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

Yes I do. It makes Paradox so much easier to explain.

But this isn't true by RAW, a fireball tossed anywhere other than in a mage's sanctum, Umbra and perhaps reality zones is going to be Vulgar no matter what; whether there are witnesses or not

Thats what he's saying. He gets rid of that category of vulgar effects.

Giving the Vulgar/Subtle thing the axe was probably the best thing Dave did.

No, it was retarded.

Paradox is wore like a badge, there's no Vulgar magic, why not just play D&D if you're in for the high fantasy?

>I wonder how I could improve a game the core theme of which is that abusing power has consequences...
>zomg I know! let's remove all consequences for abusing power! ebin!!! xD
truly a genius

>If one ported oWOD to the Fallout universe, what would be what?

What are you even trying to ask here?

A stupid question.

It would have been so much simpler/easier if he just asked which parts of oWoD could be adapted into the Fallout setting and how they might work.

Daily reminder that Mages and Changelings work perfectly together in games.

owod, yes

nwod, no

DAAAAAAAAVE

it's too damn funny Magefags have an autistic writer enabling mage faggotry, it's not surprise mage players are a reflection of him

>leather jacket counts as armor.
How do you justify this?

Nah, I just pick whats possible for that area before the game starts and let the players know the limits in the area ahead of time.

>How do you justify this?
Easy, try to slash a leather jacket with a knife, see if it'll cut as effectively as without one; there's also a reason stabbing weapons negate some armor defense

Nah, Dave actually hates supremacy talk.

I fail to see how stating the obvious pros and cons of mages mingling with others equates to "mage faggotry"?

Mage supremacy was a thing since the mid-1990's with the release of Ascension. Dave didn't begin writing for Mage until the end of Awakening 1e, and his development of Awakening is just within the last few years. Ironically, Dave hates the mage supremacy discussion as immaterial to actually playing Mage.

This. He's the one saying that Mages DON'T know everything and know this. It's why they go out and poke at everything. Dave just isn't willing to outright FUCKING LIE to fans and customers about the levels of power involved, nor does he seem willing to pull 'gotchas', 'trap options' or 'bait and switches'. Ineffectually presenting Mages as comparable to weaker splats is blatantly deceitful and DnD gets away with it cause the devs and large parts of the playerbase are ignorant cowards, blind idiots or deceitful hypocrites.

>and DnD gets away with it cause the devs and large parts of the playerbase are ignorant cowards, blind idiots or deceitful hypocrites.
I think wodfags are a dumb as DnDfags. And surely much more hypocritical.

If this post was a hat, it would be a trilby.

But elfgames fucking suck.

That Dave has the balls to call something busted as just that and generally disruptive if mixed with other splats is leagues better than the horseshit spouted by DnD devs and their defenders. There are casters in both WOD and CodD that would get fucked over by even muggles in reliable fashion(second sight sorcerers, psychics, etc). The bullshit casters are called out as such and at least Dave isn't trying to be a deceitful shit about it.

speaking of which, has there been any talk to update Second Sight to CofD ?

So, any new hunter news? Haven't read much aside from the beta test they did around October, and was curious if any new news was out and about

Yeah. Id rather the devs be sincere. Why I like Dave.

>That Dave has the balls to call something busted as just that and generally disruptive if mixed with other splats
Why haven't mages shat the setting yet then?

Because the WoD setting demands that they do not. Also why would they want to shit on something they purposely want to study?

because low level mages are powerless in the face of all-powerful enemies and high level mages are amorphous, unmoving concepts that don't ever do jack shit

Awakening mages? They already have. That's kind of the point. Ascended wizard-kings lord over Creation as the living concepts of oppression and tyranny.

How does human society still exists essentially equal to how our world (which is devoid of mages)? Despite there existing wizard-king lords that rule over Creation... but that doesn't seem to have had any impact whatsoever?

Our society as we know it(but a few shades darker) is exactly how they want the world to be running.

>Vampire Lawnchair is countered by Vicissitude and Protean
>Somehow a Lawnchair has Vitae to use
>Somehow a Lawnchair has consciousness
>Somehow a Vampire has the willpower to go on after realising he's been turned into a lawnchair.

Why did Phil 'Thrusting Father Cock' Brucato do this?

It doesn't. Its the World of Darkness. Governments and corporations are bigger, more corrupt, and more distant. Architecture trends towards darker styles, gothic cathedrals can be found in the Americas. Ancient vampires and other horrors hold significant pull in mortal institutions which they abuse at their leisure, and the dead are restless horrors who descend into a dreary grey afterlife. Things are shit.

And the reason things are shit is because a long time ago a group of powerful Mages ascended bodily into Heaven by climbing a magic Tower and broke existence so badly that this became a possible outcome. Now these Wizard-Lords have no further goals then keeping the status quo with themselves at the top.

The few beings powerful enough to challenge that decree can only legally alter the universe retroactively, so even if they did do something normies would never notice.

Also normies forget magic when they see it.

That's retarded. In my games I'd allow a Vampire with Vicissitude to mystically RESIST the transformation, but a chair is a chair ffs.

Because that rote only uses Matter and Life, which essentially does nothing but alter the victim's pattern to that of a lawnchair.

Does a mage that transforms himself into a dog -----automatically and instantly-- loses its conciousness "because he's now just a dog"? Nope.

How does a fucking chair have blood?

It is a lawn chair. I don't give a shit about semantics or game mechanics, willfully transforming yourself into a talking dog is isn't the same thing as being a lawn chair.

If a hostile Mage turned a different Mage into a lawnchair it'd be the same story.

Please respond

>It is a lawn chair.
So? It's still the vampire in a metaphysical level, with all its mystical properties, their patterns have just been rearranged to look like something else.

Even in VtM vampires have powers to become mist, pools of blood, stone, water, earth, desk, statues, bicycles but they still remain themselves, able to use disciplines and spend blood.

No it isn't. It is a chair.

Sorry, by RAW it's just the vampire made to appear like a lawnchair.

The difference being a dog has a brain

A chair does not

Almost as if its a waste of word count that works nothing like any other shapeshifting and m20 is shit.

They really wanted vampire players to feel speshuuuul in v20 didn't they

That's fucking adorable

Doesn't apply to vampires, lest whenever they used their powers to become mist, pools made entirely of blood, or boulders etc, they'd instantly die

Except that's their given inherency. A mage's foreign magics gives no shits about that.

If the mage wanted to have the vampire retain its consciousness then Mind would be a conjunctive Sphere. Only Brucato seems to think no? Gee wiz, I wonder why he bothered to make thing so simple for non-mages and overwhelmingly complex for mages. HDYDT is such a hypocritical piece.

Maybe they had Phil at gunpoint when he was writing about vampires?

Crossovers are stupid anyway, who cares about the rules for them?

A fomori can posses pretty much anything, that's why I need crossover rules.

>If the mage wanted to have the vampire retain its consciousness then Mind would be a conjunctive Sphere.
Or perhaps the mage would rather have to use Mind/Spirit to take their conciousness away? The rote only uses Life/Matter and changes the vampire's physical patterns alone, due to their metaphysical inherency a vampire's conciousness isn't directly tied to their physical patterns - after all, they're undead and their brains are biologically nonfunctional; it's the power of blood and will that animates them

So use Life to give the lawn chair blood...?

What do you mean by this and what's the point you're trying to make?

Chairs don't have blood.

Neither do vampires when they transform themselves into a rock or mist - something that would suggest the blood gets metaphysically synthesized regardless of their form. If the vitae was there when you transformed them into a chair nothing prevents them from mystically using the potential energy that still exists within their patterns; granted you still could burn off the blood in their bodies before transforming them but that's another deal entirely

The idea that you need 50 Spheres for simple tasks is stupid and defeats the entire point of the flexible freeform magick system.

Anytime you read a book that says something like "You need Forces 4/Life 2/Time 3/Prime 7 to be an Akashic and jump over a wall" you should soundly ignore it.

A vampire whose been turned into a chair is a chair is a chair is a chair, and should be treated as having experienced Final Death.

Yes, except again, vampiric powers aren't Spheres. M20 is basically saying "Mind not needed", for whatever reason. It should be a Life/Matter/Mind effect all things considered.

Vampires turning themselves into mist or bats is the same thing as a Mage turning himself into a talking dog.

This debate isn't about the logic of keeping blood in a chair or how you fit a human mind into a dog's brain. Such 'logic' is just Technocratic science and doesn't apply to True Magick, or even linear magic.

This debate is the difference between Polymorph and Baleful Polymorph. If you transform yourself into something weird, then obviously you dictate the terms of its weirdness [or rather, your powers do]. If someone else transforms you into something weird, then THEY dictate the terms to you.

A vampire who becomes a chair willingly using the Discipline of Lazyboy can feel free to keep his mind and his vitate, but if he uses that same Discipline on a Werewolf its completely unreasonable to assume the resulting Garou necessarily is conscious.

If you need crossover rules to use for antagonists there's no need for massive balance wank as found in this thread.

>If you dictate the terms of its weirdness [or rather, your powers do]. If someone else transforms you into something weird, then THEY dictate the terms to you.

Well yes, but "your powers do" in terms of Life/Matter, which the rote uses, are that you're simply able to alter the vampire's --physical--patterns;

It seems to be a fundamental metaphysical aspect of vampires: 1. Not have their conciousness tied to their physical patterns; 2. Be able to spend vitae regardless of its form so long it's part of them

If you want to silence the vampire's conciousness then add Mind to the rote (something Life/Matter alone won't deal with when it comes to vampires), it's that simple

Its obviously easier to just have a bit o blood and flesh craft them into chairs with stakes in if you really care about them getting out of it.

Nah. Lawn chairs can't think. But go ahead and support something that doesn't make sense.

>Nah. Lawn chairs can't think.
You're unable to make lawn-chairs that cannot think without Mind, sorry

I'd argue that you'd need Mind to actually allow the Vampire to think in lawn chair form.

Except lawn chairs don't have brains. :^)

Too bad vampires are undead and their brains are nonfunctional, something else animates them

Yeah. It's right there in the rules. Only no justification for it.

Its called vitae and (non-Tzimisce) chairs don't have it.

Personally, I think its supposed to reflect Hoard. This also means that if you succeed at eating an angel or elder earthbound's soul (such as via their True Name, which lets you add their Faith rating) you wouldn't just grab 5 or so permanent Faith but rather 10-20 points, which is fairly crazy.

Even if angels and earthbound NPCs really are supposed to have 20-50+ faith dice and not just faith points (I assume its the latter via Hoard or Hoard analog, to give them parity with elders and methuselahs), it doesn't change the fact that discussion about earthbound in these threads are about what can be done in a practical sense with an earthbound PC, and there is many orders of magnitude more mobility and probability from fallen -> earthbound than vampire-> methuselah. In some eras, earthbound are all you'll even find on the planet.

Spirit 4 + hope the avatar doesn't simply choose to leave and return to its original owner.

If you drain them out of vitae before using this rote then you're right, if you simply transform the vampires (and their vitae) into something else then it doesn't matter because the (altered) blood is still there and they have innate access to it for purposes of activating disciplines

Ummm, ok

>Crossovers are stupid anyway, who cares about the rules for them?

OPP's consumers apparently want crossover play and accompanying rules very much. That's precisely why they intend to release The Contagion Chronicles. It supposedly will have detailed crossover rules along with an alternate setting that will provide reasons for the various splats to work together with some power parity.

In light of the quality of recent WW books, I expect TCC to make crossover arguments even worse, but maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised.

Well I mean crossover has always been popular for some reason, but beyond maybe using another splat as antagonists I don't really understand why. It's never worked well, and it's often difficult enough to get the players to all have characters that have meaningful reasons to interact in a non-hostile manner in WoD even when everyone is from the same game line.

Crossover in nWoD ironically works well mechanically speaking. It's just the gaping disparity of balance that's the issue.

No, the core theme of Mage is that actions have no consequences and that mages are simply Better Than You.

Lets remember that REQUIRING mages to flavor their attacks as heart attacks and strokes rather than fireballs, is viewed as a "balancing element."

The meme that paradox is some kind of balancing element is retarded, since in oMage, you have to PURPOSEFULLY fuck yourself over to give yourself paradox (except in the Astral hell realms and a few other limited situations). There's a further meme that "when your back is to the wall, then its time to cut loose, paradox be damned!" and paradox is treated as some kind of balancing factor to "keep mages in check," despite that Final Destinationing your problems away is inherently more devastating (and doing so with lower spheres rather than higher ones is more likely to succeed) and safer to use than "cutting loose with the vulgar magick xD."

Like it or not, 2e Awakening paradox is the best incarnation of paradox to date. It has:
1. Obvious magic use in front of normies is punished
2. Technomagic, on the other hand, is fine (it doesn't have to be convincing, just not blatantly impossible and obviously supernatural -- whereas Technocrat procedures can draw paradox even if they don't seem magical)
3. Paradox primarily stems from the harder you push yourself on a spell.

Well one of the benefits of White Wolf's whole "Gee WotC why does your mom let you have three core books" philosophy in 1e nWoD is that it at least got everything onto a common rule set rather than on superficially similar rule sets built for each game. Shame about the whole five clades and five factions for each supernatural, regardless of the thematic needs of that particular game thing.

I just don't get the continued fascination from oWoD's early days to now with forming some sort of supernatural super group representing everything at once and I feel like the games would be worse off balanced towards that rather than balanced against their own internal divisions.

No. They wanted setting coherence. And since it's bad form to outright ignore the other games in a crossover section, they opted for the second-best thing of showing that mages aren't all powerful.

Freeform rules meant to cover every conceivable mystic practice are a pie in the sky promise. No surprise at all that it falls apart utterly even with an entire book's worth of patching.

You can't use spheres to take away the mythic threads of a mystically-empowered monster. So, no matter what, they remain a monster.

It's less that the consumers want it and more that ParaWolf is pushing their "One WoD" idea on everyone.

Nah, Dave loves supremacy talk and is very adamant that the story of nwod is "you like stories? here's a story. mage wins"

The only element of mage supremacy he eschews is that mages are omniscient, because he actually gets how Mysteries work. He should, he wrote them.

But Dave is unquestionably a supremacist fag -- not merely that mages are better, but is adamant that they always win.

They did.

>A bloo bloo bloo! How dare something be able to resist my power over creation!

Magefags are the worst and oWoD crossovers are terrible endeavours that just end in supernatural dickwaving contests.

If you ever get the inking to crossover, just play Chronicles instead.

WoD (old and new) is only similar to RL in the most superficial sense.

WoD is to RL Earth what a Cover is to an actual human being -- a superficial P-zombie version of itself.

It is a schizophrenic conspiracy theorist's nightmare come to life. Anyone from Earth would rapidly tell the difference.

Oh please. Vampfags are the constant whiners that manage to tarnish threads going on for weeks.

How does it feel knowing that OPP caught on and bumped Vampire down to trash tier?

Vitae isn't "blood," its the distilled essence of life force that usually uses blood as a conducting medium.

>A mage's foreign magics gives no shits about that.

By all canon you're wrong.

>If the mage wanted to have the vampire retain its consciousness then Mind would be a conjunctive Sphere

That has never been the case. Mages don't Gilgul themselves the moment they shapeshift either.

Silence yourself lest he add Spirit 4 and Mind 4 as a conjunctional requirement of all shapeshifting.

Amazing how much the topic lawn chairs can trigger Masqueraders

>A vampire whose been turned into a chair is a chair is a chair is a chair, and should be treated as having experienced Final Death.

Strictly a houserule, reflected nowhere.