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

As usual it's gonna suck compared to 1e

Half-Damned was shared a long time ago, although now hopefully someone will shared the errata'd version.

It would also be great if someone is willing to share the corrected release of A Thousand Years of Night. The original version had some of the worst editing of any CofD book.

Is there any Clan that is nearly as superior as the tremere? They didn't even really had a clan weakness before the shitty V20 reboot and are literally one of the pillars that keeps the Camarilla together. How can antediluvianspawns ever compete?

Please, I’d like to try out this game, send me a request at Jeff Belinger#6987

>shitty V20 reboot

Imagine being so drunk on Tremere cock-vitae that you actually believe this. How scary.

What's their clan weakness now?

Pretty sure there isn't, it seems no Clan has achieved anything noteworthy in the past millenium meanwhile the Tremere ascended to the very top. It was even Meerlinda, who proposed to Hardestadt the creation of Camarilla some 100 years before its inception and was pivotal so it would work.

The first sip of vampire blood brings them automatically to a level two blood bond

Really makes that unbondable flaw seem even better. Too bad they cursed the blood line so you can't do the fancy sabat ritual to ignore blood bonds without being branded.

What I'd find most interesting right now would be Antiquity in oWoD. Carthage vs. Rome, or perhaps how vampire society organised during the halcyon days of Greece.

Other than that I've always liked the Modern Nights urban setting for the game. It's vanilla, but vanilla tastes fucking good. I'd love to run a campaign in 80s Miami or some shit.

Go read Requiem for Rome & New Wave Requiem. Yeah, they're for V:tR, but they fit almost perfectly with what you're looking for.

This sums up how I enjoy that the fluff and crunch of Tremere are married perfectly; they're as overpowered and curbstompy mechanically as they are historically.

I mean, yeah, if you're a Tremere fanboy, sure.

Only the lore didn't add up at all. Modern Tremere are great - their history isn't.

2e dhampir powers are
1. THEMES
2. uh
3. ????

Clan? Lasombra I guess. Their "weakness" is that they are invisible to video cameras, they actually destroyed their antediluvian (iirc), they have their own (shitty) blood magic, and in a physical confrontation they can just float around spawning 1000 tentacles.

Still not as good as Tremere but not bad. They're also similar to Tremere in that just as the Tremere run the Camarilla, the Lasombra run the Sabbat.

Mechanics-wise, the Tremere shouldn't have survived the Dark Ages. The writers were their sole saving grace.

They *did* throw in some mechanics possibly explaining their survival later on, but it was still a bit silly.

Thanks, I'll check it out. Although I do wonder if it'll do anything for me lacking the Masquerade metaplot.

>Only the lore didn't add up at all.

Yeah yeah, mage supremacy, etc. etc. but considering mage fans masturbate continuously on other people, that's more the reason to enjoy it.

The funniest shit about the Tremere roflstomping the Order of Hermes is that the Technocracy, who don't even know they're mages, any clue how paradox works and even aggressively shit on the only people who can protect them against spirits, wind up curb stomping all vampires during Ascension-Gehenna, to the point that the Order of Hermes then benefits from vacated Tremere stockpiles... I don't really get how the fuck that works, since both the Tremere and the Order of Hermes completely switched magic systems since the days of DA: Sorcerer.

So overall due to 900 or so years of aging XP the Tremere are probably much more powerful than they were when they fought the OoH at their height and when the Tremere were at their weakest, and the Technocracy still bitchslapped the Tremere largely unintentionally (as a part of a campaign to fuck up all vampires, but mostly just the Masquerade breaching ones).

Even then, many Order of Hermes mages get BTFO by... empty Tremere chantries. Trying to get books... of fucking Thaumaturgy, which then enliven the Tradition. The Order of Hermes needed to let mages who don't know they're mages, BTFO the vampires, so that they could take books written by people who aren't mages, to teach them more about how to be mages.

AMAZING

Why do you guys even faithfully follow terrible writing(owod) over quality sandboxing(cofd) ??I keep trying to read old school WoD supplements and I can't help but cringe at how awful it is. terrible worldbuilding with only moderately interesting fluff.

That just makes the most overpowered splat, at their strongest, getting shat on by not only the weakest splat, but by *fucking ancillae* all the sweeter. Nothing better than a David vs Goliath story.

Its a shame the Tremere vs OoH war, iirc, happened like 99 years afterwards. It would have been far funnier if it happened immediately, so that it was pre-neonates curb stomping the Order of Hermes in their full glory.

>Quality Sandboxing
I like CofD quite a bit, but I've never seen it as a sandbox. Modular, sure but not that far. Anyways, I'm sure our local Smug Anime Girl oWoD fan will tell you why soon.

cofd doesn't have a metaplot so there IS no writing to really discuss

except that the Tremere clan (?) in cofd hilariously btfo themselves when they tried to steal supernal magic, turning the mages into really dope Reapers

>thank God that you don't take Wisdom hits for using attainments now or every last Tremere mage would be MAD

Instead of sperging out, read these threads.

>forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/main-category/main-forum/the-classic-world-of-darkness/mage-the-ascension/1074903-having-a-hard-time-buying-into-the-tremere
>forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/main-category/main-forum/the-classic-world-of-darkness/mage-the-ascension/379957-how-anyone-tried-out-a-hermetic-tremere-war
>forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/main-category/main-forum/the-classic-world-of-darkness/mage-the-ascension/1077627-how-could-the-tremere-manage-to-win-the-first-massasa-war
>forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/main-category/main-forum/the-classic-world-of-darkness/mage-the-ascension/36511-need-help-for-vampires-mage-crossover

And yes, the Massasa War(s) are near universally shunned as atrocious writing.

I don't think anyone seriously takes the Massassa War or Blood Treachery seriously, user.

And to think, it could have been done so much better. I would have rather had some well thought out war-tactics then just 'mary sue vampwizards beat flesh-shapers and hermetics xDDD'

My favorite historical setting wasn't a published one. A friend of mine ran a game where we played in the First City; he turned things on their heads when it became apparent that we were going to be the Antediluvians and the game swept away into an Epic Mythos advancing into the Dark Ages and Modern Nights.

So... Terrible and nonsensical writing saved them? Even using generous house-ruling I don't see the Tremere surviving using DA rules. God forbid DA: Fae, which are more powerful than DA: Mage.

That's not what happened... ... ...

CofD is definitely a sandbox.

My personal favorite variant is the one in which mages are basically superheroes (Veiled Guardian, Supernal, Exarch, Praetorian, etc) especially because then I don't have to deal with the bizarreness of the world being infested with tens of thousands of people who ruthlessly hate each other and can rewind time, cast a spell through a casual acquaintance and kill each other, blow up entire legacies at once, etc.

WoD lore IS awful. It's so fucking half assed. CofD isn't much better.

I reeeaaaalllly don't see how writing that makes magefags bitch about their precioussss getting curb stomped could be viewed as undesirable, sorry.

You can't even really say the Tremere are unfairly favored in the end since they are BTFO by the mage equivalent of Adam Sandler in Ascension and by the vampire equivalent of The Thing in Gehenna.

By the end of the day, you're going to need a better excuse than "I don't like it xD" and "muh mages could never lose xD"

Nothing beats the metaplot of oWoD. It's the one thing that separates WoD from generic vampire settings. Caine, the Jyhad, the lore of different generations andsoforth are the thing that got me int othe game.

People who prefer Requiem seem to be newfags / to lazy to get into the lore.

Doing a "one-shot" tomorrow for about 3 hours. Going by NWOD SAS modules, how many scenes will they be able to get through?

In cofd, yes, the Tremere vampires obliterated themselves trying to steal supernal magic. The geniuses even were careful to do so ALL AT ONCE rather than let one person try and see what happened, so ALL the Tremere vampires got destroyed.

The Tremere MAGES were their victims, and they were called "Tremere cursed" for awhile before eventually just becoming the Tremere.

In 1e, Tremere were utterly fucked into inevitably losing all their Wisdom, but in 2e, they can gnarm souls without penalty, thankfully.

I didn't say it was undesirable, now did I? You're starting to sound like you feel a bit threatened, so I apologize.

I'm merely stating the not so blatant fact that it doesn't take much effort to deduce that Dark Ages was not very well thought out - particularly in the fluff deparment. That said, I did thoroughly enjoy Constantinople.

No.. .. .. The Tremere were products of The Theban after having sent them on a mission to the east.

The posts I responded to unambiguously didn't enjoy it, so...

>You're starting to sound like you feel a bit threatened

Projection.

>Projection.

Input affects output

So wait, the Theban is a confirmed abyssal entity? Interesting.

>Legend has it that this family of vampires made a deal with an abyssal entity of some sort that taught them how to tap into the power of their victim's very soul. This ritual would essentially allow the clan to become daywalkers if they acquired the souls of awakened kine. Unfortunately, the acamoth purposely hid a crucial detail to the ritual, bringing about the extinction of the line as the spark of Gnosis within their Awakened victims' souls devoured the vampires from within. The taint of the Tremere endured in these mages, twisting their souls into a new and sinister legacy. This legacy was initially known as the "Tremere-inflicted" but eventually became known by the name Tremere, or "Tremere liches" to distinguish them from the vampires that cursed them.

Tremere lore has been redone

No longer canon...

It seems the players know better than the actual writers/authors. Not surprising.

Its a toolkit. A sandbox is a style of game. Or at least it is the difference in terminology in my part of the world. It is a modular toolbox, while a sandbox is a game where the GM preps a bunch of NPC stuff and goes 'the city is yours, go forth and seize the night!' with maybe one introductory plot hook but letting you kind of go do whatever without all but the loosest of rails.

Ah yes you're right. That being said, the only thing that really makes Requiem pop for me is Damnation City, which looks like it would be damn fine for sandbox play.

I like Vampire a lot, but feel like you need a group who is down with the buy in about the absurd gothic angst being fun.

I also enjoy Mage, Mummy, and Werewolf a bunch.

I wish more than three other people liked Mummy

>mages written off as complete and utter blubbering buffoons

Ok but to be fair this is the only way to involve mages without backlash

Mage RAW is something to be ignored otherwise everybody loses

The Theban is from the Left Hand Path who may or may not have been a vampire, possibly an example of an archmage tier one, though unlikely

>Ok but to be fair this is the only way to involve mages without backlash

Hey, that happens in Mage focused lit too sometimes. One of my favorite moments of the Awakening 2e anthology was when an archmage was trying to circumvent the Pax and stole another mage's soul to try and steal his destiny and re-enter the world. Which accidentally robbed him entirely of his powers when fighting that other mage in the center of the soul for the former's stolen life and then got the shit beat out of him in a fistfight since the other guy grew up in a shitty Caribbean slum and knew how to throw down even sans his gnosis.

Mages being fucktarded out of hubris is some prime comedy.

Not true, they gloss over and ignore the Tremere's biggest advantage. Numbers. Going from a Hermetic House to a Vampire Clan should have exploded their population.

It would have been an advantage had disciplines been upped

Aint that the truth.

Guaranteed any conflict involving mages will result in "what an idiot he should have done xyz"

Fledglings in numbers with auspex and dominate only aren't going to do A N Y T H I N G to mages.

youtube.com/watch?v=VLbWnJGlyMU

Bullshit

Tremere number advantage was one of the selling points...

What exactly can fledglings without technology, whose disciplines are useless on mages, who are helpless for half the day, do against guys who can nuke you with area effect spells from miles away? What are they gonna do, run up and feebly slap the mages?

I mean, I kinda like it... There's some dumb stuff, but I think there are some pretty cool parts to it and that the core ideas of the gamelines are interesting.

buenos dias mandy

Unironically yes.

How do you guys represent potions and the like in awakening 2e?

Either imbued items or offering yantras?

So what made White Wolf so incompetent at world building and writing?

You try to do better in a setting where you can be instantaneously killed via a drop of stray semen (or any other sympathetic connection). Seriously.

Overwhelming splat bias, social justice nonsense, inability to collaborate, fanfiction tier writing and 90s pulp obsession.

Horrendous mechanics not running in-line with the fucking lore. This Tremere/Mage nonsense just enforces my already profound and seething dislike of how shit oWoD was.
If you write a set piece revolving around one of the most pivotal moments in the setting, you better fucking make it show. Only they don't/didn't.

Simple. The overwhelming hubris of "roleplaying, not ROLL PLAYING" artsy fartsiness giving them an extreme disdain towards crunchiness.

The section on Carthage in Beckett's Jyhad Diary was thought-provoking, in my opinion, on the True Brujah...

I was thinking sort of like the classics like potions of speed, polymorph, invisibility, mana, etc.

I think it'd be you casting a spell on the person and using the potion as an offering yantra. Tools are just to assist, they do say that mortal myths about magic confuse them as the sources so I guess it isn't really super doable in the CofD or WoD.

Well decide if you want hung spells using an offering yantra or actual imbued items.

Time or Prime, make a call.

Shouldn't potions and stuff fall under Matter?

Well in owod, of course Matter 5 can do anything you want but has no real rules.

As a rule of thumb, Matter enhances stuff an item can do, whereas potions have purely magical effects unrelated to what the fluid's material components reflect; a potion is no more a chemical than High Speech is a language.

Potions are "quasi-imbued" limited-use items created using Prime 3.
I mean, you can also use the act of making the potion and so forth a Sacrament/Tool Yantra, but for an actual potion you can store, you need Prime 3.

I mean, if you're just making ludicrously strong coffee, then you can do that with Matter 3, but nothing in the order of the classics, such as Healing or Invisibility, is doable without using Prime 3 to store the spell (which you also have to be able to cast) in the item.

Then you don't know the mechanics all that well, Tremere had Perdo Magica which could dispell Hermetic effects/rituals; Order of Hermes' Pillars, mechanically, as used in DA are significantly more limited and less powerful than Spheres; there are Thaumaturgy rituals that can ban Awakened sorcery from affecting entire areas (such as chantries the Tremere resided in), for instance a Thaumaturge with a rating of six could ban all usage of level 5 Pillars.

Also, Lord Tremere was already an Antediluvian by then, in fact he'd been so for 60 years, a lot of the Elders had already eaten up 4th generation Salubri and gained their generation/disciplines

>So what made White Wolf so incompetent at world building and writing?

Lack of self-awareness and ego.

Not enough of an excuse. Or at least the forums seem to think so.

Canonically the only thing that saved the Tremere were thaumaturgical bans.

Plenty of people were arguing for and against Tremere being successful in reaching a stalematd in their war campaign, there're arguments made for both cases.

You can't just go "the forums seems to think so" when the discussion was divided lol

Four threads. And yes, you're right, only the majority seems to have thought it was a very silly thing. And I can only read this present thread and agree. Past WW products just weren't top notch.

Plenty of people were arguing for and against Tremere being successful in reaching a stalemate in their war campaign, there're arguments made for both cases.

You can't just go "the forums seems to think so" when the discussion was divided lol

>canonically tremere magic saved them from awakened magic

Sure?

>deleting posts to correct them

Wow. Are you that anal?

Yes?

I just find it funny. Even with bans Mages with IQ exceeding 100 would have gotten around it.

This thread is pretty funny.

I think the better question would be 'How would we make a proper Massasa war scenario without idiot mages, mechanics neglect, mary sues and tzimisce acknowledgent'

In short: How would we rewrite Blood Treachery

There're more than just four threads complaining about it. It was practically a meme on the extinct forums.

Just the delicious tears of Magefags

How many mage conflicts are written with the full capabilities of mages in mind? I mean, really?

A quarter that. Mostly it was used to take jabs at how bad and biased WWolf was in its day.

Yeah, all that... anti mage bias.

Blood Bonds.

It has precedent in the True Black Hand, which as retarded as they were at times, the Chakravanti were certainly pretty cool. So you could have the Tremere be a sort of insidious corruption infecting the OoH, using their connections to the older members and promises of easy power to the younger ones.

The main advantage that the Tremere have in this is their innate immortality and their knowledge of the practices and protocols of the organization that they are attempting to infiltrate.

How many have mages falling to their spalt's main theme? Hubris is what supposedly defines them, but they're always apparently Just as Planned out the ass.

It saddens me to see quality well thought out discussion on the actual forums compared to the autistic sewage that this place has become... ...

Most splats suffer that problem user, for example Assamites sorceres and Old Skool Anarchs (or anyone Thaumaturge with Path of the Evil Eye for that matter) can kill anyone they know the name/have a picture of, no matter the distance, you still won't see Anarchs killing all world leaders or opposing parties like that, the reason the writers give to justify why it doesn't happen is rather poor

The only reason I even still show up in these threads is hoping for news about W:tO 20th.

Speaking of Wraith, how do you think the Guilds that never got a book would function, by my recollection that would be:
>The Proctors and Embody
>The Userers and uh...Usury.
>The Seven Families and Lifeweb
>The Alchemists and Flux
>The Solicitors and uh...whatever the hell their guild was called
>The Harbringers and Argos