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

Edit:
Can someone please tell me the difference between all these games/settings/whatever they are:

World of Darkness
World of Darkness v20
New World of Darkness
New World of Darkness v2
Chronicles of Darkness
God Machine Chronicle
Mind's Eye Theater

Also, where do the various game lines fit into each of these? If I buy the "Dark Ages Vampire" book, what system am I playing? What about "Hunter: The Vigil" ?

>Auspex 10

Not good enough

>God Machine Chronicle
nWoD 1.5, compiled with the Chronicles corebook

Pretty sure he can punch gods with auspex 10.

>World of Darkness
This is the 'imprint', more or less, for the original 'play as monsters' game lines. Vampire the Masquerade, Werewolf the Apocalypse, Mage the Ascension, Changeling the Dreaming, Wraith the Oblivion, Demon the Fallen and a number of others.
>V20
The X20 lines are 20th Anniversary omnibus and updated rereleases of most of those games, with some rules fixes in place. There are also some expanded books that add new content.

>New World of Darkness
This is the 'reboot' for lack of a better term. In 2004, they ceased publishing the original due to a number of factors. They decided to release similar games (modern horror genre), but designed them as a toolbox setup, rather than a hyper-detailed, ever-advancing setting like the original World of Darkness was. This is the World of Darkness core, Vampire the Requiem, Werewolf the Forsaken, Mage the Awakening, Changeling the Lost, Promethean the Created, Mummy the Curse and some other books.
>NWoD v2, CofD
These two are the same thing. This is the 2nd Edition of the NwoD books. They kept toolkit setup, but revamped everything, as a lot of the original NWoD was only just a few steps away, as far as design, from the original WoD (OWoD) in places.
>Mind's Eye Theatre
The LARP versions of these games. They facilitate non-contact 'parlour LARPs' using these settings. They use special mechanics in many instances, and are design for a more Player vs. Player environment.

See Also...
OWoD/CWoD:
Masquerade, Apocalypse, Ascension, Oblivion, Dreaming, Fallen, Kindred of the East ,Kindred of the Ebony Kingdom, Dark Ages, Victorian Age, Wyld West... a LOT of sub books within each line. Most books will tell you on the front what they're a supplement/what game line they go with.

NWoD/CofD
Requiem, Forsaken, Awakening, Lost, Created, Curse, Sin-Eaters, Descent, lots of books within. These are generally color-coded (all Requiem books have the same red on their covers, all Promethean books have the same off-white/purple combo), and they will call out what game line they're a supplement for. The core 'blue book,' or World of Darkness/Chronicles of Darkness book, can be used with any other book.

>That feel when oWoD is more popular then nWoD and there's nothing your shitposting can do to change that.

But hey, at least Geist is pretty good right?

Have you and your other players ever managed to make a themed group in a WoD game where everyone played off each other?

So by that definition than Call of Duty and Twilight must be the best!!!

>That feel when DnD5e is more popular then oWoD and there's nothing your shitposting can do to change that.
Fucking idiot

While you're right about popularity not being a great argument, there's an important difference here: oWoD and nWoD are trying to do, more or less, the same thing. For Twilight to work as an analogy, you'd have to compare it to other YA emotional porn novels. And Twilight did do what it set out to do (which was not to be fine literature) very well. So what I'm saying, I suppose, is that I wonder why you think oWoD is worse.

Typing out all those words and you are still pic related

Actually, my opinions are mixed: I like old Vampire and Werewolf more than new, but prefer nWoD for most of the other gamelines.

>apocalypse being better than forsaken

>you have to compare what it was trying to do

Well, since Twilight was trying to be an expression of story through the written word, just like Crime and Punishment, and is more popular than Crime and Punishment, it must mean it's better than Crime and Punishment.

>it must mean it's better than Crime and Punishment.
Its more readable.

Twilight isn't readable

Apply yourself better.

Nah, he can't.

Sure it is. Even teens can read it.
Crime and Punishment didn't age well.

>timeless piece of literary fiction dealing with universal human themes
>didn't age well

I like WoD's fiction. So yeah, it didn't age well in my opinion.

Can we please go back to fighting about mages?
It was better than edition wars.

>literary fiction
>not a scam created by college professors

So, how 'bout them Obrimos?

Pretty cool guys

Of course literary fiction is better than genre fiction. Just ask all the literary fiction authors who give each other tenure and awards.

Yeah, fuck themes! I didn't want to reflect on any element of the human condition anyway!

This is going to be a weird question, but are there any cyberpunk supplements for this system?

What's the best Hunter compact/conspiracy, and why is it Cheiron?

>Yeah, fuck themes! I didn't want to reflect on any element of the human condition anyway!
Yeah, this but unironically. The human condition is boring.

oWoD mage has some of that going on.

I'm just not convinced that mages are as powerful as you narcs seem to preach. Just reading shit over mages seem gimped. I think will stick to Masquerade.

I meant more as a standalone thing. The system strikes me as something that would be well-suited to it, since super beings slowly dehumanizing themselves as they strive to remain on the cutting edge of power seems to be a big thing in WoD.

Oh
No but that would be pretty cool.

Which book did you read?

I'm skimming over both ascension and awakening and bits of sorcerer while I'm at it. it doesn't take much for a vampire to one hit kill a mage in any edition from what I'm seeing. they're just human.

>just

>mages are just human
>so easy to kill

Said no one ever

>Captain Planet: The Game now with furries
wow, so good

Does forsaken even have a tribe that pretty much just rapes you? Or antagonists with powers like this?

Wait? Apocalypse IS Captain Planet with Furries.

Ok. Better question. WHEN do mages outmatch vampires, werewolves and such?

Without active spells, attainments, and so forth, you would be right. They are 'just' human.

However the trick is to arrive at such a situation where the Vampire is in combat range with an unprotected Mage, being able to bring all of his abilities to bear, without the Mage having any.

And Mages, being comparatively paranoid individuals, given the constant peripheral mage sight pings they have to deal with in their everyday life, are rarely unprotected.

Also yeah, starting Ascension Mages and Sorcerers from oWoD get their asses handed to them by a Vampire.
But that's because Ascension is a game about preptime. You've got jack shit chance of doing anything in the heat of the moment (without significant investment), so you run off to your basement and prepare your Magic there.

Enlightened scientist, not magick scum.

>WHEN do mages outmatch vampires, werewolves and such?

At character creation. As the XP accumulates, it just turns to overkill.

When the mage is given prep time.

Uh, Apocalypse is the hippie one, user. Forsaken is just about hunting shit and dealing with the balance between spirits and humanity.

You have no idea what you're talking about with that last point. A starting Ascension Mage with Arete 3 can fucking rape a starting vampire in a dozen ways.

How do you think an encounter between a vampire and a mage would go down? For Ascension and Awakening. Not a rhetorical question, I'm actually curious.

The vampire speed kills the mage before she has a chance to fire off a spell

Oh right, I forgot that in oWoD everybody buys their power stat to maximum rather than offering genuinely interesting and comparatively useful merits/qualities.

Friend I'm sorry but that's not just an oWoD problem...

Awakening: The vampire tries to attack the Mage, the Mage reflexively activates Mage Armor and possibly other defensive contingencies, uses a Save or Die against the Vampire, Vampire probably dies. This is assuming the Mage doesn't just kill him from across town.

Ascension: Same as above except the Mage has to set up his defenses in advance, and its more likely he doesn't even need to roll his Save or Die because he rolled it five minutes ago.

If a Mage felt like it, its also possible he could just use magic to go super saiyan and become a Vampire whose even stronger then a Vampire and kick him in the dick until he dies, Mages are potential combat monsters.

Mages can summon sunlight, throw people in active volcanos hundreds of miles away, summon spirits to defend them, increase their physical attributes into the ceiling, stop time, go back in time and kill the vampire as a baby. Really the sky is the limit, Ascension is a game about defining your own reality, Awakening is a game about hubris and challenging the gods. You might as well ask who would win between a vampire and a Solar Exalted, they are not meant to be similar tiers of play.

In my game of Ascension the players cleared an entire room of vampires by just opening a portal in space to shoot sunlight at them.

You have 15 merit points to start with, with a potential 22 if you buy flaws. It costs 8 to get Arete 3. There is literally no reason to EVER start an Ascension game without it, since you can get it and still put a few points into Willpower and buy any background you like. Its very easy to be an Arete 3 Mage whose also rich and famous and has high Willpower and a Wonder or two.

>MtAw
Turn 1:
Vampire (if they have Celerity) attempts to attack the Mage.
Mage reflexively activates Mage Armour, potentially stopping the attack in its tracks, probably just decreasing its damage to survivable levels. Alternatively, Mage already has protective spells up, and is even more unharmed.

Mage then has his action, and utilises Willpower and a reflexive Yantra to cast a spell either shutting down the Vampire, or rendering himself even more incapable of being harmed

Turn 2:
The Vampire, now unable to harm the Mage, attempts to flee, or just stands there and takes it
The Mage uses their unassailable vantage point to kill the Vampire, imprison and interrogate them, or lets them go.

yeah because all mages are adepts in all 10 Arcanum right? Idiots.

>In my game of Ascension the players cleared an entire room of vampires by just opening a portal in space to shoot sunlight at them.
That's a Correspondence 5 Forces 1 spell I believe. Much easier to just capture sunlight using Forces 2 and store a few days worth in something.

You don't need all of these strategies to beat a Vampire, you just need one. Any given Sphere or Arcana at rank 3 is more then enough to kill the average vampire in short order.

An Elder would be slightly harder, but still mostly a speedbump.

Couldn't a vampire fuck up a technomag/Enlightened Scientist? After all, they're mostly just squishy humans with superior analytical abilities without their Devices.

>nwodfags run this general
>magefags rule this general
>there is no escape ever for vampfags
just let me die

'Anchoring' was the worst idea from M20. I think I just ruled it a Coorespondance 2 or 3 effect, treating it as 'teleporting' Sunlight.

I did a similar thing in MtAw, using a Space 3 portal, and Forces 2 sunlight redirection and focussing, also keying the spatial overlap to permit forces to pass through by themselves.

The GM first refused my request to drop a stone to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, and then create a portal from there, blasting them to pulp with ludicrously high pressure water.

>Technocrat
>Weak

Brah. Technocrats are scary cause anyone cause use their stuff. That's their paradigm and why they beat the Traditions back.

Can I use Forces to make a barrier of sunlight like that witch from True Blood? It could also deflect rocket launchers.

If said Scientist is lacking his toys, yes of course. But what kind of Etherite leaves home without a ray-gun at least?

Yes, however once again, when the hell is any Techno-Mage without their devices?

Yeah

Making it out sunlight is a pretty shitty idea.
You'd need Forces 3 to mod its properties into being useful, or Forces 4 to turn it into a kinetic barrier in the first place.

In Awakening, it's really just better to either create a kinetic shield, or perhaps use that Forces-redirection canon spell to shunt it off-course.

It's 5 actually. They give rules for slaughtering vampires in Revised. But I agree that M20 is awful.

Reminder that you only need Forces 3, Prime 2 to make sunlight. And just Prime 2 to do aggravated damage with any sort of attack.

Yes. Would be Forces 3 to do it. You'd convert the sunlight into a kinetic barrier. Much easier to just have a force field + one that emits sunlight. That'd only require Forces 3 + Prime 2 if you have it generate sunlight. Forces 2 purely if you have the barrier absorb sunlight during the day.

You need Prime to make light?

Only in Ascension.

No. You need Prime 2 to make something from nothing.

In Ascension, you need Prime to make something from 'nothing'.

A Technocrat Scientist would have gene splices, nano tech, or cybernetic implants up the wazoo, so even without his super special guns, he'd still fuck a vampire up. This is assuming he just didn't predict the vampire would attack via hypermathematic differentials hours before the vampire actually did. Ditto for SoE and VE.

Prime 2 is for creating a Sphere out of nothing.
Well fuck those rules then. There's no reason creating a spacial window to pull in sunlight should be harder then pulling in a remote control from downstairs. I basically did what this guy did

That whole scene sums up an Obrimos outmaneuvering vampires quite nicely.
Or more accurately, a Moros Master with Forces as third Ruling.

>youtube.com/watch?v=Qojkae5S3bg

So what you're saying is the average ranking Technocrat is Rick Sanchez circa season 3?

>Well fuck those rules then. There's no reason creating a spacial window to pull in sunlight should be harder then pulling in a remote control from downstairs. I basically did what this guy did
Your idea would actually work if you did it with Forces 1, Correspondence 3. You need to be able to target the forces pattern. Correspondence 4 would be for making a generic hole in space to use it. Correspondence 5 would be for making the location be the same as the location in space.

So your idea would work if you had Forces.

>So what you're saying is the average ranking Technocrat is Rick Sanchez circa season 3?
Yes. Rick is literally a crazy technocrat, though some might argue he's an Etherite, but seeing as he uses actual science he'd be a technocrat.

This is 100% correct.

>Correct
Haha. Even the vampire scale is wrong.

Rick is so fucked up that he'd find even the SoE too tightwadish for his tastes (the Victorian steampunk shit would also piss him off). None of the factions would really want to deal with him either.

>True Fae stronger than Archmages

No

>Uses actual science

His equipment is based on theories that range from the ridiculous to the retarded by the standards of modern science, its basically magic.
As I said, I don't "do" anchoring. I only require another Sphere for an effect if it actually adds something to that effect.

Since the actual effect the player did was just creating a spacial window through which light could travel [but not solid objects], targeting not outer space but the other side of the planet where it was daylight, I ruled it like I did.

Most of Ascension's rules are bullshit anyway so I heavily houserule. Which I realize makes it less relevant in a discussion of "Canon Mage vs Canon Vampire", but point is the feats are possible even if I make certain ones easier.

I think he'd hate the Etherites more than the Technocracy since they're "bad" scientists.

>but seeing as he uses actual science he'd be a technocrat
You can be an Etherite and only use Technocracy-approved sciences.

Though it'd kinda like being offered all of the ice cream in the world, and only ever eating vanilla.

There's nothing wrong with vanilla, but if you had the options, wouldn't you rather try something else once in a while?

Who would win, an Ascension mage or an Awakening mage?

Filename.

They also have Buck Rogers science. Generally when I think of Etherites I think of Jonas Venture Sr. Square-chinned American scientists with labcoats over ripping pecs wearing jetpacks and shooting laser rifles. Sort of like this. Only more SCIENCE!

youtube.com/watch?v=4Ah2I166f_U