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

Some shit introduced in Beckett's Diary
whitewolf.wikia.com/wiki/Drowned_Legacies

Sounds like there's some "Kindred of the Obsidian Kingdom" splat planned down the line
Although the descriptions remind me more of the fucking Strix than anything

Interesting. I have heard in at least two contexts how intriguing south american vampires are and how well at least some of them fit modern conceptions of vampires though clearly not all will (otherwise the book would be SHIT).

A new Geist spoiler is up.

theonyxpath.com/the-doors-of-death-geist-the-sin-eaters/

How are people liking them so far? I think Geist 2e is shaping-up to be a very good revisions.

>However, don't let mages with Death anywhere near Sin Eaters.

Can anyone share the Trinity Continuum: Æon Preview #2? Thanks!

Hey Tg, I’m playing a vtm game and I plan on killing some npcs, is there a fine line to walk so I don’t become a murder hobo or should I just not care because of the setting, the GM hasnt really said anything either way. What are your thought?
Hope this is the right place to ask, and thanks.

Give us some more backstory, user.

Basically we’re repopulating a city that mysteriously lost all the vampires overnight, my guys a Brujah gangbanger/hitman that is planning to do something that will leave some bodies.
Also just remembered GM mentioned we can kill while hunting ‘let me know if you want to kill them and if/how you deal with body’ it’s my first game so I just don’t want to be That Guy.

I've never really felt death mages step on the toes of sin eaters; sin eaters use deathly effects to do miscellaneously weird magic and death mages use miscellaneous magic to do deathly effects. Plus the death mage can boost em.

Good find though

I was actually referring to how the Arcana of Death can really screw around with sin eaters (and vampires, mummies, etc.), and Moros or other Death-proficient mages would probably be poison in any crossover scenario, to say nothing of the incessant mage-supremacy wank that we'll have to endure here once Geist in released.

Just finished discussing my Demon character with my DM. It took some time since it's for a one DM/one player campaign so we dug a lot around his past and everyday life. I don't usually like playing WoD that much but Demon really grabbed my attention.

>Once you’ve used a Key, you fall under the effects of its Doom. While you’re Doomed, you can’t use that Key from that source again until the Doom is triggered. The Doom of Blood, for instance, makes you fail dramatically the next time you try to avoid a violent confrontation, whether by de-escalating, running, or what have you.

Might be kinda annoying to have Geist Yantras be so clunky and meta to use. Cool in theory, but it seems annoying to have to partner each use of a key with dramatic failure chasing. Nwod is a pretty gamist game.

There's nothing particularly wrong with offing random grunts if it's what your character would do, although you should probably avoid drawing too much heat on yourself. The ST might have plans for the important NPCs too, so maybe check with him before wiping out the entire cast of named characters.

I don't see much of a problem with death mages in such crossover games, that's what death is for, and it will generally be used to help party members and do fun stuff; death is one of the weaker arcana.

Even in the most geist/vamp/mummy infested game in the universe, death still isn't more applicable than mind or fate.

Thanks that’s what I was hoping for, and yeah I’ll mainly stick to randomman 1 and randomwoman 13 rather than named ones.

Old or new?

Why would there be mage supremacy wank in nwod over geist? Nwod's power levels seem pretty cut and dry and *mostly* intentional, compared to owod's where different spheres compare on an entirely random basis to other spheres.

Don't know, it's the Matrix-ey one with the God-Machine

Geist 2e will be great. Hopefully the kickstarter will be soon so we can get some much needed supplement books for the gameline.

Ah yes, I love that one.

Both are great, and my favorite lines from both games by far (even though on the surface there's no reason to associate the two), but dtd is a treasure.

I have to say I can't wait to start playing it seems great
Plus I love one on one RPG it's more intimate

>Hopefully the kickstarter

I hear Geist 2e is slated for release just after Signs of Sorcery...

So on the topic of ndemon, I thought I'd post an image that summarizes my favorite look for angels, demons and cryptids in my chronicles when I run and my character and its cryptids when I play: that of creatures of liquid metal with solidity as needed.

My analyst character favors two modes: a partial transformation with a suite of detection abilities and inhuman beauty to cause others to be more cooperative, and a demon form that incorporates a lot of elements centering around a theme of a liquid metal creatures: mirrored skin, amorphous, that sort of thing.

These sort of creatures are the most common form of high rank cryptids (not by virtue of a greater power level but due to them being almost totally comprised of the stuff), and comprise most angels and demons as well. If you were able to see these nearly invisible creatures, your vision would probably incorporate exotic technological or supernatural properties that would make them seem partially transparent like this; potentially amorphous nanotechnology around a largely unchanging robotic endoskeleton..

Although terms like "robot like" come to mind, they are definitely living things. Veins carrying plasma and other liquids, wires and tubes go through their bodies; although they'd brightly glow if exposed, the mirrorskin suppresses this. They are nearly invisible except when moving.

The cryptids are even stranger; animals translated to a largely inorganic existence, they are typically nearly invisible mirror creatures like their big angel and demon brothers. Rarely seen, and having an instinctive desire to remain hidden (a vestigial tendency to emulate the vagaries of Cover), someone whose cat or dog is turned into a cryptid is unlikely to bump their feet on one. Yet they may still hear the recordings of an animal from time to time, and it may consume, and then use nanotechnology to emulate, household devices, especially smaller ones.

Is there a morality system in all of WoD and CoD which doesn't suck? Homebrews included.

I really like this, might steal.
I'd rather have Angels that are so weird their form can't be fully understood or rationalized. I have this Angel whose true form is so thin that if seen from the side it's virtually invisible, but from the front looks like a wide gap in reality, opening on what seems to be cosmos with stars and nebulas at first but really are the lights of electronic circuits so weirdly put together it doesn't seem logical.

There are, of course, the conventional "clusterfuck of meat and machinery" creations as well. If one is seen, it is usually one of two varieties; ghost-cryptids or depraved fusions of corpses and machinery made by angels to protect infrastructure. The corpses used in the process are drawn exclusively from stigmatics, and the ghost-cryptids are likewise deceased stigmatics, offspring, and of course, the ghosts of burned soul covers (echoes).

Any such creature that has a significant portion of visible flesh is almost certainly going to be made using stigmatic tissues (living or dead). The unique receptivity of such unfortunate souls to the flows of aether and the God Machine make them extremely useful for various deranged projects. One rare creative escape for angels lies in producing such abominations to protect infrastructure; by channeling any weak desire for self expression or whimsy, and shaping human bodies, and discarded bits of angel carcasses and defunct infrastructure together allows an angel that would otherwise fall to safely express itself in terms of producing monsters whose sole purpose is labor and to kill intruders.

...

Hope in Princess: The Hopeful.

I'm inclined to have it be a tendency for the weakest God Machine creatures to be made of bits of stigmatic meat and discarded infrastructure, intermediate (including almost most PCs) being liquid metal, and rank 4 and 5 angels (transcending the limits of even major template creatures' stats) to have impossible forms.

Afterall, the rank 1 guy who just runs up and stabs little old ladies doesn't need to be terribly transcendent, and PCs can therefore identify -- at a glance -- any angel or echo that is flat out too powerful for a PC to contest.

I get that, but I think it would depend more on the role the Angel or Demon has (or had) to play. A Psychopomp, even low ranked, would be less about physical materials and more about symbols and otherwordly structures, in my opinion. A Destroyer, even high ranked, would be more physical, more tangible. A Messenger, high or low ranked, would choose either something completely unknown but truly amazing or something human-shaped, at least with a face.

Is there any hope for the Bubasti to survive?
It seems like out of all the different were-cat tribes they've got little hope of having a good ending.
I might even say they've got it the worst out of all the shapeshifters, but I think that spot belong to the were-sharks.

The four starting powers I'm netting for my unchained are:

Occam's Razor (for ablative cover and making people believe the simplest explanation)
Homogenous Memory (for covering up the party's many crimes and excesses)
Four Minutes Ago (for not only hiding but removing the demon's involvement); Homogenous Memory is used as the prerequisite to literally write the demon out of scenes rather than figuratively.
The Word (Analyst freebie so the character has some offensive punch for doing more or less everything); is often going to be used with the former ability to cause NPCs to perform bizarre actions on their own.

For some reason, the high strangeness of being an invisible mirrorskinned being continuously writing itself out of the timeline, and only perceived due to the actions which are now happening without the demon's apparent involvement but suiting some sort of agenda, has really stuck with me to the point of making for very entertaining dreams. The time abilities of demons, so much more abstruse than the time abilities of mages, strikes me as having a lot of use, and even more potential for simply being unexplained spookiness.

Of course, mechanically that's also a good pretext for attempting to farm beats due to exceptional success on cover checks.

Ah true. Though a psychopomp (angel anyway) is probably going to be never be seen by unchained, or really by anyone, as I don't think there's a way to see into angel twilight.

It's telling how the only interesting part of NWoD is the exclusive set of villains in the setting that are pretty much discount Weaver spirits/drones.

>mfw by RAW thaumaturges are better at spirit dealing than mages, here's how to be king of the world fresh from character gen:

Start with: Thaumaturgy 3 (or 4), Willpower 10, Manipulation 5, Occult 5, Path of Spirit Manipulation as your primary Path, Herd background at 5, ritual Enfolding the Believers (Level Three), Megalomania derangement (optional)

1. Use Enfolding the Believers on your Herd
2. You now have 23 dice from the get-go to use any Path power and ritual whenever your cult is involved
3. Vampire rolls 23 dice at difficulty 6 to use Spirit Manipulation 3's Voice of Command; all spirits resist being enslaved with their Willpower, for most spirits this pool will never exceed 10 rolled at difficulty 10 (spirit's Willpower vs your Manipulation + Occult rating as difficulty).
4. Get creative; you now can start enslaving a lot of different spirits to carry out your bidding, you can force enslaved Banes to possess your cult and get a powerful army of fomori or might as well go for Paradox spirits to protect you from mages (something that requires at least Spirit Sphere 5 for the Awakened)

Other considerations for when you get more powerful, 1. Path of Spirit Manipulation 4 can make fetishes a lot simpler and quicker than a Garou or mage would; 2. Presence works fine on spirits; Presence 3's Entrancement will make any spirit a willing servant, Presence 5's Majesty will make you a god in the spirits' eyes

Do you guys know any other broken combinations?

>Aeon Preview #2

Thank you, user.

My Psychopomp Demon's true form is a big mechanichal spider, made of so many tiny mechanisms that it almost seems smooth. But he's only like this because je got way more into the physical world since his Fall.
But about that appearance thing, I think it really depends on the Demon/Angel/Cryptid you're dealing with, how it came to be and what its relationship with humans, the physical world and the etherial world.

Duh, time loop into throwing a marauder at him that lives in a world of pure sunlight.

Awesome ideas. I'd probably add some angels and demons that are purely made up of mechanical and artificial components, but with these components being assembled in a completely counterintuitive way (bodies of tubes and wires that aren't plugged into anything and just cycle back into each other) and, most importantly, behaving like organic parts : metal pipes swell with hissing breaths, metal grilles twist into smiles, glass lamp-covers deform into frowns, oil leaks like saliva.
All in all, I think all of these solutions should coexist, and that the physical appearance of an angel or other GM creature shouldn't be an immediately decipherable indication of its rank or function.
For example, I've got a guardian demon that looks like a large slab of grey, polished stone with smaller slabs for arms and that seems to manipulate objects by magnetism and slide a centimeter over the ground, and another that's basically a jet-black Cerberus with floodlights for eyes and railguns instead of snouts.
The sheer nonsensical variety you can exploit is part of the appeal, in my opinion.

Only issue here is that by RAW a lot of Paradox spirits are not in the Penumbra. But this is a very interesting idea. What spirits in the Penumbra could a Vampire easily acquire?

>mages

>What spirits in the Penumbra could a Vampire easily acquire?
Without heigher levels of Spirit Manipulation and Presence that would allow the Thaumaturge to summon any spirit he has ever seen you'd need to scale your powerbase horizontally first;

That being said, of easily acquirable, most spirits tied to concepts, regardless of where they typically inhabit, are fair game because they're attracted to things that match their spiritual correspondence; for example, continuously inflicting severe pain on someone has high chances of attracting Pain spirits; spirits tied to elements are also easy to attract for the same reason; you can farm countless Wyrm-spirits (which you then use to create an army of formori) just by having your cult indulge in depravities;

Getting Paradox spirits might be more complicated if you don't have Presence 4/Spirit Thaumaturgy 5; a relatively easy way could probably involve kidnapping a inexperienced mage and forcing him to nearly blow himself through Vulgar magick; when the spirit appears he can be enslaved or even potentially made into a fetish if you have Path of Spirit Manipulation 4

This reminds me our friendly neighborhood archmage Mr. Time Vegetable

by RAW Summon from Presence in v20 only works "on the physical world"

Can someone fill me in on the ParaWolf/nuWW meme? What exactly did they do to make themselves instantly hated?

That's why I said heigher levels of the Path of Spirit Manipulation (rating of 5) would be needed alongside of Presence if you opted for that venue

user, we might just win the Ascension war without even having Avatars!

Imagine what Tremere would do if someone flagged this up to him.

It's really no wonder the Tremere curbstomped the Order of Hermes twice

>tfw no cheese for any of the Fera
Cheese-user, can you enlighten us?

I never got one on one games. I always preferred the dyanamism and emerging game play from a large number of players. One on one sounds so boring.

The werwolf one in 2e CofD Forsaken is pretty solid.

It wasn't so much instant as it was taking the Goodwill they started with and shitting on it with every new announcement and game.
But mostly they seem to have an odd view of 90s edgelording that makes no sense and is worse than actual edgelording

Friendly reminder that the Mokole are the best of the Fera and anyone who says otherwise is a dirty vampire lover.

Need some guidance.

My ST revealed that he's going to be using a mage master as the "final boss" in our Forsaken chronicle, but only to me. How should I react to this? Should I immediately pack it? Should I tell the others? Or maybe I can use this to my advantage and cherry pick abilities when it happens. PLEASE RESPOND.

Can Forsaken even step sideways at will? Don't they need some shitty portal?

Played properly, you woofs are going to get their shit pushed in.

BUT this is a forsaken ST who will probably play retardo Mage just so you can all beat him and feel speshal. You can then go round all your furry fwiends and say you killed a master mage.

Big woopie doo.

10 - 1 the st hasnt even read the mage book.

Given the distinction between presence/domination/animalism, you'd really need a new discipline, crank out a few 13th gens who were mediums in life and then force them to teach you any new disciplines they develop that fit the bill.

>A Messenger, high or low ranked, would choose either something completely unknown but truly amazing or something human-shaped, at least with a face.

What? By RAW Presence works just fine on spirits; Path of Spirit Manipulation 3 lets you command any spirit; Path of Spirit Manipulation 5 lets you project any Thaumaturgical power or Discipline on the spirit world; why so the need for a new Discipline?

This is relevant to my interests. I've long considered a non-Infernalist Tremere who summons spirits as a fun concept. What Disciplines and Paths would I need to play up the traditional Hermetic/Faustian summon?

That is, draw a chalk circle on the ground, utter low, dark words of power, and have something appear dramatically within it?

Yeah, you either downplay Mages or don't use them at all. Hell, even Demons and Mummies aren't safe.

Right. There a few different ways to achieve this. Path of Spirit Manipulation 5/Presence 4 is an unorthodox combination akin to walking the land with Hermetic Sight on, taking note of the different individual spirits, and then being able to summon any of them instantly.

Elemental Mastery 5's Summon Elemental would work for summoning traditional spirits of the elements such as fire, air, earth and water.

Path of Spirit/Rego Manes/Rego Mentem (depicted in the image) is probably what you should be looking into for the traditional Hermetic summoning & partial control of demons and nature spirits. Though having Path of the Spirit Manipulation as well would expand your degree of control vastly.

This path is cripplingly under powered compared to Path of Spirit Manipulation.
As per Rites of Blood, regular Spirit manipulation allows you to do this. It's almost like Mage Paradigms in many ways. A Wanga practitioner using Path of Spirit Manipulation does it differently to a Tremere.

>Any psion can now become a proxy assuming they can manage to meet the right requirements
Huh....how about that. Wish we got to chapter 11 faster then, wonder how the Doyen feel about that

About the same as most other things I would imagine. They're afraid and cautious, some of them already doubting if giving psi powers to humanity was a mistake or not, looking for ways to make the leash they keep them on just a little bit tighter.

I'm I missing something or are the tables for vehicles fucked up in the post-errata core-book?

...

>This path is cripplingly under powered compared to Path of Spirit Manipulation.
I agree but it has the one advantage of bringing the spirits over to you, Path of Spirit Manipulation, at least as is written, won't summon the spirit, rather you have to chase after it with Hermetic Sight and then opt between conversing with it through Astral Chant/commanding it with Voice of Command.

As for more ideas, here's another relatively inexpensive ritual for the average Thaumaturge but that has several benefits, one of which is pretty good for a would-be spirit-dealer (+2 difficulty to all attacks from spirits)

When you get Thaumaturgy 5 obtaining the Enchant Talisman ritual and using Warding Circle Versus Spirits on it is ideal; so you can single out just about which spirits will be able to get close to you.

So Path of Spirit Manipulation AND Path of Spirit offer non-Infernalist/demonic ways of summoning spirits for a Tremere?

I could start with a bit of both [mostly SM] with just one rank to start in Path of Spirit to allow for making imps or jagglings or whatever. Take the Medium Merit while I'm at it for ghosts and be master wizard.

Yeah but personally I'd just take Path of Spirit Manipulation and focus on that; at rating 3 you can pretty much command most spirits (if your Manipulation + Occult are high enough), at rating 4 you can make fetishes which can be --extremely-- powerful; the only disadvantage being you have to draw spirits indirectly by tapping into their spiritual correspondence or hunt for them with Hermetic Sight on.

Once you build a sizeable brood of enslaved spirits you could get your minions to locate/summon any other spirit you want to enslave

Since I literally only want this for the fluff of 'calling up what you cannot put down', magic circle, dark mutterings, candle and chalice shit I'd probably level both. I get SM is better but it fits the fluff less.

Also like I thought, it looks like the vitakenisis mode for just wiggling your fingers and getting rid of mental derangement is going away.

Not really, the GMC is drastically more interesting than the Weaver.

>lol it wants to kill everyone
>why? because its dumb

Oh yeah. I'm only saying this because... there's a very finite number of angels/cryptids/demons I'm going to be able to show up per chronicle, most of the angels being things that the PCs will never be able to see under any circumstances (twilight, possession, etc).

That doesn't sound anything like the Weaver. Have you ever read a book before?

Moron thought you meant Wyrm.

werewolf packs can have spirits (average rank 3, average dice pool 20, per The Pack) as *members*, not just totems. Pick the counterspell numen and a readily applicable influence you should be good.

Unless he's a *spirit* master you'll probably be good. Likewise get totem influences.

Yes, I am aware of the irony that werewolves are SO SHITTY that their only hope is to beg from the spirits they yell at 24/7 to help them. Werewolf and Vampire's themes are both absolute shit: "I am an awful person plz kill me" for Vampire and "I police the spirit world.. INCOMPETENTLY" for Werewolf.

Cue the guy who identifies with mages who will become offended if mages don't win every engagement, despite the fact that mages are like ten notches higher (vamps/weres are just "mortals with supernatural merits" tier).

The Wyrm is also a multi headed beast covering nearly every vice or indulgence of humanity. Not just boring old murder. Now werewolves themselves. They are all murder all the time and not really good for anything else. Even in their end times book.

>planning a game for months
>finally get characters made
>finally going to play tonight
>we have to push it back AGAIN
AAAAAAA I JUST WANT TO ROLL DICE AND PLAY GOTH ROCK

NWoD is more interesting than OWoD for the simple reason that it doesn't have an annoying metaplot ruining everything.

Nor does it cater to obnoxious Vampire fans and LARPers. The only minus I can truly give is the unwavering masses of SJWs.

Dave is being a bit of a retard here.

>until the mages realise (??) their powers rip Demon's Cover to bits

This makes no sense. Fittingly, Dave doesn't seem to understand how his own rules work as usual (yes, he was part of DtD). Cover blocks mage detection abilities -- hard. I GUARANTEE that the last person a mage will suspect is the one that registers as A) a human and B) telling the truth. Hell, mages are dumb enough to not even know ghosts are fully sapient people -- and that's something you can actually find out with magic.

This reminds me of how in the Demon book, the Lambent is described as "launching full on assaults until a demon's Cover is shredded, and then waiting until the demon switches Cover, destroying that one too, and only moving in for the killing blow once the demon is Burned." Only problem is, he has literally nothing that can do anything like that.

The only way a mage can attack a demon's Cover is ... investigating the demon, probably with a boosted dice pool, and ratting on him to humans.

Likewise, demons are in a fairly good position with regards to mages, considering the mage categorically can't see them coming as anything but a human, the demon can further confuse his foes with stuff like Decoy, Terrible Avatar, Possession, Demon House, or Demon Car, and more importantly, can simply learn all a mage's tricks with one Exploit.

HE LIVES

You're talking about the guy who extensively wrote for *every* single gameline to date.

Read Apocalypse. Remember, the Weaver's goal (witting or unwitting) is the annihilation of all life, including itself, because its too stupid to even comprehend that it is also a spirit.

Dave says you're wrong. So you're wrong.

I hear people say this about the metaplot all the time, but no one ever has any examples and in my years of playing these games I've never run into that problem.

Yeah. No wonder he is dodderingly confused.

Even if a mage had some way to breach Cover, the demon could simply undo it and put the angel after the mage instead.

Also kinda disappointed, thought the space travel/spaceship rules would be in the space chapter, guess its in the equipment chapter?

>When you meet someone for the first time, if the ST is feeling nice they might let you actually make use of this 3pt. merit

That just flew right over your head.