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

I said legit friendships, not camaraderie enforced via blood bond rituals.

Those can be legitimate friendships though? Just because you have the Vaulderie doesn't mean you automatically buddy buddy up with someone. Some people hate people because of the Vaulderie, but feel compelled to look out and help them.

Besides, are you telling me a Tzimisce elder doesn't hit the town with a Toreador Antitribu every now and then?

Are the british all vampires?

They live on an island with no sunlight and eat blood pudding.

The queen has also been around strangely long.

Other than merits, are there any examples in oWoD of Vampires and Werewolves being friends?

Could we leverage the fact that Brucato has crossed the line to full blown no shit Holocaust denial to make an argument to OPP to finally ditch his hack ass, to the benefit of all game lines?

does anyone have any links to the black dog books? they are not in the pastebin and i don't remember what i saved mine on.

I really hate it when SJWs and /pol/tards invade tabletop, especially World of Darkness. How butthurt do you have to be to get mad over the fact a Jew ghost isn't stated?

>Could we leverage the fact that Brucato has crossed the line to full blown no shit Holocaust denial to

Really??

I think you'd have a hard time mobilizing the kind of backlash to Wraith that would be enough to get much response.

Casual antisemitism is not only common, but encouraged, among much of the hard left OPP/WW crowd. Brucato will not suffer any consequences. If his attitude or writing was problematic, Rich would have actually edited M20, and we all know that didn't happen.

The only way Brucato will get the boot is if he's accused of something utterly horrible and unforgivable like rape or addressing some snowflake with the wrong pronoun.

>The only way Brucato will get the boot is if he's accused of something utterly horrible and unforgivable like rape
Wasn't he already at one point?

That's why I think this is a unique chance. The kind of antisemitism that SJWs like to advocate is the kind that can be dressed up as concern for some minority further up the Ladder of Victimization that the Jews ("it's not that I hate Jews, I just think Israel should be nuked because of how they're treating the poor, innocent Palestinians"). Holocaust denial can't really be presented as benefiting any minority, so it doesn't fly even with the left.

>it's not that I hate Jews, I just think Israel should be nuked because of how they're treating the poor, innocent Palestinians

Nuking israel is a fucking retard idea (especially if that is your motivation for it needed to be done), but its not really antisemitic per se.

You'd be surprised how willing people are to confuse "Israel" and the "Jews", in both directions (i.e. what Israel does reflects on the Jews, you can legitimize your hatred of Jews by claiming you hate Israel), when it's psychologically convenient.

Define "friends"; in Dark Alliance: Vancouver the Kindred and teh Garou share Vancounver with peace ensured by treaties, the book even opens the possibility for mixed packs of werewolves and vampires.

How the fuck does that even happen?

First rule of Metaplot is don't question the Metaplot.

If it makes sense, you're obviously doing something wrong.

Going to play my first ventru, what are the most fun/best feeding restrictions? Shuld it have with the char to do or be "random"?

...

I think you should roll for it, that adds a lot more soul to a character.

Is there a table somewhere? If you have a link id love to take a look.

People using cocaine.

Why the fuck did OPP step backwards to rewriting the core rules in each and every splat book again? The system in 1e was better, you didn't have to waste space giving a condensed version of the system for every single core.

People complained at them for years that they had to buy two core rulebooks to play CofD.

So apparently this was a thing?

...

Once again, I forget to check. Dammit
Also trinity core all in one

A'ight idea for a one-shot. Cupid is actually a Magath of Love and Archery. He was banished long ago but he gets to remanifest every year on february 14th.

You need to hunt the fucker down and send him packing before things get out of control.

Thanks, user!

tfw no Guide to the Nephandi

No worries. As far as I'm aware I've posted them all so far, and I'll keep that up, so don't worry about asking. Don't know how much of aeon they're actually going to preview, kinda doubt it's gonna be all eleven chapters

why need a guide when you can live it

This always struck me as weird. There's like 20 different books for the Wyrm alone, but no Nephandi love?

What's this about? INB4 "The Conspiracy Against the Human Race"

>The Conspiracy against the Human Race
sets out what is perhaps the most sustained
challenge yet to the intellectual blackmail that would oblige us to be eternally grateful for
a “gift” we never invited. Being alive is
not
all right: this simple
not
encapsulates the
temerity of thinking better than any platitude about the tragic nobility of a life
characterized by a surfeit of suffering, frustration, and self-deceit. There is no nature worth
revering or rejoining; there is no self to be re-enthroned as captain of its own fate; there is
no future worth working towards or hoping for. Life, in Ligotti’s outsized stamp of
disapproval, is MALIGNANTLY USELESS

Idea: start off a Hunter game to get a new group into the system and setting
e.g. simple mystery/monster hunt, shit hits the fan etc.

Then have them Awaken either together or at different stages and make it a bit more freeform from there.

dogshit?

do you like it?

Fuck that shit.

I think the premise of VtM is ridiculous. I just can't suspend my willful disbelief over it. No one, anywhere has ever seen or heard about vampires? Not one person? Not a single vampire, thin-blood, or ghoul has ever broken ranks to tell people about vampires, especially in the information age, and ESPECIALLY when it seems like the sabbat will just let any asshole join? Why is the Society of Leopold or other witch hunters not shouting it from the rooftops?

and so forth

However, I very much like the intrigue and politics of VtM. Secret civil wars, Independent Clans, cults, Secret societies within secret societies and so forth.

Is there any way that I can play this game, or find another game like it, without all the things I think are dumb?

Aren't they covered in both of the Books of Madness editions?

I tend to run with the explenation that there are methuselahs whacking down high-level obfuscate/dominate effects to keep people from noticing/remembering about vampires existance. So, no matter how much evidence there is, the idea never really 'takes hold'.
No, those powers don't exist in any book, it's merely a bandaid to keep the world making sense.

>no one has ever seen or heard about vampires

But they explicitly have though. Why do you think hunters are a thing? It's just that society as a greater whole isn't aware of them. No one's going to believe the crazy guy on the street who swears up and down that a shambling corpse has been feeding him its blood -- sure, leaks occur and the Masquerade is broken, but in the end common human disbelief and skepticism can patch it up quite easily. And when it doesn't? Well, that's what you have professionals for: make the blabbermouths (Kindred or human) disappear, make them stay quiet with a little Presence/Dominate or a friendly blood bond, or wipe their minds. On top of that, if you take into account the lore of the greater setting as a whole instead of treating it as isolated then you have a whole other extremely powerful and influential group who wants to keep society in the dark about the vampiric condition: the Technocracy. It's no wonder then that whatever small amount of evidence online that isn't just dismissed as being staged or fake ends up disappearing as if it were never there with no questioning its absence save a select "crazy" few... and when the Technocracy slacks, you have experimental Thaumaturgical Paths that solely exist to manipulate the net and use it as a conduit.

Honestly, all things considered, it'd almost be ridiculous if the existence of Kindred WASN'T a secret. A couple of random self-destructive Neonates in Nowheresville are going to lose every time to the horde of Cammies, NWO Operatives, and ravenous internet debaters ready to pounce on their ass at the slightest hint of the existence of Cainites. So I don't really see why the premise is so unfeasible.

All that being said though, just play the game in the Dark Ages setting if you can't suspend your disbelief for Modern Night. The sects don't exist back then though: if you want Camarilla vs Sabbat then maybe look into Victorian Era Vampire.

At large the Masquerade regulates itself, the Kindred are entrenched in many goverments and corporations and clean up whenever a thin-blood, ghoul or something else messes up. The few ones that somehow realize a greater conspiracy are taken as seriously as flat-earthers; hell even in our world there are those that claim aliens, vampires and witches exist... does anyone pay them any attention?

Thank you for affirming my personal feeling on the matter

The bottom line is that's way too many people for any vast conspiracy to survive. Think about your friends. Think about that one blabermouth guy who just can't keep the lid on ANYTHING. Multiply that ratio by the population of the conspiracy and as big as this one is, it just doesn't work

I could go on complaining about what I don't like, but that really isn't my point. I just don't like the premise but I really love the actual game setting. I just can't get into it.

No one has ever captured a vampire and been like: hey look this person is literally made of blood?

And furthermore, why would they keep it a secret if they did? It seems grossly irresponsible to keep the fact that there are beings who will literally devour you a secret from the general public.

It's a very silly thing to assume that even 1% of the WoD is somehow left unnoticeable by the masses. To say otherwise is to discredit just how powerful the modern age is with information. All it takes is one monster to pull off something obscene and have it spread like wildfire.

At least Ascension fixes this issue with consensual reality. Mostly.

It really depends on the character, clan and the ideology they follow.

I once played i brujah in a dark ages game. Who ended up living into his elder years, and forming a very strong and lasting friendship with neonate.

It can happen, but it depends on the vampire and how far removed they are from their human and emotional side.

I'm sorry I didn't mean to keep harping on it but it's frustrating that I just can't get my head around it. Maybe user above is right and I should just play Dark Ages.

Still, I think something would be lost for me in the social aspects of the game.

Yeah, they have; mostly goverments (which Kindred and Technocracy infiltrated alike, that are intent on keeping this a secret for the sake of other); the sporadic hunter or other mortals, as soon as they privately messaged their friends to come check what they had found or something of the sort, would be immediately on the radar of Technocracy.

>To say otherwise is to discredit just how powerful the modern age is with information.
Not when information is controlled so deeply by Technocracy they even managed to change Earth's consensual reality by alienating mankind.

You bring up a good point though. No shame in that. Urban fantasy just doesn't work realistically speaking, even for something that's inherently unrealistic.

The Technocracy controls every aspect of modern society and has a solid iron grip on the internet -- the primary means of communication and the source of almost all information within our era. They have people monitoring it at all times in the shadows, they have the ability to target people with mindwipes through simply viewing their YouTube comments, and they have the simple and natural recourse of shadowbanning anyone who speaks the truth with their universal admin privileges. Would it work in our world where this level of absurd magic(k)al damage control doesn't exist? Certainly not. Would it work in the World of Darkness where there's simply too much at work for mere word of mouth to expose the truth? Fuck yes.

But like I said, your best recourse is to just use one of the historical settings. Or I suppose you could lower the actual population of vampires. Elders are already pretty restrictive about who gets to Embrace who: if that's not enough justification for a lower population in your eyes though then maybe just make the actual process itself harder? Like, have a random chance of the person dying in the process, with only a select few coming out of the process alive. Something along those lines. It wouldn't stop Sabbat from Mass Embracing, but for vampires on Humanity, it'd fuck them really hard.

It just doesn't work if you disregard how canonically tight Technocracy's control over information is and how the average person has been historically conditioned to remain apathetic, uncreative and ignore that which would offend the purported definiton of what "reality" is meant to be and that is pushed by Technocracy's agenda.

If you want to pretend that the world is largely rendered mentally inadequate, sure.

Yeah, oWOD is, and even if it wasn't, Technocracy's control over information as described here would ensure things are contained.

Assuming the Union has such control, then there's no reason why every other faction isn't under their sway.

I'm sorry, but it's just not realistic.

>Or I suppose you could lower the actual population of vampires. Elders are already pretty restrictive about who gets to Embrace who: if that's not enough justification for a lower population in your eyes though then maybe just make the actual process itself harder? Like, have a random chance of the person dying in the process, with only a select few coming out of the process alive. Something along those lines. It wouldn't stop Sabbat from Mass Embracing, but for vampires on Humanity, it'd fuck them really hard.

This I could buy. If vampires were limited to a few at most per city, it would make the game more about influence over the kine than straight up vampires vs vampires, which could be really cool.

>"then there's no reason why every other faction isn't under their sway"
>implying that the union doesn't have every other faction under their sway to some extent or another

Why don't you read the fucking books instead of shooting down obviously abridged descriptions of single facets of the setting?

Whenever werewolves get turned they roll their Gnosis stat at difficulty 9. If they succeed they die a quick and painless death, if they fail they suffer a long and agonizing demise, and if they botch then they successfully become an Abomination. You could probably adapt something like this over to normal mortals with a bit of tweaking and some additional rules -- say, making it easier for vamps sired by an elder of a low Generation to survive, since the blood is more potent and the curse isn't diluted enough to allow them a chance of escaping it.

I'm not sure what a mortal would roll for it though. Maybe just their Stamina? Alternatively, you could create a new stat for it like Faith or something.

The metaplot evidently states they do not. For all their power the Union is flabbergasted by the few all-too-obvious blind spots - effective gongs on the radar.

Technology is the main means Neonates use to combat their Elders and strike fear into them, the Weaver is the dominant force in the world and the potential true main antagonist of Werewolf, Wraiths have trouble piercing the Shroud to accomplish their ghostly business in the Skinlands, Changelings are dying en masse due to disbelief in their race, Demons find it more difficult to reap Faith from their Thralls in an increasingly secular age, etc.

The influence of the Technocracy is everywhere user. It just isn't obvious -- and that subtlety is what makes Technocrats so amazing at their job.

They're apparently not as good as you seem to think. Technocrats can't do anything about vampires abusing technology. Had they - they would have been finished by now.

What do you mean by abusing technology? Like I said, Neonates are taking the fight to Elders through it. It suits the Technocracy's agenda to let the younger and more human vampires take the fight to their cruel, uncaring, and generally more powerful granddaddies who'd all gladly return the world to an era of vampiric control given the chance. Why waste valuable time that could be spent fighting the Ascension War on playing clean-up more than is necessary if the vampires (Neonates against Elders, Cammies/Anarchs against Sabbat, etc.) are gradually doing that job more and more for you?

That doesn't make any sense. If they really wanted to help then they would offer it upfront and end the threat then and there. Except they don't, because they can't - there's a whole Path dedicated to working technology that rivals the Union's own.

One of the only problems is that the plight of neonates and Elders is largely a machination from Methuselah and older subtly playing the Jyhad - which no lesser vampire (Elders included) seem to be able to escape, this is further confirmed in Gehenna by how useless Elders are against Methuselah and how all other vampires (Methuselah, Elder or younger) are either useless against the Antediluvians or have always been unwitting pawns to carry their will.

Difficulty 6, actually. Becoming an Abomination became way, way harder in Revised and onward.

Humans have no resistance to it unless they are Kin with Gnosis, though True Faith could probably prevent it at the very least.

They also don't really exist like that except in Mage. They aren't some miraculous omni-antagonist for every other game; they are a foil group for the Traditions. In other games, they can easily be pushed to the side, particularly on account of how in Werewolf, you can just shut down their operatives for the short window of time that you need to tear them limb from limb and brick their communications gear for good.

The recovery teams strongly believe that something terrible happened, but the car accident that happened right afterward is seriously impeding their investigation, to say nothing of how they just don't want to believe that they're vulnerable like a horror movie character in the face of Garou.

No? Mages are one of the lowest supernaturals population wise. Granted they could send in Enlightened Citizens, but that's still a waste of resources -- their focus is on the Ascension War which, at least in their eyes, is the key to cementing their control over reality. Why would they fuck off to go group up with a bunch of random young vampires who're going to do what benefits them regardless of having help offered or not?

It seems odd that you're insistent on such a blunt and blindly blatant approach when we're talking about vampires. Isn't their natural recourse to resort to scheming and politicking to get their way as opposed to rushing in screaming like autists? Why can vamps exercise a subtle approach but not the Technocrats who are openly stated to be ruling reality from the shadows?

You're more than this. You do mean something and everything you've ever done is a purposeful and intended pattern. I care about you.

>"They aren't some miraculous omni-antagonist for every other game"

You're right, they're a miraculous omni-protagonist for every other game. My mistake.

Yeah, they don't, I'm just suggesting houserules for it to make the Kindred population lower. I remembered the way Garou react to the Embrace and figured it was relevant to the current discussion as well as a potential good place to start for any actual mechanical rules regarding the phenomenon.

White Wolf always had a habit of making mages better than everyone else - that scenario can be safely ignored.

Free free to ignore or pay heed to it as you please in your games. But within the metaplot, it remains canon nevertheless. Reality is concrete -- we have our glorious Technocratic protectors and patrons to thank for that.

If you analyze the Week of Nightmares with detail it's made clear it's surprising Zapathasura managed to endure as long as he did given all the disadvantages he was made to face in that particular scenario.

In Gehenna the Antediluvians and the rest of the vampires are also affected by the God-sent Withering which greatly decreases their power level, and they still manage to end civilization.

1. Meanwhile in Ascension you umbral spirits with weak stats killing True Magick™
2. Technocracy and the rest of the collective will of all Awakened mages being unable to deflect a meteor that erradicates life on Earth

3. Slumbering Australian aborigine spirits that just get back to actively apparently already have enough power to match or even exceed Technocracy's hundreds of years of control, preparation and grinding.

Metaplot never mattered much to the other lines. Vampire lost Clans, Mages had the Avatar Storm to worry about (which killed off everyone's old guard), but in Werewolf... the Stargazers moved their leadership to Tibet, and the Garou Nation started getting together more often while the Fera seemed to have recovered from the War of Rage, for some value of recovery, none of which relied on the events of Time of Thin Blood. Most Revised books didn't even let other games' events have the time of day, since the MO of the time was to keep all of the games separate.

Because they realized that the various settings don't like to play along with each other. So they stopped trying to force them together, and that was some of the best material they ended up making.

And, now that they've all grown apart, you have to realize that it's not going to be an easy thing to try and make them fit together. In fact, it's probably just not happening. Your interpretation is just one sign of this; you aren't proposing an "equal WoD", but one where Mage is true and everything else is not. If you want an "equal WoD", you'd have to take great pains to actually make everything work, which means ditching consensus reality.

If you analyze the Week of Nightmares with detail it's made clear it's surprising Zapathasura managed to endure as long as he did given all the disadvantages he was made to face in that particular scenario.

In Gehenna the Antediluvians and the rest of the vampires are also affected by the God-sent Withering which greatly decreases their power level, and they still manage to end civilization.

1. Meanwhile in Ascension you have umbral spirits with weak stats killing True Magick™
2. Technocracy and the rest of the collective will of all Awakened mages being unable to deflect a meteor that erradicates life on Earth
3. Slumbering Australian aborigine spirits that just get back to activity apparently already have enough power to match or even exceed Technocracy's hundreds of years of control, preparation and grinding.

Most of the Ascension scenarios are dumb. But luckily they're all optional endings distinct from one another. The Week of Nightmares is definitively and likely always will be canon to the metaplot, but aliens coming down from out of nowhere to reclaim Avatars or a meteor destroying the planet? Not so much, especially when the 5th editions coming out seem to assume that the end of the world didn't actually happen.

Besides, if we treat each individual End Times scenario as canon and worth upholding, then we also have to extend to the same treatment to the gem that is pic related.

??

...

If you want to treat the games as isolated then that's fine. There's nothing wrong with avoiding crossovers/crossover elements. In that case, my original points that don't concern the Technocracy still stand, where people are just too skeptical to believe in whatever trickle of evidence comes out about the existence of Kindred and the technological Thaumaturgy Paths and the Disciplines that let you charm/mindwipe targets help to repair whatever dents in the Masquerade are made.

>aliens coming down from out of nowhere to reclaim Avatars

Why would the archmages allow this to happen

Because they're all dead or out hiding in the mystical promised land of irrelevancy. The Avatar Storm fucked them in the ass and then the Unnamed started devouring the remaining ones en masse.

>Besides, if we treat each individual End Times scenario as canon and worth upholding, then we also have to extend to the same treatment to the gem that is pic related.
That's fine, in Ascension's spin of it Technocracy erradicates most vampires after the Thin-Blooded rise and the God-sent Withering massively cripples the vampire's power; the Antediluvians decide to fall back to the shadows; the feeble Order of Hermes scavenges for scraps of Thaumaturgical knowledge, clearly recognized here as the better magic, as Tremere knowledge seem to propel the Order to new heights, flourishing as Tremere books feed the mind of new mages.

Then they're all killed by a meteor, have their magick killed by alien not-umbral spirits or Technocracy's full might is matched by australian aborigine spirits that just awakened from their slumber

>And then the Unnamed started devouring the remaining ones en masse.

Does this mean that pre-ruler of the Tellurian Unnamed, which is when he goes after all the remaining archmages, is strong enough to kill all canon archmages?

>Technocracy's full might is matched by australian aborigine spirits that just awakened from their slumber
wut

Or Voormas freezes the entire universe with his True Magick™ or the Unnamed buttfucks everyone in the ass, all other splats included and reigns supreme for eternity through the almighty power of Entropy 10 and the assistance of his dark generic infernalist masters. What? You didn't think those three user listed were the only End Times scenarios for Mage, did you? Yikes. Maybe you shouldn't try and play pretend at being some sort of expert if you haven't actually read the books or at least done a bit of basic fact-checking first. That is, assuming you weren't actually aware of the other scenarios and weren't just being intellectually dishonest, but intellectual dishonesty on World of Darkness General? Naaah. Never could happen.

Also, the contents of the books weren't actually important. They benefited from the knowledge because they believed the knowledge would benefit them: that's a basic cosmological principle of Mage. If the Order of Hermes genuinely and wholeheartedly believed they could attain the secrets of magick and the universe through Disneyland pamphlets then they could have just scrounged around in an amusement park for eight hours and gotten the same result. But Tremere Thaumaturgy is much more similar in nature to the Hermetic paradigm and its corresponding breed of magick than a Mickey Mouse coloring book thanks to House Tremere's magi roots, so here we are.

>matched or perhaps even exceeded

His earliest appearance as a statted antagonist had him at Entropy 6, which makes him an archmage. He also had the backing of generic and vague Lovecraftian horrors, though all that being said, he still didn't kill all archmages: he just picked off the scraps in the wake of them getting fucked and fucking up each other.

The typical Tzimisce NPC is a crude Eldest puppet (or Souleater, or whatever explanation you like). They lack friends because there is nothing there to "befriend." They are normal as humans, and then begin fleshcrafting humans into furniture. This is obviously not based off psychology or "peer pressure," its The Thing. PCs, as a rule, are not going to easily be made into The Thing, and Asakku is kind of a clumsy implementation.

In any case, as Tzimisce PCs are essentially Santa Claus they will make friends easily. Even a very conservative Tzimisce can make friends with people wildly different from them (furries, transgenders, etc.) by making their dreams reality.

Tzimisce's clan disciplines are actually pure garbage mechanically (zulo form does close to nothing, fleshcrafting does close to nothing, animalism is rarely relevant, etc) so they have to compensate by RP.