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

That level of intimacy is a bit much for me to stand, even if its with my wife.

You mean like one on one games?
For the most part the various story teller systems seem to be built with the idea that members of the same party fill different roles, as opposed to other systems that are all based around one thing. So one guy is the social vampire/werewolf/whatever and another is the combat, information gathering, spy, so on. One player is only really going to be good at one thing

I don't really like one on one RP in general, not really anything to do with WoD/CofD.

greentext story time

>Be me
>Play vampire the masquerade the first time, seems cool
>Continue on, steadily start to notice dislike between my character and the other characters in the party
>still seems cool though
>~some time later~
>Catch a character betraying me red handed, unable to do anything because character simply not powerful enough, period, so let it slide even though it makes my game a lot harder
>~later later later~
>Make certain character who betrayed me dies by simply doing nothing, then killing his killer by shooting them in the back of the head
>Everyone, even the storyteller, mad at me
>"user if you feel so much hate and resentment that you're willing to let a character that was your only hope of survival in parts of the future storyline die by simply doing nothing, we don't want you here. Pack up your character and go home. Retcon, (other_person), you aren't dead."

Was I the that guy? I thought vampires regularly betrayed each other on the nightly pretty much.

>Was I the that guy? I thought vampires regularly betrayed each other on the nightly pretty much.
Depends on what the betrayal was and how much it did screw you up

Nah. The ST is automatically a faggot for showing favoritism, especially because he started it.

While personally I envision vampires as being trustworthy amongst each other (if mostly due to that, realistically, I think vampires would mostly just interact with ones they are blood bonded, dominated, entranced/enthralled by, etc. etc.) brutal retaliation isn't a bad thing at all.

It made me get passed over for a hierarchy promotion, nothing to serious but severely frustrating and frankly it felt like bullying to me because my character was a good bit younger than the other guy's character (but not so young he shouldn't have been in the hierarchy yet).

I later learned that what storyteller meant by 'your only hope of survival' was because there was no way (period) my character would have survived what was coming, they just weren't powerful enough, period.

>It made me get passed over for a hierarchy promotion, nothing to serious but severely frustrating and frankly it felt like bullying
That's honestly standard vampire practice, they're manipulative and scheming bastards; yes it sucks to be bullied by older vampires, but realistically if the vampire you let die was older than yours, had a heigher standing in Camarilla/appropriate sect and had contacts (which seems to be the case) his Final Death would be investigated, eventually they'd learn what had transpired and you'd be blamed for complicity, being ostracized or even Final Death isn't a far-fetched outcome. You'd have been left in a much greater position if you saved this guy's life and then contested a valuable boon in the court (which you could even screw him up with in return for what he did to you), prestation is taken seriously.

>I later learned that what storyteller meant by 'your only hope of survival' was because there was no way (period) my character would have survived what was coming, they just weren't powerful enough, period.
Yes, the Storyteller is a faggot for showing favoritism and making convoluted scenarios where you cannot survive, but honestly letting the consequences of what you did play out (final death vs political undermining - which is a somewhat acceptable practice), it'd mean the end of your character regardless

If you didn't know that then you can't be blamed for acting accordingly. Sounds like the ST is just a biased fag who's pulling excuses out of their ass desu.

>"Y-YOU WOULDN'T EVEN HAVE SURVIVED HOW DARE YOU NOT PSYCHICALLY READ MY NOTES AND NPC SHEETS AND THEN EMPLOY THEM VIA METAGAMING BAKA user IF YOU AREN'T WILLING TO BLINDLY FOLLOW THE GROUP ON THE RAILS I SET THEN GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE WE'LL RESURRECT THE OTHER PLAYER NOW SINCE WE DON'T LIKE CONSEQUENCES IN OUR GAMES"

There is definitely no reason to not allow a vampire to die that selfishly abuses you in such a fashion, especially if its much stronger.

There's probably a 0% chance they'd find out unless there were witnesses. At best, they might find out there's a combat situation.

>it'd mean the end of your character regardless

The Camarilla has no means by which they could tell apart the consequences of him hesitating vs him not hesitating.

I think he did the right thing.

Perhaps vampire the masquerade isn't the right game for me then, being bullied, by anyone, makes me hate the fuck out of them.

At that point I kind of felt like final death is absolutely unavoidable, whats the point of even doing this, if you understand me.

I knew saving his life would have helped me out but I just didn't really care at that point. Really what I wanted to do is boil him alive and pull his arms and legs off with big hooks or some other grotesque medieval torture that even a vampire wouldn't easily survive.

I got the feeling at that time that I hadn't been wanted there for some time already so as you can imagine.

Pretty much this. You should have stayed just so they can retcon his death but not yours and you can laugh in their face about how butthurt they are over ICC -> ICA

Nah, I said you did the right thing. Killing people for bullying you is perfectly reasonable vampire behavior.

If a vampire acts obviously untrustworthy/cruel to you, and outranks you or is a rival, then arranging for an accident is essentially mandatory, imo. The problem would only get worse with time.

It seemed like a game where you have to smile at your enemies and make certain they never even find out they're your enemies until they're getting surprise decapitated by the chop squad.

And I didn't ~exactly~ kill him, I just didn't do anything while he got killed.

I'm torn, I like that sort of game, but I get unbearably paranoid to the point that I don't trust anyone, not even my own group's player-characters, pretty much ever, and as you can imagine, that gets somewhat unendurable after a while.

>There's probably a 0% chance they'd find out unless there were witnesses. At best, they might find out there's a combat situation.
Not really, if the vampire he got killed by being complicit mattered enough all that's needed is for Camarilla to get a Tremere involved, there are several failproof ways for them to learn what transpired there.

Hell, even Auspex 2 could be used to learn the name of user's character if he was careless enough as not to dig for the bullet he shot the killer with

>The Camarilla has no means by which they could tell apart the consequences of him hesitating vs him not hesitating.
Yes they do? After learning the identity of the people in the scene all of them get interrogated, if he's on the spot Dominate/Presence can even be used to make him spit it all out

I'm not really sure how I would have cleaned up the scene without a big fire or something similar, I blew the guy's head more than halfway off in a shotgun blast.

If there are no witnesses then at most, they could find out he was there and that he avenged his death.

I don't know wtf a Tremere would do.

I suppose I would allow a very carefully worded Dominate to reveal the truth. NPCs definitely would trip over it, and PCs would have to metagame to figure it out.

Overall, "the party fought an enemy and there were casualties" doesn't strike me as suspicious. As an ST I would be more suspicious of the players trying to argue it.

I think it's good to be somewhat paranoid of your own team. However, I have to say, I've rarely had to worry about that IG. My groups have always cleaved to their own pretty staunchly.

I've had like two games where Cabals/Coteries/whatever didn't have a unified front.

I really like doing seekings, harrowings, gift quests and the like 1 on 1. But being responsible for even 2 other party members amongst the rest of the Npcs is super tiring mentally.

When you say 'very carefully worded' do you mean 'so carefully worded its obvious you're meta-gaming'?

Yeah. I only envision that sort of thing happening if the player whose PC was killed, is playing a justicar coincidentally trying to investigate his death.

There are a lot of things to be considered; did anyone else know the vampire user got killed by complicity had screwed him over not too long before? Other vampires are attentive and keep track of the political picture. How suspicious is it that he ended up dead after screwing him over...

Auspex can reveal the emotions quite easily, other than that usually interrogators are quite experienced at detecting bullshit, does user have sufficient manipulation/subterfuge to lie convincingly enough and beat the contested roll without raising any suspicion? Can he keep his cool despite being a young vampire?

I feel like I could be really good at this game, if I didn't hate everyone and feel so unbearably suspicious of everyone that I'm willing to kill my own player-group's characters on-spot if given sufficient evidence.

Unfortunately a lot of my early experiences with the game are 'you get tricked and fucked over relentlessly until you explode and have a that guy moment', so it's hard.

The only time it happened where it wasn't clear who was being the that guy is the time I explained, but there have been other times when I'm in doubt over who exactly was the that guy.

Like one time I couldn't figure out if a girl was my enemy or not and it kept innocuously seeming that way so I just final death'd her regardless.

I think part of the problem is that lately when I say 'hey I'm new-ish to this system' people take it to mean 'great! an opportunity to fuck with someone until they explode!' and then do that.

Other vampires considered me a ruthless low humanity beast.

Did anyone know the guy you got killed had screwed him over not too long ago?

Doesn't the Blase merit beat all of that?

Newbie questions from a guy or two looking to get into this

1. Should I start with masquerade or requiem
2. How would I involve other games
3. How overpowered are mages really
4. Could I use another game system instead
5. Are online sessions viable

does anyone have a download for the Lasombra and Tremere Clan Novel trilogies pretty please?

Possibly, but originally I was planning on killing literally all of them anyway, so I'm not sure they would have been able to help me. All the player-characters I mean. I was planning on wiping out both sides during the next big fight in a big explosion and then sneaking off home.

I've had two kinds of trouble in WoD games:

1) Large games (chats, MUs) where admins are biased against me and my team, and

2) Other teams having a beef with us and having some real moves to make (entirely reasonable on their part)

When I believe 1) is the case I make a point to troll the game itself and create as much drama as possible just to be a pain in the ass.

Do you have any advice for technocrat or more technically minded Traditionalist (Sons of Ehter+Virtual Adept) seekings?

I'm planning to start everyone with a free point or two of arete and want to go over their awakening and a seeking or 2 with them before the game starts for the newer players. I'm just having trouble coming up with/finding good inspirational material for Scientific 'spirit quests'.

Those large games are just horrible. I've been told point blank by admins 'you're a white male, we don't want you here'.

I've also had my rolls stunted with no explanation because I was fighting a mod's PC.

First off, mods shouldn't have PCs, nor should admins, second off, how bullshit is that?

>1. Should I start with masquerade or requiem

Requiem. Starting with Masquerade today would be like installing Windows XP; sure, XP users still insist it's just fine, but it isn't.

>2. How would I involve other games
Huh?

>3. How overpowered are mages really
Very if you know the rules, but it takes a long time and a lot of autism to get there.

>4. Could I use another game system instead
Yes.

>5. Are online sessions viable
As viable as with any other tabletop RPG

>I've been told point blank by admins 'you're a white male, we don't want you here'.

Which large games, and when?

That's been so far back I don't even remember. It was some Mu*-net type command-line game in the vampire the masquerade category.

The Reach? Cajun Nights? Fallcoast?

Also, which admin? Inquiring minds want to know.

I think it was Cajun nights, actually, it may have been the reach, though.

Again this was years back, when I was first getting even interested in VtM, though I didn't play an actual PnP version of VtM until this year.

How long has the FUCKING WHITE MALE shit been going on for?

>Try to enter a game organized by a minority group to only be available to them.
>Be surprised when they won't let your honky ass in.

Just find another game.

Listen, if I have to bake your faggot cake, then the least you can do is let me into your Internet pretendy fun time games. Fair is fair.

>Comparing anti-discrimination business laws to being able to participate in a fun game someone organizes.

Sure, as soon as you are fine with gay men being able to visit your house unannounced to have gay sex on your furniture.

That shit's been going on since before you or I or anyone in this thread was born.

>be a dipshit minority
>get 'discriminated against'
>scream racism and instantly get the world presented to you on a silver platter

>be white
>get actually discriminated against
>"lol fuck you cracker"

Sad if true.

fuck you cracker

Don't you have some domestic terrorism to perform?

It's okay to be white.

>mfw Thaumaturgy can let you completely nullify a particular Sphere of a mage

No mind of any mage is truly safe. Isn't Thaumaturgy great?

No one here is talking about White people, we are talking about crackers. There is a difference.

What book is that from?

Knee-grow please shut up. You'd be screaming in rage and torching your neighborhood if you had to put up with 1/50th of the harassment and hostility I get from ungrateful shitbricks like you.

It's from the Tremere Clanbook 1E

Its so weird how most of the non-mage books (and even the mage books themselves) treat nearly every situation like its being approached with hermetic magic.

>Oh no, someone won't let me play in their online game, or asked me not to join their social club, woe is me. Sometimes they even look at me like the racist cracker that I am!

Eat shit

1. Masquerade. Requiem is a loreless husk of Masquerade and Masquerade got a 20th Anniversary Edition. At most just use Requiem's superior mechanics and Masquerade's actual lore via the translation guide.
2. Depends. I'd recommend keeping it mostly Vampire focused if you're DMing, especially if it's your first time, but you could allude to the existence of other supernaturals or include them in minor ways. For example, Kindred stay the fuck out of forests because they know the Werewolves lurk there and'll kill them on sight in most cases, so you could have them show up as mook/boss NPCs if PCs are dumb enough to go wandering around alone on their own in the woods despite cautionary tales. Also worth noting is that V20 has stats for using the other supernaturals with Masquerade-only rules, so if you want to employ them then using those sample stats would probably be the simplest way to do it the first time around.
3. They're all reality warpers and at high levels can easily buttfuck other supernaturals. If you get the jump on them and they don't have prep time though then it's a different story.
4. Sure. Most of the old White Wolf games got GURPS versions, so if you don't wanna use V20 or the CofD rules then you can look to that. But that'd only work if you wanna do Masquerade -- if you wanna do Requiem in GURPS for some reason then you're on your own when it comes to translating it.
5. Sure. Roll20 has WoD sheets and Mr. Gone has a site where you can download interactive PDF character sheets for both oWoD (Masquerade) and CofD (Requiem).
mrgone.rocksolidshells.com/

Are there any large-scale online WoD games that actually care about your race, though? I can't think of any.

It's still okay to be white.

In what way is the Path of Magical Resistance treating the situation like it's being approached with hermetic magic, other than it being in a book about of Tremere and their flavor of Thaumaturgy?

Any game that's being run by far left sjws is going to disadvantage white male players.

Its one thing when it's directly stated that this isn't for you whitey, its quite enough when you don't find that out until you're already in the game.

Does Masquerade have a translation guide like Ascension does?

It implies that they can do something about all uses of magick, but completely ignores the fact that Technocrats even by the rules don't typically 'cast' anything.

The sad part is that some people actually believe this.

You trying to say that overt hatred against whitey for being white doesn't exist?

I experience it daily asshole. Shut up and go home.

Of course they cast spells. The only people they fool is themselves (and ignorant sleepers). Vamps and even umbrood don't care about your silly paradigm.

Wait a minute, I thought that vamps didn't really have a soul, and that soul was needed to use magic.

I can't remember exactly what I read but it seemed wishy-washy on this point of whether souls are necessary to magic and whether vampires are doing actual magic (as opposed to abilities which simply appear to be magic).

>You trying to say that overt hatred against whitey for being white doesn't exist?
No, I'm saying that
>Any game that's being run by far left sjws is going to disadvantage white male players
is the same group think nonsense that you decry.
>I experience it daily
As does everyone. The difference is unless you are in a country that is not run by Caucasians, it will not affect your success or your ability to climb the social ladder.
I can call you a redneck, whitebread, chickenshit cracker all day, but at the end, it's just insults. It won't affect your life in the long scale unless I have something over you that allows me to put that belief into action.

You forgot that you attack people (and by people I mean whites, I.E. actual human beings) 10 fuckheads deep and rape and murder white women and children by the hundreds daily.

So no, it isn't just insults. If you hate whitey so much you can't bear the sight or sound of one, how about you just fuck off and go home?

It's still okay to be white.

They don't though. They use precast effects in devices that work even for mortals quite often. Which is why that paragraph is dumb. Using a cellphone is a Correspondence effect accepted by the masses. By your theory you could counter spell a cellphone.

That's not very good, all things considered. The Spheres can largely do the same and more.

Awakened magic is not the only kind of magic.

I think you need to stop being so mad on the internet.
Grab some tea, smoke a good cigar, and rather than be so concerned about others, make yourself better.

Hard to take this bait seriously when the exact same paragraph gives vampires the ability to use the Spheres...

By RAW you only need a single dot of Mind to counter Presence per Revised. It's largely the same in M20.

You keep posting shit like this. I'm convinced your self esteem has successfully been bent over and fucked up the ass by the multitudes of magefags lurking in the general. Are you really so anal about this? Jesus.

What's the highest level of Thaumaturgy a starting character can have?

Thaumaturgy and other forms of blood sorcery explicitly aren't True Magick™. If you had to compare them then I suppose a good way of looking at it would be viewing it as magick's corpse -- it's what happens when you butcher flexible potential in the name of purer, safer power. Prior magickal understanding fuels it in some ways since vitae is simply another form of Quintessence, but in the end they're distinctly different and the power of blood sorcery is the power of the Curse of Caine, not the power of the individual and their Avatar.

>They don't though.

Of course they do. To a vampire with auspex and thaum, a Technocrat is obviously a wizard, probably a Malkavian equivalent.

>They use precast effects in devices that work even for mortals quite often.

Their *talisman* equivalents do. But for the most part, they just use a focus to cast a spell. They pretend by the fact that they use google glasses they are even 1% less wizardlike.

Now, a Tremere may not THINK to try on a very mundane looking NWO agent, but Tremere are in no way mages and are not limited by paradigm.

>By your theory you could counter spell a cellphone.

You could counter spell a cellphone being used to fireball (uh sorry, thermal sphere) someone through the internet or matrixport.

If you minmax then by taking all Flaws, no Merits, and investing your three free Discipline dots all into Thaumaturgy then you can have Thaumaturgy at 5 and 8 freebies left. So you can have Thaumaturgy 5 and one other Discipline dot, but given Thaumaturgy's main power is in its flexibility you'll be missing out since you'll only have maxed one Path (your main Path) that way.

5, 6 in da perhaps, even more in Elysium

Whoops. Meant for

You're forgetting freebies aren't you? Couldn't you just spend your three free Discipline dots to get Thaum 3, then spend 14 out of 15 freebies to get Thaum 5?

John Paul Foster - kidnapped Christmas night, sexually molested, penis cut off, and tortured to death with a blow torch, perp was a black woman who stated she hated whites and Christmas in her guilty plea. John Paul Foster was 6 years old.

Shorty Belton - decorated 90 year old vet, beaten to death by two black crack dealers with hammers and wrenches. They stole 39 cents from his wallet.

Christopher and Shannon Newsome - Kidnapped, raped, tortured, burned, raped some more, beaten with sticks stones and hammers, dismembered, burned in a garbage pile. Because their car broke down in 'the hood'.

You trying to tell me this doesn't merit anger?

Sounds to me like it's you who's the racist homey o sapien.

If you're okay with people being systematically tortured for days and then simply murdered, you're a fucking psychopath, period.

>a good way of looking at it would be viewing it as magick's corpse

Alternately, the difference between James Bond and an elder with literally just Athletics 9, Brawl 9 and Potence 9.

>You trying to tell me this doesn't merit anger?
No, it means you are looking for something to be angry about. Bad shit happens to people by other people every day, all over the world.
>also, why are you assuming I'm black?

>Vitae is a form of Quintessance
>Quintessance is a derivative of the Prime
>Avatars are essentially hyper-concentrated shards of Prime
>tfw you realize its theoretically possible to use Thaumaturgy 10 and endless seas of blood to build yourself an Avatar to ride back to the One.

I call it the Long Way Home.

You're the one who said 'fuck you cracker' in one of your first posts, bucky.

Repentance is a form of ass kissing, it's insincere when given freely and a lie when it's forced, you'll get none from me.

>not limited by paradigm
Only to an extent. I wouldn't let them counterspell a phone or a radio but I'd probably let them counterspell hedge magic despite those two being basically the same thing from a metaphysical perspective.

You are making one of those classic newfag mistakes of assuming you are talking to a single person, all the time.
My first post was , and it took poster count from 15 to 16.
Like I said, u mad, brah, chill the fuck out.

Considering even Antediluvians have ??? blood pools and can spend ??? points per turn, and that they feed by devouring entire cities it truly makes one wonder just how much "quintessence" in the form of blood they have avaliable

>Quintessence is the raw material of reality. It is what flows through the patterns of reality and what makes magic possible. The primal force, quintessence can not truly be divided, measured or contained. The patterns of all supernaturals, mortals, inanimate objects, and the whole of the Tellurian is woven from Quintessence.

I don't understand. By RAW this means I could end literally anything using Prime... Even more abstract things. Even other magics.

Nah, I'd rather some real actual justice be done on the subhumans who do this shit daily.

No, I'm remembering them. That's why I mentioned minmaxing with Flaws.

>Vampires get 15 points of Freebies in V20
>Can take up to 7 points of Flaws which add Freebies at 1:1 rate
>15 + 7 = 22
>Invest 3 Discipline dots in Thaumaturgy
>Spend 7 Freebies for Thaumaturgy 4
>22 - 7 = 15
>Spend 7 more Freebies for Thaumaturgy 5
>15 - 7 = 8
>"If you minmax then by taking all Flaws, no Merits, and investing your three free Discipline dots all into Thaumaturgy then you can have Thaumaturgy at 5 and 8 freebies left. So you can have Thaumaturgy 5 and one other Discipline dot."

You are correct. With high enough rankings in Prime you can literally unmake things.