite? Damn. I was hoping to have a loyal army of domineered wraiths.

>How many ghosts can a Moros have under his/her sway?
As many as their spell's factors and wisdom allow.

>Is building an army of the damned a feasible goal?
Sure. Find a graveyard of the restless dead and wake the freeloaders up.

>What about Thyrsus and spirits?
Sure. Works slightly different but still doable.

>What's the maximum rank of a ghost/spirit a mage can enslave?
Rank 5 which would be like the Spirit of a great city like London or New York etc.

Spell permanence might be worth it to you. Or you could summon suitable candidates and make deals with them instead of relying on magic to compel their obedience directly.

A spell would force them to serve you. A wiser, if harder, course of action would be to ask them nicely.

If it's indefinite, no, but you've got to release the spell then. If you do it unsafely, things are going to get weird. The only benefit to recasting the spell is that you don't need to worry about massive spell-overflow and reach problems.

I can't remember how much exp we had but it was like our third campaign. It was probably close too 200 I would think more or less
The entity had a win win situation. Either we kill the Mage with the bullet or we fail and he can use our body to manifest in the fallen world

>mage loses an arm

If I reattach it using magic, it's Lasting right?
But if I grow it back, it's only Indefinite?

What are the actual benefits of going Tremere?

It seems like a huge waste to reap souls at a rate such as theirs. Why not hop into another body (dick move, but still) or just use Deny the Reaper to prolong their life without resorting to any douchebaggery?

They're expanded greatly in left-hand path. They have a whole culture and basically get a 'second' legacy based on their house.

Because they are the Sith.
So they have to take the goofy mustache-twirling path to more power instead of just following the route everyone knows works.

>They have a whole culture

Are they friendly to each other?

If you look, there are a few ways of easy immortality in the corebook, But the main part is that they need to be done as indefinite spells - it just takes one really irritable mage, or wandering into an ansho or ansho-esque thing, to undo it and end you.

Yes, but they have a kill on site when encountering other 'reapers' i.e. soul eating legacies. They are duty bound to genocide the legacy and form it into a new set of attainments for a tremre house. Its not looked down upon if they fail, but they're supposed to try.

Some spells aren't Indefinite though. Namely Deny the Reaper.

It goes against the Moros mindset though.

So wait, they actually help out by killing other douchebag mages? Interesting. If only for their own gain, though.

It'd say it was lasting if that was so. It doesn't - and one of the reach effects flat out said it has a duration.

Help out, aka kill mages who try to get an in on their food supply.

I think the spell itself only works on specific things, such as body parts and objects.

That's only the Reach effect.

Another aspect that others haven't touched on is that they're *the* experts on the soul.

Yes. And it doesn't say that it vastly changes the spell. Lasting spells are noted. It's just a duration thing. It even says that mages who aren't liches can fuck with their lifespan in the book, but need to worry about one wrong spell.

Wouldn't the easiest path to immortality be to found your own Legacy based on it? You can't really dispel Attainments.

Yes. There are a few types of liches shown, and all would be Attainment manifestations. You've got the Tremere, sure. Then there are Morpheans -dream liches, who stalk the Temenos. Spirit-Liches are likely to be something similar to the Purified.

Hell, there's probably a few deranged Perfected Adepts who took Regeneration as an attainment and stopped aging all together. Then they lost it and now rejoice in pulling something out of Evangelion in front of sleepers by lopping off their limbs and growing them back because fuck paradox.

Sure. But, dedicating your entire soul to the pursuit of immortality is going to raise more than just eyebrows within the diamond. The last thing they want is the creation of another Tremere house.

Not to mention that the pursuit of immortality and/or the fear of death is giving in to the lie. It's exactly what 'The Psychopomp' wants.

I sometimes muse about a body part snatching Lich Legacy. Perfect for horror.

This brings up another question purely out of curiosity. Which of the factions would be the most tolerant of Lichdom?

Wouldn't it just be giving you more time to ascend?

Why would it be seen as bad if you aren't negatively effecting others (like with say, a spirit-lich).

I believe Dave has mentioned at one point that immortality might actually prevent one from Ascending. Something about being too tethered to the Fallen.

Depends on how you became a Liche. As long as you can keep it on the down low without causing too much collateral damage I could see both the silver ladder and the mysterium turning a blind eye.

There's a big chunk of cultural prejudice there because of the Tremere turning out to be turbocancer. And yeah, functionally, it's probably just giving you more time to ascend. But if you're cut off from a huge part of the world by confining yourself to the Shadow or the psychic dreamscapes, it's going to be harder.
I think he was talking about using excision practices to prevent you from being able to age to death, since you stopped being particularly human at that point.

Huh, and here I thought the Free Council would be the lenient ones..

This makes me wonder if Kadmon the Gardener made the mistake of going immortal.

That probably wouldn't work just because so many of them would vote you out. They sway with the zeitgeist after all, and unless you live in lich central, that won't turn out well.

Then again, that could be a funny story. You go to a new town, the counsilium is like 'hey man, don't go to the assembly around here'.

You say 'screw that I'm Free Council for life!'.

Then go there and realize it is just lichtown, USA. Population, you and a bunch of soul suckers.

Like the old joke about a gang that's nothing but undercover law enforcement agents. "Does anyone here NOT have a stolen soul? No? Wait, yes? Okay, now it's mine. Good. Let's work out how to eat the locals more efficiently."

My logic is that being a Lich is a clear indicator that a mage isn't a huge fan of change. That sort of conservative thinking is more popular within the diamond and the seers.

>Contagion Chronicle

Sort of meh about it, but curious enough to check out a more thorough write-up when it becomes avaliable.

He's already an Archmaster. He can do whatever the fuck he wants.

How 'human' an archmage is, is even more questionable, than the usual pondering about a Mage's humanity.

Just as well, the Deathlords were a big whole in the line where someone forgot to put either fluff or a reason to care about them

The cthonians aren't much better, if I remember right.

Well, I didn't read the extra supplements for Geist.

At least you can say something for certain about the fucking cthonians, they played it way too coy with the deathlords. Also
>supplements
>plural
huehuehuehue

Honestly I wasn't sure.

I read Geist, realized it was unplayable, then never looked back.
I wanted to love it, but man the game was so aimless. They may as well have just let fans write the second half of the culture and mechanics if they didn't feel like finishing it.

What if the contagion nerfs mages though ??

I dont see why folk think they need nerfed or that "balance" wont just make all splats exactly the same but you know most people are retarded

What is this, DnD 4e?

Do you really think it is possible that 'all splats could be the same' in this situation? That is completely nonsensical.

But that doesn't matter, because Contagion won't do any of that. Won't matter.

Daily reminder that DaveB is the best writer OPP has and is practically Jesus

Isnt that what people want when they say "balanced" splats?

Its utterly ridiculious.

...

You must get down on your knees and worship DaveB as the most evolved writer Onyx Path has even known, even better than Phil Brucatto!

>What if the contagion nerfs mages though ??
It won't. At the most, it would just nerf them for them to be used for the crossover games in the book, although that isn't likely, as it apparently isn't a default crossover setting anymore. It's not like Mages would be nerfed all across the board even if it was. They would still be just as strong as always in their own books. Most people recommend nerfing Mages for your crossover games anyway. At best, a crossover book would just do that for you, if it did it at all.

I swear I can't tell you how much I appreciate player crossover and inter-splat balance not being a priority for these games at all.

So do i. I really cant understand people who want it, i think its just all "Mages shit all over my fav splat" faggots.

Most probably havent even been in a crossover game with one, they just cannot stand it that another splat is just outright better.

The latest V5 playtest can be downloaded from the www.worldofdarkess.com store if you have a GenCon coupon. Anyone have one?

What aspect are they testing now? How far up your arse their penis can penetrate before you yell?

FATAL would be an interesting design direction. I support Rolling for my characters anal depth at character creation. (With racial modifiers, we can assume the average mage can take a werewolf's knotted cock)

>(With racial modifiers, we can assume the average mage can take a werewolf's knotted cock)
They can't.

Don't ask me how I know.

Dunno, but the new playtest has been going on in GenCon. Nobody has reported on it yet, from what I can tell.