Cardgame Edition.>Previous Thread>>94572864>Pastebinhttps://pastebin.com/WiCHizn0 (embed)>Mediafirehttps://mediafire.com/folder/s9esc6u7ke8k5/CofD>Mega Ihttps://mega.nz/folder/ePQ1BKhJ#RCosRCh59Ki2Mpb1M9H3Uw>Mega II (also containing fanmade games)https://mega.nz/folder/ZbQ2zLJA#DOT-3df6rS2lLet4_RmqJQ>WoD5 Megahttps://mega.nz/folder/7rQQ1LbQ#16_AiXVGo0P3_rVOJuoZyA>STV content foldershttps://pastebin.com/9i9zhydQ (embed) (embed)>General Creation Kithttps://mega.nz/#F!FWJgBTbb!f7d5rARWHYzuI8-8aI-Bxw>Ideas: BJ Zanzibar's WoDhttp://167.99.155.149/>Anders Mage Pagehttp://mage.gearsonline.net/anders/>White Wolf Wiki:https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page>Thread QuestionWhat is your favourite boardgame/cardgame related to WoD and why?
>>94589670never played WoD/CofD but I've heard the game attracts sex pests, freaks and other degens because of mostly the game is about players playing as vampires and that in itself attracts those kind of shitters.My question stands as: how do I find a group that is made of functionally normal people that play the game NOT for the fetish aspect of it>implyingyes i am.
>>94589772>how do I find a group that is made of functionally normal people that play the game NOT for the fetish aspect of it>in any TTRPGYou don't.
>>94589772Just play Mage or Werewolf? Or play the chronicle as a hyper unfuckable Nossie
>>94589772>how do I find a groupI suppose the obvious question is, how do you not have a group already? Do you have no friends?
>>94589772honestly i wouldn't play with wod with stranger so what the guy above me said
>>94589772Befriend the normies first and introduce 'em to the game through your terms later. This used to be the norm before the Internet became a thing. >>94589802>Do you have no friends?lelz
>TQ>What is your favourite boardgame/cardgame related to WoD and why?I never played any.But what I find fascinating about it is that every single piece of adjacent ludomedia in the franchise implies that you're supposed to play with the World of Darkness to "win" and that "win" means political power and the neutralisation of one's enemies. And then people bitch that the TTRPG isn't Social Dungeons And Dragons, that it's some shit about exploring the emotional range of your characters and bla bla bla.Putting Theatre Kids in charge of the franchise was a Mistake.
I'm reading through the Outcasts book, and in the Caitiff section near they end they mention that Caitiff, and potentially clan vampires, devolve into animalistic monsters if cut off from humanity for too long. The example given there was a vampire turning into a slug-like creature almost unrecognizable from its previous human form. What do you think of this? Is anything like this mentioned anywhere else in vampire canon?
>>94589802of course i dont have friends, what year do you think this is? 2001?
>>94589832The only way I accept playing any World of Darkness game with strangers is if I'm STing. Misbehave or act like a bitch and it's /kick /ban and everyone moves on with their lives.The only time I was a player in a group of strangers ended up in disaster. I got kicked out of the group on session 2 because some bitch with pink hair and custom pronouns said she didn't felt "safe" around a "CIS gendered male". We were playing V5. I took that as a compliment and didn't fought twice about it ever again.
>>94589971>We were playing V5.
>>94589928Can you upload the page where this info is from? I skimmed through the Caitiff chapter of the book and didn't spot that part.
>>94590019Not just V5 but the first time I was playing the damn thing. I got mad, called over my friends - my old group from high school - and set up a game for ourselves. We played three sessions and collectively decided we wouldn't play anything 5th edition even if people paid us all the tea in China.I imagine the shitshow it'd have been if we had tried W5.
>>94589971Please, tell us in detail about that.
>>94590034I didn't even got to interact in game with her character. I noticed I would crack my usual Dad jokes and the only one that wouldn't laugh was her. The ST was a friend of mine, said I probably intimidated the other players on the account of being a Veteran. I know bullshit when I see it lol so I didn't bought that excuse and dug a big further and voi la. There's always someone that will rat lol those people are all like that.
>>94589772My friends and I started up a game of VtM last week. I wanted a 4th player so grabbed one from a gamefinder thread. So far? Good dude and I like him. Just find people and try. Sometimes it'll work out. Sometimes it won't.
>>94590052>ST friend of yours ditching you for generic alt girlTell me at least he's eating that pussy.
>>94590061The ST was a girl.
>>94589928I thought I remembered that being from Time of Thin Blood. Although I'm remembering the same slug-thing so I guess not.Anyway I figured that to be a result of a thinblood's ability to (albeit usually unconsciously) control and alter the blood. So some thinbloods create disciplines, some gain strange weaknesses based on what they THINK a vampire should be weak to, and some degenerate mentally and mutate into fucked up things.
>>94589971>>94590064>V5>pink hair and custom pronouns>ST was a girl.It just keeps getting worse.
>>94590088Nice dubs.Everything makes sense when you learn that I thought the ST was hot. That day I relearned a lesson I had forgotten.
>>94590101What lesson?
>>94590101Fucking GodMachine keeping us here with the crazy woke people.
>>94590107Never join a long-term activity over a fling. It seems alright because it's an RPG game, but suppose it was a Pilates class or some other shit like that and it will make more sense. I disrespected my Saiyan Pride and I paid the price for it. The other lesson was that you pick-up girls at bars like a normal fucking person, not at your local RPG community. I always kept to that rule, on the account of having a friend that didn't and his life was an eternal disaster because of it, and I regret the two times I broke it to this day. Hopefully the third time is indeed the charm.
Do players on your table really get freaky with each other?
>>94590199Minds Eye Theater, the VtM larp from the 90s, was absolutely about fat nerds drinking wine and getting laid. Hands down, that was the game. Was fun.
>>94590208Any cool story to share, anon?
>>94590219Nope--just creepy weird ones. I was a teenager in the 90s, hanging out with ren faire people drinking wine and pretending to be vampires.
>>94590236>just creepy weird onesGo on ...
>>94590240It's not very exciting, anon. Drunk teenager fucks chubby twenty-something while blasted on cheap red wine.
>>94590101>>94590152It's just weird your ST was your friend, you did dad jokes all around (which these jokes are pretty harmless and based on puns), everyone laughed except this player. You never interacted in-game with their character either.Then instead of coming to your defense when that player complained "I don't feel safe around cis man", she decide that player was right.Like, what the fuck? Doesn't make sense at all.
>>94590262>Guy explains how he did nothing wrong and women got freaked out by itWow it's almost as if hearing only one side of the story presents a biased perspective.
>>94590262The other players were also friends with the ST.>>94590268I pressed one of the other players about it because the whole thing was weird and thats when the "pinkyplayer didn't like you and bitched about not feeling safe around a CISgendered hetero male" came out. I think the ST just decided to Not Get Into Trouble because she knew I wasn't gonna make a big deal about it and the other player probably would. Their whole group only played to sessions after that, which is why I came to this conclusion.I didn't made a big deal about it but I got super mad lol hence the setting up my own group to check out V5 and whatnot.
>>94590318>>94590262>>94590268As for WHY the other player didn't like me, I am never going to find out for sure but my hypothesis is that when you put together the "pinky player didn't like you" and "the players were intimidated because you're a veteran", the real answer is probably "this particular player didn't like that someone else had bigger Protagonist Energy than her". My character was slightly older than the rest of the characters, had Ancillae status while the rest were Neonates, specifically because the ST asked me to take the lead, as the older player in the group. And to top it off, it was a Ventrue, too.I think this particular incident could've been avoided if everyone was together for session 0 instead of having things done asynchronously.I must also mention that the game was played online, not in person, with no cameras on, so that probably didn't help. To me the biggest loss was that my friendship with the ST never recovered and that I really liked the character I had built for that game, I really wanted to give the concept a try but I lost all interest on it after that.
>>94590374>>94590318We don't have the other side of the story because you don't have the other side of the story. It's pointless to continue talking about and no one cares.
>>94590374>My character was slightly older than the rest of the characters, had Ancillae status while the rest were Neonates, specifically because the ST asked me to take the lead, as the older player in the group. And to top it off, it was a Ventrue, too.I played a "slightly experienced character" once in a MtAw game. It was a nice game and everyone was in for this ride. I don't think session 0 would help 'cause this seems more a person's behavour rather than a gaming issue like you said.
>>94590404>You don't have the other side of the storyEeeeh, I have three sides of the story, I'm just missing one, but good on your for white knighting for a girl you don't even know. >>94590416I think its a group dynamics thing, like you mentioned, but that could've been potentially solved by a little bit of calibration on the expectations side. I don't mind taking a backseat and playing a supporting role, I just did what I was asked to do. If I had noticed one of the players wanted to take centre stage, man, I'm all for it. So long as everyone is having their fun, I'm happy.
>>94589928That's a wight. When vampires hit zero humanity they essentially turn into freakish mindless monsters acting on pure instinct utterly consumed by the Beast in a perma frenzy
>>94589670>What is your favourite boardgame/cardgame related to WoD and why?I just think it's existence is funny
>>94590585I wonder how much a deck of this thing costs nowadays.
>>94590597125$+ shipping or something.
>>94590025It doesn't expand upon this at all, and there's no rules for it, just this bit at the end. >>94590068It feels like a spiritual predecessor at the very least. It also details caitiff developing their own disciplines and introduces the fangless flaw. >>94590461This seems wholly different from wights, and implies that it's a unique thing to caitiff. A wight usually doesn't devolve into a straight creature, usually they're just vampires that are bestial.
>>94590618That sounds like a Gangrel who raged too often. Veronica might have been a social Caitiff but not truly Clanless. It's not like White Wolf hasn't put deliberately misleading information into its other books.
>>94590618>Character disappears innawoods>Later found as a weird slimy thingSeems to me the character had a run in with a Tzimisce. Or worse.
>>94590613Expensive but it wouldn't be the most expensive or the most stupid piece of World of Darkness memorabilia in my collection.But its the type of stuff you only buy when you find someone selling it for a lot less than the online shelf price. Thanks Anon.
>>94590618If Cainites suffered from physical degradation from staying away from humans, Caine would've turned into a big ass worm before the founding of the First City.
>>94590682That just happens to shitbloods.
>>94590421>Eeeeh, I have three sides of the story, I'm just missing one, but good on your for white knighting for a girl you don't even know.You have one side: yours. It's not white-knighting to assume that if a dude on 4chan got accused of being creepy, it's 'cuz his ass was bein' creepy. That's just the law of averages, anon.
>>94590618To be honest, it just sounds like a Caitiff Wight with a lot of Physical Flaws and Merits. I like the idea of vampires being capable of mutating with Protean but this seems a bit jank or in universe propaganda.
>>94590738>You have one side: yours. I have feedback from two other people, that makes it three, retard.>not white-knighting to assume that if a dude on 4chan got accused of being creepy,Projection much? You're on 4chan too, retard.Fuck you and have a nice day.
>>94590762A very convenient story too. Nobody's gonna go looking for Veronica no more.
>>94590682In my opinion at this point Caine has a 50/50 shot of being an eldritch horror or just a dudeTzimisce had to have gotten it from somewhere
any ideas for a interesting angle for owl shifters? beside just smart guys
>>94590865>any ideas for a interesting angle for owl shifters?Steal stuff from the Silent Stiders and give them a ''marked for death'' gift because of their assosiations with omens of death.
>>94590208What are the chances Goymer and Karim have had sex as their characters?
>>94590199In my experience>My VtM players mostly got freaky with NPCs, unless it was LARP or Online play -then everyone tried to fuck everyone>WtA players were mostly in for the action with the exception of this one furfag>CtD players were either too autistic to even flirt with NPCs they were trying to seduce or too autistic to stop making sexual remarks. No inbetween>DtF players were mostly building NPC harems>HtR were probably the most normal>MtA have been mostly tame, except for my current players where one is actively trying to seduce the other two and mostly succeeding
>>94590618I guess it's a fun way to distinguish them from Caitiff: the mutability of their blood cuts both ways. Outside of zones of vampire consensus, they start degenerating into more alien monsters.
>>94590941>KarimThat's haram, isn't it?
>>94590853Tzimisce was a mortal shaman, right? I like to play with the idea he was possessed at some point. Maybe by one of the primordial banes the Black Spiral Dancers found under the earth?
>>94590974NTA, but is the whole Tzimisce metamorphosis related to the weird changes some shamans undergo during their magical awakening?
>>94590865They'd have a lot of overlap with Bastet, they're dark omens of death, night, magic, evil, etc. Consider the terms lilitu and striga. They could be the Bastet to the Corax's Garou.
>>94590968Not if Goymer is a "boy"
>>94590997I get strong cock blocker vibes from Karim. The guy who not only doesn't have fun, but who hates when others do.
>>94590982Never confirmed, the most they say about mortal Tzimisce is his trade. I like the idea that the most magical Aunties were touched by other night creatures.>Cappa was certainly a Mage, probably of a scholastic tradition>Tzimisce may have been a proto-Dreamspeaker>Zapathustra was fae-touched>Maybe Malkav too>Saulot may have been a magic healer, maybe mundane, maybe a linear healer to split the difference. That'd line up with his habit of stealing ideas for his clan, rather than picking his own direction
>>94591045Interesting. Some real world shamans tell some pretty crazy stories about being physically changed by spirits. It would work well with [Tzi]. >touched by other night creatures.L-lewd.
>>94590941Who's Goymer?
>>94590865corax are connected to celtic and nordic religion because of the morigan and odin's ravens so these guys could be greco roman because of the owl of athena and mineva so you can make them the guys who are to this day mad at the splats who are connected to the germanic tribes and perhaps the turksi would probably give them a mix of silent strider and black furry gifts and give them the ability to side step into the dark umbra
>>94591117Norwood VI+ guy who likes to roleplay as some gay Cappa, I mean "Hecata".
>>94591137Ah. The Supreme Gentleman Gamer.
>>94590618Wait, I know what that is. Thats a bloodworm. Veronica is a vampire who got possessed by a Bane and turned into a fomori. It is stupidly hard to arrange but possible.It's in Book of the Wyrm 20th.
>>94591155Gotta say at least the random people that lose their shit and start killing people in the USA got a major upgrade in the last 10 years. We went from super cringe to super based.
>>94591137Didn't knew Dawkins was into hairy legs. I thought his cocksucking was only metaphorical.
>>94591175well it works during a frenzy and a wright is in a total state of frenzy no?
>>94591184It's a classically American problem finally getting resolved:>Why am I so angry?>It must be the anonymous crowd of women/children/elderly's fault
>>94591212Yeah, that's a really niche reference since bloodworms don't come up that much.
>>94591208I think de Camden got fucked by Mithras or some shit like that.
>>94589802>Do you have no friends?anon check what site you are on
>>94589788Hunter and Mage are probably the least horny of the genre, but still very capable of being horny.>Or play the chronicle as a hyper unfuckable Nossie>unfuckableOh, my sweet summer child
Is there a place where I can look at ONLY the crunch of Mage the Ascension 1st ed or revised?Or at least a list of what pages to consult?
>>94591251I can find Nossies hot myself but like you can make some weird goblin looking assholes that are putrid shitholes.
>>94591396>you can make some weird goblin looking assholes that are putrid shitholesAnd then fuck them?
>>94590853Buckle up, this turned into a 4 part story.>1/4My longest-running Masquerade chronicle began when I was at the very ripe and mature age of 14 years. The plan was always to end with Gehenna, with Caine playing a pivotal role. Since I didn’t read the official Gehenna novel or End Times scenarios until the group went on its first hiatus, I forced myself to come up with my own take on the End of Times.Back then, I was heavy into my PlayStation One and borrowed a lot of ideas from games like Vagrant Story and Street Fighter Alpha 3. Specifically, I stole the concept of "The body is but a vessel for the soul" from Vagrant Story, and the idea of an army of backup bodies from M. Bison’s plot in Alpha 3.I envisioned Caine as the origin of all vampiric power, capable of doing anything his descendants could. Inspired by the (alleged) Malkavian Antediluvian’s ability to possess any of their descendants via the Madness Network, I gave Caine a similar power, but with a twist.The turning point that marked the transition from "We're playing a story about City Politics" to "We're playing a story about the End of Times" came when one of the PCs had their soul forcibly separated from their vampiric body, demonstrating that in this Chronicle, the soul was the true essence of conscient identity, not the body. I established that vampires were composed of several metaphysical components: their human soul (memories, conscience, personality), their Beast (the vampiric curse), and their body (a vessel). These could be split apart under the right circumstances. This split also matched the idea that your character sheet can be clearly divided by 3 in multiple points - not just in physical-social-mental but also the Header, the Attributes-Abilities-Advantages and the Splat specific stuff etc. >1/4
>>94590853Continuing from >>94591551>2/4Caine, in my version, wasn’t just One Guy anymore. Despite his capacity to live vicariously through his children if need be, he tired of his condition and wanted to experience True Life. Thus, he used a corrupted version of the Changeling Way Ritual to leave his original body behind and "reincarnate" in a baby’s body, aiming for a fresh start. While he successfully left behind the Mark of Caine and his Beast, the Curse persisted. This made him a Beastless "dhampir" (I called it a "Caineling") with all of his Disciplines and a reduced blood pool - fragile but still dangerous. To hide in plain sight, he took on the guise of a taxi driver in New York City (yes, that driver from Bloodlines). Meanwhile, his old body, abandoned in the Levant, became a vessel for The Beast itself. When a vampire frenzied, it wasn’t just losing control - they were briefly possessed by The Beast of Caine. The Caineling ritual took place somewhere in the 70's to match with the Lore that the Changelings came back after the Moon Landing 1969, so "Caine" would be an adult by 1991 when VTM came out, and nearing his 40s in 1999, which is around the time our Chronicle took place. This would explain any lore inconsistencies like "why did X thing worked differently many years ago" or "why does this contradicts the Book of Nod" etc. Anyway.The story ramped up when the PCs, searching for the lost body of their coterie member, found themselves in New York. During a failed raid to recover it, one PC was shot in the head with a Primium bullet. This bullet absorbed their vitae and expanded, dooming him. Desperate, the PC hailed a cab to watch their final sunrise by the Hudson.Unbeknownst to them, his driver was, you guessed it, mother fucking Caine. >2/4
Continuing from >>94591567>3/4See, the player of this particular PC had once shown up drunk to a session and derailed everything (the aforementioned raid), so I played up the tension, making the group think I was exacting narrative revenge. I'd fill his character's Health boxes with black ink from a ballpen one box at a time as I tortured the player in front of everyone, to make sure there was no coming back from that. By then I had access to my office's printer so I used to print brand new sheets for my players every time we played, so that didn't really meant much - I still have all the original ones in a thick black briefcase.Before sunrise, by the margins of the Hudson, contemplating his Unlife, the PC heard a voice offering a deal: surrender control of their body to live. This "voice" was Caine. The player agreed, and I ripped their character sheet in half in front of the group. Taking the player aside, I handed him another copy of his sheet with the only difference being the name that said "Shiva" instead of Fred (the charater's name). I told him to explain to the group that his new character “just happened” to resemble their old one, with all his memories etc, and to keep the other players thinking it was just a joke. In truth, was happened was quite complicated. Caine used a Dominte-based Metadiscipline to "copy" an instance of his mind, knowledge and personality to Fred's brain, which could take over whenever it felt like, and used a dark ritual to transfer his Curse into Fred, this creating "Shiva". The driver then removed the Primium bullet, patched him up, and dropped “Shiva” off in Manhattan to go back to the coterie. The rest of the group, unaware of all of this, assuming the new character was a gimmick to keep the player involved, just rolled with it. They thought the character's "death" was just my way of punishing the player for his drunk-ass shenanigans - the whole group was mad with him about it, so they didn't really see a problem.>3/4
>>94591175It is multi-splat book, so it wouldn't exactly be out of place for it. But I do think that the writers were trying to do something to make caitiff stand out more. I'll have to look at the authors for this book and see what else they've written. It happens all the time where a book introduces some really whack shit out of nowhere and it's because the writer has no real knowledge of the setting and was just hired on to shit out a book (looking at you True Black Hand). There's another interesting addition in the werewolf section of the book. More or less a path for your common Garou. It's supposed to be for Ronin specifically, but it's stated that any werewolf not regularly taking part in Garou ceremonies is at risk of corruption.
Continuing from >>94591578>4/4So, by this point, Caine had become three entities: the Driver (now just a regular human with no super powers), Shiva (his Curse), and his original body, now The Beast, all still linked to a degree to one another in Spirit, but remaining as separate entities.This chronicle started when I was 14, but by the end, when I was 25, we were playing only twice a year due to Life Happening. One of my players has since passed away, and another lives as a recluse due to illness. I’ve decided it’s best this story never truly ends.What I had planned was for the PCs to become central to Gehenna, either by being possessed by their clans’ Antediluvians or diablerising them. With several low-Humanity PCs, the finale was envisioned as an all-out brawl between them that triggered the End of the World. Picture multiple Antediluvians awakening in Times Square, throwing nuclear missiles at each other like javelins, as all Vampires succumbed to the Beast, and the Apocalypse unfolded.One final Big Kaboom for a group that loved Big Kabooms. The Heavens would disappear with a roar, the elements would be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it would be laid bare, as the Credits rolled. >4/4
>>94591567>To hide in plain sight, he took on the guise of a taxi driver in New York City (yes, that driver from Bloodlines).That takes place in LA.
>>94591673Yes, but Caine is cursed to Wander The Land. That was one of the aspects of his Curse that I wanted to play out in the chronicle, with the players going to the Levant to try and find Caine's original body etc and see if any of 'em realised that after Shiva showed up they never stuck around for long anywhere.
>>94591683Caine's curse is to wander on my dick
>>94591850
>>94591894Where's the book of Caine Nodding Off While I Give Him Backshots?
>>94591924On STV, available in a Pay-What-You-Want Model, duh.
>>94591929The Erciyes Fragments? The only Turkish fragments Caine knows about are from when some guy broke off his dick in his guts
>>94592000No, that one is $8.99 on DVTRPG.
>>94592031The First City? Caine invented the first Bath House.
>>94592056>Bath HouseThat’s rich coming from someone whose personal hygiene makes a Nosferatu look like a Toreador.
Irad?I rad Caine's prostate off a cliff, fucked him so hard.Enoch?He knocked out a tooth at the bottom of a k-hole.
>>94592056>>94592071Like, why do you think its called the DIRTY Secret of the Black Hand? None of this would happen if you showered every day, Anon. There's only so much Axe Body Spray will do.
>>94592112>>94592115Yeah that Hand is Black because of your constant wanking, Anon. Stop it before you go blind.
>>94592112Whatever, Pepe Julian Onziema.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4n4rBrs5-LY
>>94592112How did you circumvent the issue of Viagra only being invented relatively recently? Cuz with that limp dick of yours you ain't fooling nobody lol
>>94592115>Axe Body SprayI can't read this name without thinking about that old propaganda with the frog.Thanks for reading my blog.
>>94592192>that old propaganda with the frogDo you have a link?>my blogDo you have a link?2
>>94592203https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9ganw4kCK8
>>94592220Ah, the Love Is In The Air one. Classic.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXnGmUu5qCg
>>94592232Axe body spray is just presence in a can.
>>94589772Play it with your existing group
>>94589772You’ll be fine if you do a proper screening before allowing people into your group.
>>94592693>>94592489What would be a short litmus test one can make to find out if they're walking into a trap? Other than checking for Nose Rings and Neon Hair etc.
>>94589670Do the Sabbat use ghouls like the other sects do? I’m running V5 if that’s relevant.
>>94592736I generally have a short conversation with potential players where I ask what they played previously and what they enjoy in their games. This is a great way to look for red flags if you can read between the lines. I also ask them to read the chapter on character creation. This weeds out the lazy faggots. Honestly the only time I actually met a weirdo was when a literal tranny wanted to join. He skipped on us when I said I only believe that there are two genders.
>>94592770>He skipped on us when I said I only believe that there are two genders.
>>94592743Yes, even more in direct roles than the Camarilla
>>94592770There are only two genders - people that I'd put my dick into, and people that I wouldn't. Your body, my choice. This is a joke k, Nick Fuentes is an idiot
>>94591579i know it's not really what the game is about but i would have liked to have a "path" like this for weaver corruption and maybe even wyld overdosis too
>>94592770Well, I've met my share of problematic players before 2014 happened, so the whole nose ring/neon hair thing doesn't really help in those cases.
>>94589670Hey Anons, I'm going to run a solo campaign of promethean and I want to know if y'all have any cool concepts. I'm leaning toward a classic Frankenstein but idk all of them seem cool, also 2e btw.
>>94593158Solo as in you STing for yourself, or you STing for one person?
Out of the blue I've been asked if I'd run Under a Blood Red Moon to start 2025. Can't say I was expecting that. I really don't think I can make it in that time frame (so much to add and re-write to make it work if memory serves and I'm still procrastinating on new year's eve's one-shot). But then I don't want to say no either - not often that group of friends ask anything like that...Interesting times ahead. >TQRight now, by current play time, it's a tie.Jyhad. It's a great game - if a bit too... I guess I'll go with overwrought for its own good - that"s just so good at tying mechanic and lore. On that aspect, similar to Netrunner (though I think the later is Garfield's magnum opus). At five players it has a really great flow, I find, especially once people start to understand how to break the natural sequencing, not to mention the acceleration as players get ousted.Vendetta. Again I think pretty decent weaving of lore and mechanics, though obviously a lot simpler. A friend of mine dubbed it a "parlour* game for hardcore", and I think it fits. While it does have a statetegic/tactical element, I find the it of is seeing everyone's plans completely go off rails as even just one small misstep leads to cascading consequences. Very fun - and satisfying in those rare moment s the plan do pull through.*: best translatiion I can think of.
>>94593185Running it myself with AI
Mage the Ashitsion
>>94593312Werewolf the Apoopcalypse
Mummy
>>94593333Vampire The Merderade
>>94593372Mummy the Reeksecretion
>>94593392Changeling: The Creaming
Hunter the Rectuming
Demon: The Fart'em
Chronicles of Fagness
Wraith: The Obliviscous
Promethean: the Cooming
Orpheces
Geist: The Shit-Eaters
World of Dorkness
>>94593467Beat me to it. Mummy: The Turd
Werewolf: Toilet Forsaken
Vampire: The Reekin`em
Mage: The Awankening
So, any of you guys ever use Beasts as adversaries?I'm preparing to run a Mage game and think it's a good thing to keep in mind. They're very interesting as straight villains imo.
>>94593509Beast: The Peemudholesrsly did you interrupt our literal, actual shitposting to ask about fucking BEAST? :/
>>94593518Yes, I have a morbid fascination for that train wreck, probably because it has some good ideas.
>>94593524https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTv14Bib2z4
>>94593509They run into the under/over problem of outscaling things like vamps because their starting numbers are just pretty high (and they can isolate people) and getting facefucked by things like mages that can roll as many dice as they want.
>>94593826wow so funny and inventive
>>94593873There is a simple joy in playing the hits
>>94594291I understand the juvenile fascination with the Gamer Power Word, but "Stinky"?
If a group of supernaturals, regardless of splat, were to try to pull a heist on the Vatican, what kind of defenses would they have to deal with?
>>94594514Nunchuck wielding ninja losombras who quote Dan Brown
I want to turn a group of mummies into a group of recurring antagonists (they can come back from the dead, it would be perfect) but then I remember they made the amenti basically geolocked to the middle east + Egypt and there would be no reason to go to follow this specific pack of werewolves to the far off region of Wales.Now, either I send the pack to the middle east on a suicide mission or I completely fuck with the canon and now Caerns work as a separate web of faith (they are holy sites for werewolves) because of stuff the Dreamspeakers and Verbena are doing to try and make their own digital web on the back of moonbridges. This would give kinfolk a way to come back from the dead to fight again in the name of Gaia. But guess what, whilst the Garou are arguing about the spiritual laws this would break and actually making kinfolk immortal through death might create martyrs and we would prefer our kin alive yadda yadda the BSDs have hijacked the web to make Fomori-Mummies where the spirit bit inside is literally a bane, and they don't suffer from taint or a loss of autonomy like before. The BSDs even have a gift which both turns someone they kill into a wraith and said wraith is bound to them, so they would have a simple method to create the human spirit section of this wyrm-mummy.Thoughts, people? A bit too overblown?
>>94592799Thanks anon.
>>94594954Why don't you just make it so the mummies arrived in England in the 1800s when the British were literally stealing mummies to put in their museums or something? You could also just randomly have a mummy be in England seeing as in the lore of oWoD, Osiris, the first mummy, literally ran all the way to Britain to fight Mithras and LOST. Just have one of his body parts be in Britain and some mummies took the trek over to find them or the BSD found his penis and are using it for wyrm shit
>>94594954Two words. Bog mummies.
>>94593196Vendetta is indeed a good game. A friend bought it and we played for a whole afternoon. Pretty entertaining. Too bad there weren't any expansions featuring the rest of the Clans.
>>94595739Oh, right, completely forgot about those.Time to revive some ancient Fianna enemies and throw in some mysticism and shadowlands stuff.
Has anyone actually played Demon the Descent? There's so many plates you have to spin as a GM that I can't see how you're meant to actually run it as a game unless you straight up ignore things like alternate covers.
>>94595813I've played it as a player. Players can manage their own covers.
I'm playing Ascension Revised, the 2000 edition, and I gotta say, I'm not a fan. The CT rules from Awakening 2e are much tighter. The setting, I'm also kind of ambivalent on.
>>94595822But as a GM aren't you meant to be monitoring all their covers all the time for slip-ups, breaches etc?
>>94589772I tried to do this 10 years ago and met some of the worst people I have ever met in my life. From what I can see it's only gotten worse with the kinds of discord troons who make up the community since V5 came out.Choosing one of the older editions (V20 or nWoD/CofD) is the best early filtering you can do, beyond that anybody you can bullshit with who doesn't have some sort of obvious personality defect is probably the kind of person who won't use their character as a vehicle for their fetishes but those people are pretty rare for RPGs as a whole.In my own experience anybody who wants to play as the opposite gender is going to become a problem more than half the time. Stay away from couples they are always total degen freaks without exception.
>>94589670What is the darkest part of the World of Darkness?
>>94596167>Stay away from couples they are always total degen freaks without exception.For example?
>>94596206The first Vampire game I tried to ST for I was basically unknowingly feeding new victims to a fat polycule. I think there's something about the chance for weird autistic couples to create characters that are just a fiction-suit where they are cool and hot and the vampire thing is kind of an afterthought. When it's a couple they are either both feeding each other's worst roleplaying impulses (compulsive seduction of NPCs, elaborate BDSM shit around hunting/feeding) or only one person is into this and their partner is dragged along to a game that benefits immensely from high level RP and putting everybody off. It's hard to blame them under the circumstances but it's so fucking common I personally want no part of that.
>>94594954bane mummies don't interact with the web of faith so they aren't region locked but they are too few (7) of them to really call them a group and their two minion options have problems two the first the asekh-sen don't have many exicting powers and need mummy organs to get extra lifes and the seconds is well just banes so that might be a bit boringthe cabiri exist and they sometimes steal nodes and relicts (see below) but they don't act in groups and there also only roughly a dozen of them...mummy in general doesn't have good antagonists on it's own and i am gonna second making up bog mummies> and now Caerns work as a separate web of faith (they are holy sites for werewolves) because of stuff the Dreamspeakers and Verbena are doing to try and make their own digital web on the back of moonbridges.caerns/nodes work for mummies but they work the same way they work for mages meaning they can drain them to get their sekhem that's how mummies(horus was in switzerland for a time, there is a dark age vampire fiction novel with two mummies in europa and well all the cabiri since at least roman times) in general operate in europa since at least the dark ages so you can 100% just copy the mage vs garou plot of "mages want your caern as a node" with the tiny extra that mages just want them for power or a horizion realm but mummies need them to stay in the skinlands so they are probably gonna be a bit more invested
>>94596199>What is the darkest part of the World of Darkness?Oblivion, probably.
>>94596247>The first Vampire game I tried to ST for I was basically unknowingly feeding new victims to a fat polycule.Tell us more about it.
I'm having a hard time inserting the Tremere into cities and chronicles when I ST. The rest of the clans have pretty understandable interests, but there's not really things that scream OCCULT when you research a city. Except for kitsch occult stores and museums that'll come up. I just don't really get Tremere in general, and they don't feel like they mesh as well along with the other clans when you put them all together.
>>94596633They were fat Gorean swingers (I guess?) who I met through a now defunct local social media page. I had no tabletop history and none of my friends were into it so I sought out any way I could to actually play. Stuff like IRC, play-by-post, before randomly googling 'white wolf + city name' and finding a page on MeetUp. After I got into a very big chronicle that soon imploded, another two new players asked if anybody was going to start up a new game and I volunteered, they offered to host the game which was a big plus even if it meant a long commute across town once a week.There were new players joining pretty frequently because it was the only option. Some of them coming from pretty as well, and this couple would constantly ask if people wanted to stay over, or needed to overnight or if they were looking to rent a room - eventually I found out that many of the new players weren't coming back because these two were propositioning them and acting out weird master/slave scenarios to see who was into it. They revealed this after I tried to describe how the vinculum and they said 'what do you think is happening here lmao'. Profoundly awkward.
>>94597017>fat Gorean swingersWere they Ventrue?
>>94597089Only the woman had a clan in mind when she played (Daeva, this was nWoD) and the guy let said he wanted to be surprised, I had his character become Ventrue because it seemed to fit and I wanted the clan to be represented. I don't know if I was playing into some weird kink by doing so but I wouldn't be surprised.
>>94597017>They revealed this after I tried to describe how the vinculum>how the vinculumNot sure I get the meaning of those words in this context
>>94596951the thing about the tremere is that they already have the occult stuff they don't really travel out to search for it all that much, that used to be a thing in the dark age with them joining the fight against the norse gangrel to steal rune magic but in the modern nights tremere use symbolism just as a tool so they don't really care that this path has origins in india or that this path was first written down in hebrew nor do they really need to given their ability to make paths and adapt other path from other blood sorcererswhat they are more interested in these days is bureaucrats, teachers, but also secruity consultants and sometimes even soldiers because the tremere at a whole never really recovered mentally from the omen war so they are still in a "siege mentally" so it's more important that a chantry is easy to defend and or hide than it is for the chantries to be a source of books (those usually get imported when the chantry is first opened) or recruits (if they really can't recruit at that location they might even move apprentices from other city there)which is not to say that the tremere won't embrace sorcerers or lone mages if they can find them, but finding them isn't a priority anymore. It's easier to entice new blood with your "magic" after all and who knows maybe the non magic folk given blood sorcery might think of other path ideas your ancient former mage ass wouldn't think aboutanother thing the tremere want to do is simuntainously present a air of unknowable mystery when it comes to their Thaumaturgy and present it and themselves as useful to the camarilla because they know nobody likes them, but again their leadership remember the time before the sects when they been alone, every hated them (for good reason...), ceoris was sieged every few years and it was scary and everything sucked
>>94597119>this was nWoDYou lost a big opportunity here. They should have been Nosferatu.
>>94597143'how the vinculum works' must have been cut off because I thought I was including extraneous details and tried to tighten up the post. They were very new to the game so I wanted to get across how the blood bond affected people and they got a real hoot out of the whole 'domitor' thing.
>>94597182I didn't want to go in that direction because I like the Nosferatu and I didn't want it to come across like I was mocking some hygiene or grooming issues that were obvious.
>>94597212>extra horny people>hygiene or grooming issues that were obviousWtf is wrong with them?
>>94594349A similarly infantile word, for the most childish insult. I don't like my racism to even approach plausibility.
>>94595739I did a write-up on bog mummies here that people didn't seem to like. Basically, besides the geographic opening, their curse was too-perfect memory and the mildest of wyrm stink, like a Bastet or Kitsune, from depression.
>>94596951A common thing WW did was put them in college cities (Madison, Asheville, Boulder).
>>94597239Just really fat and codependent, many such cases. They were ordinarily nice and seemed normal when first meeting them but they lived like slobs and didn't eat very well. The closer you got to their everyday life it was obvious that the woman hardly bathed and didn't really use feminine products and the guy didn't know hot to take care of anything around the house. They only had the barest understanding of the lore so the Nosferatu are like exclusively associated with filth and monstrous ugliness and this comparison would have been upsetting.
>>94597359>it was obvious that the woman hardly bathed and didn't really use feminine products
>>94589670I've yet to see someone actually play Rage.
>>94591225Mass bouts of misdirected homorage is just as common and happens just as much if not more in other countries.Only difference>they aren’t America and don’t matter>they don’t get pushed by media obsessed with disarming the country or just laughing at goymerica
>>94592816Doesn’t matter. Still the funniest shit to happen to the terminally online in ages.
Dark Ages: Inquisitor is the only necessary base for a mortal hunter game. No elaboration is necessary.
>>94596951To add to what anon said: try to look up the esoteric history of the city you're building for. If there's some, put it to use, if not, well, by its very definition, occultism is supposed to be hidden, so don't be afraid to make up stuff - cults, rituals, places of power, conflicts - that fits your campaign.In a vacuum, I tend to look at Tremere as operative cells. Optimally, they need a fixer, a face, an agent and a ritual master - all in service of letting the clan do whatever it is they're supposed to be doing around in town. That something doesn't need to be tied to the occult. The clan has needs. A city/region that is a perfect /void/ of occult interest could also be a very important political asset the clan cannot ignore (say, a nodal point in the traffic between places of *actual* import), with the vampires sent there as a form of punishment in intra-clan politics.Another possibility is that there's no significant Tremere presence.
Getting into VTM 20 right now. Wanting to play a koldunist tzimisce. How THE FUCK am I supposed to figure out which book to use for this? There are around 7 different books, 3 of which overwrite a different one. From what I've gathered there are>the elemental ways>way of spirit/genius loci>way of sorrows>various krainas (recommended you make your own in one book I read, which fits the lore of koldunism)That all makes sense. What confuses me is the changing of the powers of various elemental ways in the books. Is it up to the ST which to play off of? Also, how to make a koldunism roll changes between books very annoyingly. Appreciate it y'all.
>>94599061Official answer:Use the willpower roll described in Rites of Blood for all types of magic in V20 unless you/your ST want to houserule using the existing system instead.Take (one of) the koldun paths in V20 core or Rites of Blood. These more or less are your alternate paths to the thaum ones the same way infernalists use balefire instead of the worse standard path.If you want paths like Spirit Manipulation, strictly there is nothing stopping you but I'd probably suggest not making it your main path over one of the actual koldun paths.RAW, V20 you're allowed to use any rituals from any school with any school (but you'd still need to have access to them to learn them in the first place) per Rites of Blood. Koldun etc. only have a handful of listed rituals anyway so this seems to be close to the intention of the core book anyhow.
>>94599110Okay that makes some sense. Leveling up though, RAW, from my understanding, you’ll never exceed more than five total dots amongst the paths. Because each dot in koldunism grants you a dot on A way of choice. With that in mind how do elder characters (e.g. dracula) have five dots in three paths with only five dots in koldunism. Were they just written before said book?
>>94599347You can just buy dots in secondary paths with experience (pg 124 for xp costs in V20 core, pg 132 of the pdf), it's cheaper than buying a discipline.>crossthread namefagging without actually posting in /schreck/I thought that wasn't possible (to do by accident), doesn't it only save to your browser after you actually hit post?
>>94599110nta, but the problem is that v20 true black hand book is older than rites of blood and referes to rites of blood, but still uses other stats for koldunic sorcery, they also feature koldunic sorcery as a different discipline than thaumaturgy in both v20 and dav20 and koldunism is also the only one in dav20 that still does not run on a willpower roll making it keep it's unique atribute system in every book that features it after rites of blood despite rites of blood having a appendix that says that yes it's willpower only rule is also meant to work on koldunism so we have a book that retcons sorcery rules that get's ignored by every book afterblood sorcery in v20 is a serious mess with every book that features it saying something different about it, it would even say that it's the edition that is the worst about it and koldunic sorcery is the sorcery that is also the worst about it due to it being retconned in every second book it's in even outside of v20so >>94599061 should seriously talk with his ST(story teller aka game master for our new player here) because he might use the willpower rule or he might wants you to roll the stat that mentioned the path line up and you don't want to mess up and build a character who is not good that the thing he is meant to be good in
>>94599409 fucking dammit. I make one post from mobile and it rats me out. fuck.Thanks for the answer though. That makes sense.
>>94599409>spoiler nta, but depends on the broswer i think. I once accidentally namefaged on vg because of schrecknet
>>94599439here for reference from the true black hand book which is 2 years older than rites of blood>koldunic sorcery and thaumaturgy as two seperate disciplines>activation roll with stats>but a blood sorcery paths that is new with the rites of blood book so the author of that book must have read itnobody accused onyx path of having good proof reading i guess
>>94599523*2 year younger/newer
>>94599523To be fair, all those are options left open by Rites of BloodIt's not like talmahera writing being a clownshow is anything new though.In any case while you can present what how you think it should work or how it normally works, it's something you should decide with your ST for your character in particular (and not be surprised if NPCs use different systems)
>>94599556it's not just the talmahera book, the black list book also says that if you have rites of blood you can replace some of Kemintiri thaum with a setite sorcery discipline despite that being the opposite of what that book (rites) says in regards to how that is meant to workso i don't disagree with you, but i also don't blame any new reader (player or st) for being confusedi guess we could send people to the revised blood magic books (which rites of blood also mentions as a different viewpoint to the subject) but that kinda goes against the point of v20 because that was meant to be this big collection of the stuff from the old books
Feels really lame and trivial that the final boss vampire of Mummy is Kemintiri.
>>94599632oh please don't remind me of the mummy time of judgment scenario that shit was so ass even in comparision to the other scenarios in the book of failed game lines
>>94596206It's a gamble, and a bad one. Been doing this a long time, and occasionally you get a couple that's chill and this is just their hobby, but mostly it's like the poly weirdness, or worse, they have some kinda drama between them that causes them to argue/bicker/fight at the table.
>>94599632i found Eurydice more dissapointing because she just got good stats if you get her before she kills enough bane mummies to get 4-5 dots in heaku stats in 6-7 range and low level heaku (technically if you get her early enough she got stats in the 5 range and NO heaku but in that case there is something wrong with your st) are not gonna be enough to fight a silent strider pup let alone the mummy squad they send to stop the end of the world
>>94599632It was also pretty weird how the writers forgot that mummies are pretty fucking powerful. Even ignoring the "I delete you from existance" power in Nomenclature, it's pretty easy for a mummy at hekau 4-5 to temporarily buff all their combat relevant stats into methusela levels and give themselves cost-free extra actions.That's also before getting into the fact new-gen mummies are potentially way stronger than the Shemsu-Heru. Their hekau have been statted up to 8th level compared the strongest bane-mummies 5-dots and every Amenti has the ability to reach those levels in play.
>>94599646>>94599726>>94599835I guess their metaplot-oriented ending is "okay" if you're on the more pessimistic side of portraying Mummy. Becoming a living shroud powerful enough that you basically end all other splats' current apocalypses forever is a good trade if you didn't go in actually expecting mummies to save the world.
>>94599835>That's also before getting into the fact new-gen mummies are potentially way stronger than the Shemsu-Heru. Their hekau have been statted up to 8th level compared the strongest bane-mummies 5-dots and every Amenti has the ability to reach those levels in play.they did remember because Eurydice heaku goes up to 7 if she eats enough bane mummies, but the scenario does not imply that your characters are really powerful, like to stop the final ritual that would make Eurydice a god the entire world of darkness needs to team up on to have a chance... you just need to kill 17 mortal cultists... without any supernatural powers of their own... in a cave.. that don't fight back>Hekau: As one of the walking dead, Eurydice has no natural access to Hekau. Each slain Bane Mummy bestows one dot in all Egyptian Hekau upon her.>Killing the cultists. This is the simplest and most brutal method. If over a third of the cultists perish, the magic fails. Note that simply attempting to stop them from chanting is not sufficient. Their very bodies swarmwith the unholy power of Apophis, and those conduits must be closed permanently for the magic to fail. That means no fewer than 17 cultists must die if the Amenti are to prevail. The good news is that the cultists are nothing special, physically. They have no magic to protect themselves, so use statistics for ordinary mortals>If Eurydice prevails and attains her long-sought resurrection, she buys her life at the price of the world. As the living embodiment of the Corruptor, she is as a god. Osiris himself could not hope to challenge such abeing, were he to walk in flesh upon the Earth. Only the most unlikely alliance of all the greatest powers in the world could hope to stop her — and perhaps she would still prevail. The rise of Apophis represents the end of human civilization at the very least, and likely the end of the world itself. There is precious little aftermath to such a story
>>94599632>>94599898The funniest thing though is a powerful, but normal-human sorcerer(like you could find in a dream-speaker chantry) could handle Eurydice post-ascension without much issue.Summoning, Binding, and Warding 6 allow you to summon Gods and Permanently Bind them to your service so thoroughly that they have to follow the spirit as well as the letter of what you say.Given Mummy actively acknowledges Sorcerer Revised in it's core book and vice-versa, ToJ is Really overhyping it's failure of a final boss.
>>94599957fun thing is Eurydice is a ancient soul and a walking dead meaning her body isn't her own... mummy necromancy allows you to throw wraiths out of bodies that they possessed at 2 dots but only if they are alive so technically if your players surrived the ritual they could kicker her out of that sexy new body she sold the entire world forif we go with crossover stuff a vampire or demon necromancer also could do it before and after the ascension which would be a near instant game over because she never get's the mummy immortality or other traits beside hekau, the former can also just command or eat her and sorcerer with the ephemera 4 can also just command her. wraiths just don't make good endbosses
>>94600034Is she ancient? She rejected one of the tem-akh, she died after the new Spell of Life. Her connection to the other Eurydice is metaphorical.
>>94600048you are right i read that wrong, still that only matters for the mummy necromancy partwhich means we need 4 dots of another splat's necromancy to ruin her day instead
>>94600070It just makes the ending more pathetic, that a single bitter, dead roastie that probably didn't even live half a century is the Mummy end boss of the Wyrm.
okay i am reading the mummy scenario right now and wow is it stupid: one of the bane mummies comes to (you) and HORUS for protection, horus then orders you to protect the bane mummy so you easily kill the hunters that come for her while horus is i guess taking a smoke break? and then the bane mummy insists on following the hunters RIGHT NOW even resorting to flashbanging the players with a ancient amulet to run after the people that came to KILL HER which of course leads to her being drained of her corruption by Eurydice just so you won't have horus with you because he would trivialize the plot>>94600126>It just makes the ending more pathetic, that a single bitter, dead roastie that probably didn't even live half a century is the Mummy end boss of the Wyrm.she is supposedly young and beautiful and the malestrom that caused the tem-akh to exist as they do was only 4 and a half years ago.And given that she is naked in her one picture in the book i am going to say she was 18+ when she died, but that means she could still just be 22 at her youngest
>>94600197I'm half convince horus and osiris Wamt the world to end. The other egyptian mummy scenario has the win condition SITTING BBEHIND OSIRIS'S THRONE, where it had appearantly been for millrnia and somehow no one noticed. You want know what Osiris is doing during all this? So would I! Because he's not at his throne despite it being the End of the Fucking World. It genuinely looks like he said "fuck this planet" and left everyone to die.
>>94600457yeah if i would have to run a endgame for mummies i would probably run the fallen tribe scenario of the silent striders and replace the garou nation with the osirian league instead of using the actual mummy scenarios
What do you guys think about pic rel? The series as a whole, not the specific episode. On one hand it's one of the few web series I've legitimately enjoyed in a while, and I'm a sucker for everything hunter. On the other hand though, I feel like it's constantly teetering on the edge of falling off a narrative cliff, and there are a bunch of little things that annoy me, but not enough to ruin my enjoyment of it.
>>94601304A scummy leech regurgitating old memes that needed new host after being force to detach itself from 40k.
>>94601304Should've been vampires. Should've been tighter on the references of both TTS and in-universe lore-wise. I can't watch it just by itself.
>>94601304I don't like Alphabussy or whatever his name is. Sure, some TTS jokes and memes are funny - I still like to reference the Pillarmen Custodes. But his whole schtick got old for me real quick.Your pic? Proof that he's a creatively bankrupt one trick pony. He just couldn't let go of 40k for a moment and try to use his goddamn imagination for once.Honestly I'm glad RPG Replays never took off in the west like they did in Japan because redditors like this seem to be the norm.
>>94601495Their Mage game seems different enough, though it's still pretty early.
>>94601415Disagree on it being vampires. Hunters are in my experience a much easier sell to people not already familiar with the setting. Hard agree though on the less references. It undermines the otherwise solid story they're building up.>>94601495Yeah the 40k references and re-using of some characters is a real big hurdle I had to get over. It feels unnecessary because the characters they've made for the series are good. I think they were insecure about going off in an entirely new direction, which is a shame because I think they could have done better by committing to a more serious story with a new cast of characters from the word go.
>>94601304It teeters on the edge of being too cringe to be funny sometimes (much like their later W40k content) but I think it's alright.
Which seems more likelier>Virtual Adept babe with OF>Virtual Adept V-Tuber
I've had good luck with AI "slop" character portraits. Here's one I made for my Mage: the Ascension game that I'm two sessions into. I've been using Midjanny and making a point to use the illustrations from the books as a "style" reference.
>>94601774vtuber. It's the most VA thing you can think of.OF is a Technocratic psyop anyways.
>>94601813This nigger's arm lmaoYeah it's fine for slopping out portraits, since you're basically just searching for unfitting stock art under some broad style constraint. You're going to have compounding issues because a lot of the wod artists also couldn't draw so you're going to compound the issue, but it doesn't really matter for just setting the mood.
>>94601813It's a shame Midjanny is paid.
Stupid question, but if I buy the dual traditions merit does that allow me the opportunity to obtain the tradition merits of both groups or just one? Like if you were my ST would you allow me to do that.
>>94602048The merit allows you to be two traditions, so by definition yes.Besides, only a couple traditions have merits worth taking if ST says they even exist in M20.
>>94601813There are free Slop generators there're higher quality than midjourney anon.
>>94602169Post them
>>94601774Virtual Adept V-Tuber with an OF.
I dreamt last night that the Predator was breaking into my house and I had to fend it off. Thankfully I'm a huuuuuuuge Magefag so instead of running away like a little bitch, I clenched my fist and dreamed some Magick to disappear from his mind's eye and counter-ganked the motherfucker. I boinked it really hard with a baseball bat of some sorts, and knocked it out. And then I woke up.Now. That got me thinking. How'd you spec the Predator for a World of Darkness game?
>>94602334I'd just use a bastet statline I'm sure is in Rage Across the Amazon and fudge something for the lasers.
>>94601304It's a high quality series that serves as a fantantic introduction to the series. The fight with pyotor specifically shows how fucking horrifying vampires are Supposed to be(as opposed to V5's bullshit).Anons hate it because its a thing normies like.
>>94602334Just make a brawling focused horror with invisibility and blast.
>>94602967*Fantastic introduct to WoD
>>94599957Not really that funny, you're talking about a legendary sorcerer there. Sorcerers in general were pretty powerful before parawolf molested them in S20. They have some Really nice shit people miss because they skim the book, for example: the mana background gives you extra successes and with merits those can apply to Any roll, not just paths.
>>94603054>Sorcerers in general were pretty powerful before parawolf molested them in S20That one was solely into OPP's lap. But yeah, I don't know why they did this nerf in Sorcerer 20th if the whole purpose of 20th anniversary line is just some small system corrections and an agnostic setting with all things from previous editions collected into one book. It's literal nostalgiabait. No need for a new whole thing.And I think some people didn't understand that 'cause in M20 corebook they say to use Sorcerer Revised for some systems and people acted confused on why that.Because it's just a collection of previous books, damn it.
>>94603081onyx path didn't "respect" that part of the 20th line for most splatsv20 already had a few nerfs and dark age vampire is pretty retcon heavy for a vtm editionc20 completely reworks the entire power system of it's splat (althought for the better)m20 is not a collection at all given how victorian age is something completly new and it's not meta plot agnostic it just presents half a dozen of them
>M20 corebook they say to use Sorcerer RevisedHoly Shit, even 20th treats it as non-canon. Kek
>>94603175M20's core book took so long to release it's not surprising it will reference older material.
>>94603054>the mana background gives you extra successesWhat?
>>94603081i think sorcerer revised might be the most referenced book in the setting it's everywhere it's refered to in several fera books, the w20 fera book, the crossover vampire/mage revised books, wolves of the sea and m20not really important to the topic just something fun to noe>>94603175m20 sorcerer came out 7 years after it's corebook and it's hard to refer to a book that doesn't exist yetbut yeah it's shit, but that's nothing new for m20
>>94603181Mana is the only thing in WoD that allows you to use reverse threshold rules(reducing successes needed for an action), even if the ST doesn't use reverse-threshold for other difficult reducers. It even lets you reduce threshild without reducing difficulty, so a sorcerer could spend a WP and 5 Mana for 6 guaranteed successes.Note that this isn't "Automatic" successes like WP. Threshold is only calculated After you succeed/Fail a roll normally. So if the above sorcerer spent that WP and get two 1's with no successes, then they'd still botch(and waste 5 mana)
>>94603197There was a joke in an old WoD group that Sorcerer was the only canon things in WoD. The joke was that the number of "canon" things and what was on the list changed every time someone told it, but Sorcerer was Always on that list.
>>94603054>molested them in S20It gets even worse when you read the psychic section and see how the author blatently fellates them. Bigger dice pool earlier, upgrades to most of their powers (at S20's cheaper costs), and better WP recharge options. Fucker had an agenda so blatent, I'm convinced he played a session where a sorcerer-chad stomped his shitty self-insert psychic and he wrote this book as revenge.
>>94603415M20 Sorcerer was written by a couple different freelancers wasn't it? There were interviewed on MAGE: The Podcast when it came out.
>>94603430Did they say anything interesting orcwas it the usual platitudes mixed with propaganda?
Weird concept for a Nossie Elder, his monstrous appearance didn't deform him bit turned his skin, muscles and bones see through save for his brain, eyes, heart and circulatory system. When he feeds you literally can see the vitae coat the inside of his mouth and drain down his throat before defusing into his body which slightly tints the parts it's absorbed into before it becomes one with him.Tempted to nickname him Mr Glass.
>>94603606Sounds a bit like Glob (from x men). I also vaguely remember another comic books character like that.
>>94603623Oh I love Glob Herman, oddly not who I was inspired by. I was ripping off clear plastic models I owned as a kid along with this weird Nazi Zombies character Avogardo I think is his name
>>94603661>>94603606Some sea creatures are weirdly transparent...
>>94603606>>94603623This be Glob in case you be wondering
>>94603744Deep sea life is fascinating, it represents life from far beneath the waves far from even light touching it.>>94603760If X-Men weren't all models and hot people, you'd end up with more people that look like the Morloks or Glob.
>>94603744Lack of light means no need to be visible or need to protect yourself from getting cooked by solar radiation
>>94603744I will not let the intrusive thoughts win!
>>94596199in current year? sales predictions for Bloodlines 2
>>94603744>forbidden onahole
>>94603845Around the time of the Second Genesis, Marvel changed the description of the X-Men from "the weirdest heroes you know" to "the freakiest heroes you know" in many of their first-page story blurbs. The first team was "weird" in the sense that they were college-age kids that liked to hang out in Greenwhich Village - Hank and Bobby would frequently go to the Cafe A Go-Go to dance the watusi and pick up girls - but since I did not live in NYC in the 60's I have no context if this was "weird" or not. The Watusi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdVMaOJnN8QNow, what I find most interesting about the second team, however, is how those "freaks" were a German furry, a Russian farmer who could turn into a tin-can, a grumpy Canadian hairball with claws and mood swings, and an African woman who saw clothing as some sort of optional accessory. Completing the formation was an Irish bloke and a short-sighted Alaskan nerd.I find this hilarious because the 70's idea of a group of "Freaks" is essentially Any Tech Office these days lmao.
>>94604121The X-Men in general are such a perplexing property. Their entire existence is baffling in the wider context of Marvel when like America funded giant genocide robots but like you rarely see Iron Man or Spidey get involved because nobody fucking wants to get involved with X-Man shit.
>>94604121>African woman who saw clothing as some sort of optional accessory>Any Tech Office these daysI need to get into tech...
>>94604200>>94604168>>94604121>MFW I read these messages on my phone and realise that in a decade or so there will be no more first-hand accounts of how the 60s were like.Cherish your grandpas and grandmas, they're a living library of a kind of knowledge that we will never find online or in books.
>>94604168Much like WoD, the individual splats/heros and their stories will always take precedent over the internal consistency of the setting as a whole that it gets forced into.
>>94604285Unlike the World of Darkness, however, anything mildly important only happens in big cross-over events. Its one of the things I always found weird about ToJ. You had several splatbooks with four different scenarios, all contradicting one another, and we never got a real ending that ended the line in a holistic manner.
>>94604094kek
>>94603606First thing that came to mind is Crystal Bowie from Space Adventure Cobra (I'm old).I'd allow it, but would have to be creative to keep the way vitae "infuses" the body mysterious (that said people interested in that kind of things *would* hunt the character down, more or less metaphorically).
>>94604315But, how do you...end the world of darkness? I can't really see a fully satisfying end to it. Yeah, sure, the battle against the Wyrm/Apophis/Nephandi, that's a thing, but what about the splats where that doesn't matter? How do you fit everything in a sensible and enjoyable structure? Much like real life, this slow and dragging existence is greatly preferable to going out in one glorious (or horrible) bang.
>>94604581Teleport a bunch of people of different splats and tell 'em they have to work together to win in a tournament or their world gets destroyed. And since its the World of Darkness we're talking about. they lose because they can't stop with their petty bullshit, and their world gets destroyed.
>>94604315That's because there wasn't a grand story. It was just 30 different Apocalyptic stories who sometimes said similar things.
>>94604581>>94604636See, its a metaphor for how the writers and editors couldn't figure out a way for the metaplot and lore to work in a concise manner even though they had three editions and 10 years to do it, which led to declining sales when compared to the rest of the TTRPG ecosystem, and thus their universe had to end. My content is deep and you should by my books
>>94604662Now, putting the dumb humor aside for a bit and giving a serious answer:I’ve read the splatbook endings for the three big game lines (and the Vampire novel), and I loved the Officially-Not-Official ending scenarios for each one. However, I had more mixed feelings about the other endings—mostly negative, with one exception (the Vampire scenario where you’re locked in a church).That said, I still feel there should have been a story that definitively explained how the World of Darkness ended. I think the nWoD writers shot themselves in the foot here. By leaving the end too ambiguous and not providing a final nail in the coffin, they left the story of how things wrapped up open to interpretation. This became especially problematic with the later reboot. Many fans assumed the nWoD was the aftermath of Time of Judgement and Gehenna, leading to confusion—like why the Malkavians were suddenly a branch of the Ventrue, for example.Even an asspulled "Evil Bug from Outer Space" would’ve been better than nothing. If the issue was that there wasn’t a single overarching villain to destroy the world, the line editors had all of Revised Edition to craft one—a Big Bad that tied everything together like Lebowski’s rug.In the end, what we, the fans, got from that whole shabang was the realization that there probably wasn’t much planning to begin with. The contradictions between books likely stemmed from White Wolf’s inability to organize its writers effectively back in the day.I used to think this wouldn't be such an issue nowadays, but here we are, with Thin-bloods on V5 and no real explanation as to why they're there. Or why they have weird alchemical powers now. Fifth edition and its consequences have been around for much longer than most people think, because they didn't actually start on 5th edition.
>>94603054>>94603234My WtA ST does something similar to this when I play my Kinfolk sorcerer: He allows me to use his Gnosis to reduce Difficulty for my tests. So an Alchemy Dif 8 (we use Alchemy in Hunters Hunted II, but he allows one day to achieve 6th dot like Sorcerer Revised) can be reduced at max Dif 5.
>>94604581>But, how do you...end the world of darkness?Must... resist... making fun... of the current... state... of the franchise.
>>94604581>But, how do you...end the world of darkness?Several ToJ scenarios lined up perfectly by complete accident, like how that one scenario that ends with the Amenti making the guantlet impenetrable leads perfectly into the KotE and WtA scenarios where the end of magic begins because the gaunlet becomes impenetrable.My honest answer for this is, As many as can possibly happen at once. Have Eurydice begin her ascention ritual, fail, start the ghost-storm that forces the guantlet to be replaced leading to Etc...Let the end times be a Complete clusterfuck of things going from bad to worse as heroes sacrifices themselves to prevent complete extinction.
>>94602967Hunters v.s. Diablerist Pyotr was definitely the highlight of the show so far, though I'm not sure it's actually that good of an intro to WoD. The tone is kinda all over the place and they're playing a weird game of dogwhistling to deeplore shit that has really no business actually coming up in a Hunter story set in an english backwater.
>NuminaMinor wonders that originate from Humanity's inherent nature>True FaithBlindly binding your will to empower a belief created by others>Hedge MagicHow the Consensus thinks magic actually works>True MagickUsing your own will to shape realityYeah, I’ll take True Magick any day of the week.
>>94605152Sure, but you have to Awaken first. Hedge magic, on the other hand, is, in principle, usable by any normal guy out there.
>>94605069That... actually tracks. The WtA Ragnorok scenario that ends with WoD turning into Exalted makes way more sense if it's happening at the same time the HtR/Demon Hunter X scenario where the return of the wan xian takes place.
>>94605152That's great and all, but I'm taking you to reality court over several severe charges of paradox, you're staying in that cell for the next two centuries, bucko.
>>94605152>Yeah, I’ll take True Magick any day of the week.You also have to remember True Magick has a lot less raw power than linear magic in most cases.True magick is great when you're an archmage, but surviving to archmage is hilariously unlikely.
>>94605168aaaaaaaaaaaaaa I can't hear you aaaaaaaaaaa
>>94604094>>94604848Let’s do some extremely oversimplified math here - this won’t account for marketing costs, storefront fees, or the post-pandemic inflation affecting the dollar. Navigating by stars, not a precise GPS.Now.Veilguard allegedly sold 1M copies (and couting) across all platforms and is allegedly projected by Bioware to hit 3M lifetime sales. At $60 per unit, 1M sales would mean $60M USD (duh), while 3M would generate $180M.With a projected budget of $250M, that leaves them $70M in the red in the long run, and $190M in the short term.For comparison, Bloodlines 2 originally had a projected budget of $25–35M USD. That’s roughly in line with Lamplighter’s League, which cost $29M according to the publisher. Using our pub napkin math here, BL2 would’ve needed to sell 500,000 copies at $60 to break even, not accounting for anything else. Currently, the Steam page shows around 170,000 followers, far below that target.However, the original version of BL2 was scrapped, and the game is now being developed by The Chinese Room. We don’t know how much has been spent on development so far or the budget for their other game, Still Wakes The Deep, so speculation isn’t really useful here.In conclusion: Even without knowing the current budget, Bloodlines 2 has a clear steep climb to profitability, and early metrics like Steam followers suggest it has a long way to go to reach even modest break-even targets. Combined with its troubled development history, this highlights the significant risk and uncertainty surrounding the project. No wonder the Publisher has been publicly saying there's very little chance of a 3rd instalment on that particular franchise.
>>94604779The problem with rebooting the thing is how despite so much being cut there was a lot more that just got shuffled around resulting in a lot of confusion about what was being kept in Nwod.It took a while for them to go "here's how this version of the game is different" in terms of lore.
>>94605201The question mostly depends on what the fuck do you want out of magic. In Markus case, I think he would not be fine with "just" linear sorcery because he wants to know pretty much everything about the supernatural.
>>94605204PUTTING YOUR FINGERS IN YOUR EARS DOES NOT PROTECT YOU FROM THE WORD OF REALITY LAW, DEVIANT
>>94605209I doubt VtMB will be a net positive given the sheer amount of shit involved. Even if it doubled the amount of TTRPG sales odds are it wouldn't recover all the money they used to make and market the game.
>>94605209>that leaves them $70M in the red in the long run, and $190M in the short term.That's if you just count developement costs. If you factor it marketing, things get More grim.
>>94605209>there's very little chance of a 3rd instalment on that particular franchiseBy them anyway. If someone with even half a brain picked it up they'd have a license to print money.
>>94604315People preferred the most intimate scenarios anyways>Wormwood for Vampire, literally no one that isn't a vampire knew it even happened>The "final" battle with the Wyrm is the only one that really involves the spirit realm and other Fera
>>94605446>If someone with even half a brain picked it up they'd have a license to print moneyI think you're very much understating how /hard/ it is to capitalize on that potential.Look at us. We're a subcommunity of (relatively) dedicated fans, and we can't agree half the time on what's good about the WoD in general, and the individual games in particular. Look at at the Vault books. And the mass market point of appeal isn't any more easy to define - nor to attain.
>>94605133It's really a was a total waste of the unique vibe of Hunter for Big D to actually know everything about the WoD.
>>94605399>>94605433>Czeched>>94605433>That's if you just count developement costsThere was a disclaimer on the beginning of the post mentioning that we're not accounting marketing cost, inflation etc. We also don't know what exactly "X game costed Y moneys" means - it could be including marketing, it could not. But either way we look at it, the picture is indeed pretty grim, like you said. My respite in all of this is that the guy calling the shots of the franchise, the Vice President of Darkness, is a very smart guy and even if he and his team ultimately aren't able to turn things around, I have faith that they can at least stop the bleeding. There is only so much people can do in 4 years to deal with a franchise that has been accumulating problems for the last 30.
>>94605751Big D is a FRAUD and a JOBBER. Ever wonder why nothing helpful actually comes from his seemingly massive knowledge of the world? It's because he's bullshitting, all of it all the time.
>>94605751I have little to no idea what you anons are talking about (nor do I care much really) but everytime I read "The Big D" I have images of Dunkelzahn playing the WoD, and I must say it makes me smile.
>>94605446>a license to print money.When it comes to franchises, everything works like a snowball, the good, and the bad. It takes one great product to kickstart a franchise, but only one bad one to derail it. Once trust is lost, it’s not just one success that restores it: consistency is key.For instance, Marvel’s recent struggles highlight this. Even with hits like Spider-Man: No Way Home or Deadpool 3, fan trust remains low after the lukewarm reception of movies like Eternals and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. It will likely take multiple back-to-back successes to regain its former momentum. And, I'd also like to point out, neither of those two successes were exactly made by Disney-Marvel alone - Spiderman is still owned by Sony, and Deadpool was made by Fox.Anyway. The same applies to the World of Darkness. Even if Bloodlines 2 outperforms expectations, in both sales and fan reception, it’s unlikely to stop the Snowball of Bad the franchise has going. V5 polarized fans with controversial lore and mechanical updates. BL2 1.0 floundered in development hell and was essentially shitcanned, and W5 was met with significant criticism for deviating from beloved lore and simplifying mechanics. These missteps create a perception of inconsistency that a single hit cannot easily overcome.Unless the franchise can deliver consecutive successes - BL2 2.0, strong supplemental material for the tabletop games, and perhaps a new flagship project - it’s unlikely the World of Darkness will regain any semblance of its past prominence. Just as other franchises have learned, trust is, while not impossible, very hard to win back, and consistency is the only path to redemption.>1/2
Continuing from >>94605813>>94605446>someone with even half a brain picked it up they'd haveI don't think the IP holders are stupid.Their approach to the World of Darkness as a franchise made sense on paper. After going public in 2016, they needed to diversify and saw World of Darkness as a prime opportunity to revitalize a beloved franchise across tabletop, video games, and other media. Mind you, they already owned the IP before going public, if memory serves me well.However, execution faltered. V5 stumbled out of the gate, Bloodlines 2 fell into development hell, and smaller spin-offs failed to make waves. Like Games Workshop’s Warhammer 40k struggles in the early 2010s, Paradox bet big on a fragmented strategy, and many of those bets didn’t pay off. The dissolution of White Wolf AB and the shift in strategy to a licensing business also made sense at the time, yet still suffered from problems in execution.But the strategy itself wasn’t flawed. And franchises can bounce back. If the franchise can deliver consecutive hits, rebuild fan trust, and focus on quality, there’s still hope for the World of Darkness.>2/2
>>94605822The sad thing is that the bet generally paid off with board games (in which design is more robust, less costly)... even the duds there have been at the very least decent on that front. Same with interactive fiction I'd say. Can't judge about the visual novels, I don't get what people see in those.But all in all, it's not as if everything had been a failure, it's just that it's the power movers that failed. For one, everyone wanted Swansong to deliver more than it could shoulder.
>>94604779>I think the nWoD writers shot themselves in the foot hereI don't think so? NWoD has nothing to do with WoD. WoD doesn't get revised into nwod, and nothing in wod is even powerful enough to do it because VtM/DtF's god wouldn't be able to account for himself (and he's not part of nwod, so he does have to go) and gaia is tellurian scale.Leaving the chocking, sputtering mess as it was and allowing it to collapse onto itself until people just ignored it's metaplot was the right call imo.>>94605152>your own willYou're literally just begging a spirit thing to do magic for you, Mages can't do anything themselves
>>94605822>I don't think the IP holders are stupidThey're the one who higher the current set of molesters in charge of the franchise. They have zero ability to beat the IQ allegations."It was just the Execution" is never a valid excuse anyway. If you fumble the execution, you are either too stupid, too incompetent, or both. Simple as.
>>94605979>Leaving the chocking, sputtering mess as it was and allowing it to collapse onto itself until people just ignored it's metaplot was the right call imo.Which is a shame because Deviant was actually really cool
is it weird that i find sphere magic to be way easier to understand than arts from c20?
>>94605696>I think you're very much understating how /hard/ it is to capitalize on that potential.>>Look at us. We're a subcommunity of (relatively) dedicated fans, and we can't agree half the time on what's good about the WoD in general, and the individual games in particular. That’s a fair point - capitalizing on the World of Darkness is hard, but I think its splintered nature is a double-edged sword that can work for it, not just against it. It is what it is, and we all love this franchise for what it is as much as for what it could be, not for what it isn't. Yes, we fans argue endlessly about tone, themes, and What The World of Darkness Is Really About, but that diversity is also a massive strength IF leveraged properly. The World of Darkness has a little bit of everything: gothic horror, political intrigue, street-level punk rebellion, philosophical dread, personal tragedy, and over-the-top action. There’s room for dark storytelling purists, LARPers, tabletop role-players, and gamers who just want to slash through monsters with claws.That kind of flexibility is exactly what lets a franchise grow out of its niche. Comic books used to be "just for nerds" but their versatility gave us everything from The Dark Knight to Guardians of the Galaxy. Even if the comics themselves struggle, the source material broke into mass appeal by leaning into its variety - there’s something for everyone.The World of Darkness could do the same. It’s not just "a horror franchise about playing monsters", it’s a sandbox of dark ideas that can be molded into countless forms. The challenge isn’t the fanbase, it’s the execution. It's hitting that moment where the franchise's potential explodes into greatness. You need one killer project that sells one strong vision while still hinting at the broader world behind it, transforming that creative energy into something new and unstoppable.Then the snowball of good starts rolling again.
>>94605979>Leaving the chocking, sputtering mess as it was and allowing it to collapse onto itself until people just ignored it's metaplot was the right call imo.A "right call" that paid off like investing in the Hawk Tuah Girl's cryptocoin. Truly a master stroke.
>>94605920I think you're spot on, Anon.The smaller-scale stuff - board games, interactive fiction - has worked because it’s less risky and more focused, so even the “duds” land decently. The problem is the flagship projects, like you said. Everyone needed Swansong to carry more than it could realistically handle, and when those bigger bets stumble, it hurts the franchise’s momentum far more.The smaller wins prove the World of Darkness still has life; it’s just waiting for the right big project to hit and break out of its niche.
>>94605995Managing an IP like the World of Darkness isn’t as simple as just “don’t fumble the execution.” There are so many moving parts - different creative teams, budgets, marketing strategies, external studios - that even great ideas can derail if one cog in the machine slips. That’s not stupidity - it’s the reality of running a franchise with this much history and complexity.The challenge isn’t just knowing what to do - it’s, well DOING IT, aligning all those spinning gears into something cohesive. It’s tough, but writing it off as "stupidity" misses how hard that path actually is.
>>94606156Nwod was pretty fucking successful.20th anniversary was pretty fucking successful.Seems reasonable to me.
>>94605995Again, I'm thinking you're way understating how difficult it can be to pull that stuff.Sometimes - and I'm not saying that's what happended here, but it's worth keeping in mind - you can do everything within your power right, and still fail.That's one of those terrible things about creative/complex endeavors.There's that weird tendency I've seen rise in the last decade of people instead of celebrating difficut achievements, or admirable behaviours, of taking them for granted. "Normal". And then disparaging people that did not meet that crushing standard which forgets failure is our natural state. Mediocre is what we mostly are, and sometime, just sometimes, we manage to do better.>What do you mean you didn't run into the inferno of your burning house to save your kid? What kind of a parent are you? Aren't you ashamed?>>94606104We're all wired differently. Enjoy.
>>94606200>>94606217>writing it off as "stupidity"I didn't just write it off as stupidity, I allowed room for incompetence as well!Less joking, how hard it is doesn't matter, it's their fucking day-job. If they can't do it then they're incompetent and deserve to fail.Beyond that, corpos never deserve the benefit of the doubt. They're soulless vampires that would sell your mother for a quick buck. If they fail and die they don't deserve empathy, they deserve laughter and a line of people pissing on their grave.
>>94606207Do you understand how your second statement contradicts the first?
>>94606274Yes, it doesn't.
>>94606260Don't mistake the forest for the tree.Corporations deserve all the bad they get. But the cogs aren't the machine.And one should be very careful of liberally dishing what is deserved to those that do, lest one gets what one similarly deserves in return.>>94606274Not that anon, but /I/ don't. This isn't a zero sum game, is it?(I do wonder how true the statements, but that's another issue.)
>>94606326The forest analogy doesn't really work here. The people in charge of companies have already been proven to be sociopaths. Those people aren't cogs, they're the machine operators.
>>94606217Anon, you’re absolutely right. Failure isn’t just possible in creative fields, it’s inevitable. And it should be. Creative work thrives on iteration: trying things, seeing what doesn’t work, and pivoting fast. In tech and design, they call it “Fail Fast.” The sooner you hit a wall, the sooner you can adjust course and find what does work.The issue isn’t failure itself, it’s being afraid to fail, or failing slowly and stubbornly clinging to what isn’t working. Creative industries need the freedom to take risks, fall on their faces, learn, and keep going. If failure becomes shameful, the result isn’t better work, it’s safer, smaller ideas that never push boundaries.The real challenge isn’t avoiding failure, it’s building systems that allow you to recover, adapt, and come back stronger. Every success story is built on lessons learned from things that didn’t work. When we're talking about franchises, which, by their very nature, thrive on serialisation of their products and storylines, this resiliency becomes crucial.
What will it take for Paradox to sell the IP? Who would possibly buy it? Hasbro?
>>94606326Technically moving around the competent writers can be seen as a zero sum game. VtR1 and V20 were written/developed by the same people (e.g. Justin Achilli), the abortive series (VtR2 and V5) have different authors. It wouldn't have been possible to write VtR the same year as V20 because key staff were needed for both.What I disagree with is the implication that V20 would have been as successful as it was if it was released right after revised. Meanwhile, nwod brought in a lot of new players from the 3e renaissance (myself included) and the development of nwod in no real way would have cut into the development of side projects based on the VtM, HtR, etc. IPs.
>>94606367>HasbroDon't you dare say that shit again.
>>94606367Paradox is a company who thrives on holding IPs. This fucker still has Conan IP under its belt and it's doing absolutely nothing with it.In another spin, Paradox is owned by "mothership" Tencent. So in the end, all the bases belongs to the chinese.
>>94606356Do you actually believe it's those people that do the actual work?Is it that you think the creative and otherwise productive workers played no part in the failure?And I do think the analogy works, though maybe not for the obvious reason: institutions have staying power, and as such shaping power on their constituents.You can remove all the cogs one way or another, if the machine remains, the cogs will eventually get back in place and in shape. And the process will go on. People can and in my opinion generally should take their /fair/ share of the blame, but in the end if you don't change the institutions, you've done nothing of worth.Oh fuck I'm mixing up my metaphors now... I'll go get that coffee.>>94606396>Technically moving around the competent writers can be seen as a zero sum gameThat would seem to imply there's only a finite number of competent writers. I don't know that I agree - however difficult it can be to foster and cultivate new talents.
>>94606260>I didn't just write it off as stupidity, I allowed room for incompetence as well!Lmao Anon gave me a Good Giggle there. Nice one.>Less joking, how hard it is doesn't matter, it's their fucking day-job. If they can't do it then they're incompetent and deserve to fail.Old Testament Anon would make frogs rain in Stockholm if he had his way lol.While I understand the sentiment – point me a WoD fan that isn't buttmad at the current state of the franchise and hoping for Big Changes As Soon As Possible, and you will be pointing me either a troll or a shill – and I can't say you're wrong, because, well, ultimately, the bottom line is you're not. But things aren't so simple, and this simplification is honestly coming off... not great, let's put it that way.>Beyond that, corpos never deserve the benefit of the doubt. They're soulless vampires that would sell your mother for a quick buck.Honest question: Can you define what you mean by "corpos"? Is Martyna a Corpo? What about Jason? I’m genuinely curious. If you’re painting them all with the same brush, I want to know where the lines are drawn.>If they fail and die they don't deserve empathy, they deserve laughter and a line of people pissing on their grave.Would you have laughed if Pratchett's daughter Rhi had dropped dead while she was still with Ubisoft? Or Kojima when he was with Konami? Or Amy Hennig when she was with Naughty Dog? I know I wouldn't.But I did celebrate when they left for greener pastures, I'll tell you that much.
>>94606479There seem to have been a finite number of competent writers at WW, because their hiring practices were fucked.It's not impossible for a company to find/develop new talent, but it clearly wasn't something that WW/the IP holders for the WoDs did very well because the proof is in the pudding of only a small number of projects with new staff going well, and while there's a strong argument to say that over the course of nwod's lifetime some good writers were picked up, many more bickering bureaucratic incompetents swelled their ranks (leading to CofD).
>>94606455You Dubs, But You Lie.The company that held the IP rights for Conan the Barbarian was Paradox ENTERTAINMENT, which split off from Paradox Development Studios and later became something else entirely. Paradox INTERACTIVE was created to be the publisher of the Development Studios. Bizarrely, Tencent has its chinese noodly tentacles on both companies. Well, whats left of what became of the first, and like 10% of the second.
>>94606455>>94606356Paradox is Owned by Fred Wester, NOT Tencent.Wester is a dude that likes football, video games, and heavy metal. He's very responsive on Twitter and if you ever arsed yourself to try and talk to the guy, you'd see he ain't no loony. He's a businessman, sure, but not a sociopath.If he was, he'd have cashed out and sold the entire company when it was on a high note instead of tanking Bad Behaviour accusations in public and gone back from the Shiny Lands of Spain where the food is good and the weather is nice to the Dark And Coldness of Sweden where the food is awful and the weather is not nice at all.
>>94606367>What will it take for Paradox to sell the IP? Hopefully, The End Of The World. If the IP changes hands all the organisational lessons around it will be lost.>Who would possibly buy it?Who do you think? Be VERY careful with what you wish for.
>>94606396You raise a valid point.What you mentioned here ties into something called Opportunity Cost, which is why I personally believe that a properly executed 4th edition of World of Darkness - instead of the reboot that led to nWoD - could have been at least as successful as nWoD was.Unfortunately, this is a question we'll likely never have a definitive answer to.
In the end, the lesson's still the same:Some things should just stay in the past. And it's ok. We will always have old editions to play. Not everything must be adapted to "contemporary audiences".
>>94606518I don't think this is a WoD-exclusive problem. I think long-established western franchises in the past decade that didn't got Effed are the exception, not the norm. IMO the whole western culture industry went FUBAR these last 15 years, but I think it has been a long time coming.
>>94606657You know what needs to be adapted to a contemporary audience, though?/woDg/And what I mean by that, is that we've gone past the bump limit 24 messages ago and need to make a new thread.
>>94606674Wait until page 8. That's the common sense around here.
>>94606617It would have been way harder imoIt's pretty clear they didn't have a good idea what they were doing in early nwod and I think that a similar stumbling start to 4e could easily have just contributed to the pile of burning tyres that was the wod metaplot. D&D etc. players didn't want to be tied to a setting with fixed lore. The mechanics did improve especially in becoming more holistic, but still continued to be bad.There was a failure to leverage the (owod) franchise during the period, but imo a TTRPG was not the way to go about it.
>>94606657Being dead serious now, I respectfully disagree.Time is an ocean, not a garden hose. It is vast and unpredictable, not a single stream that moves in a single direction.There’s no distinct future or past, there’s only the Now, constantly shifting and morphing what the future and what the past are. It’s wibbly-wobbly, timey-whimey.Never forget that.
>>94606722>check 'em>it would have been way harder imoWith the writers they had? I agree. Super Talented People, but as such, all (seemingly, to me) eager to be Fathers of their own Creative Children.>It's pretty clear they didn't have a good idea what they were doing in early nwod and I think that a similar stumbling start to 4e could easily have just contributed to the pile of burning tyres that was the wod metaplot.We can only conjecture about what could've been.
>>94606722>D&D etc. players didn't want to be tied to a setting with fixed lore. The mechanics did improve especially in becoming more holistic, but still continued to be bad.Comparing WoD to D&D isn't really productive, like, at all. The main reason this comparison gets made is because the products under both brands are often sold side by side.In a broad sense, all RPGs can be traced back to D&D in the same way that all First-Person Shooters can be traced back to Doom (which has its roots in Wolfenstein 3D). Even "D&D" itself, the 1974 version, can be seen as the first major entry in this line. "D&D" (the brand) represents the foundational branch of tabletop RPGs, and most games that followed, including the World of Darkness, evolved from this root in various ways. Some of these games, like Ars Magica (which influenced WoD), diverged significantly in their approach, but they still share some common roots.WoD may have its own distinct themes, mechanics, and tone, but in terms of role-playing game history, it finds its lineage through D&D and its evolution via Ars Magica. This lineage is acknowledged in the original AM 1st ed (1987) when the author states on Ch. 0:>"If you've played OTHER FANTASY ROLE-PLAYING GAMES, Ars Magica may seem closely related to them in theme, but it does have some fundamental differences."This model of evolution is similar to how we view First-Person Shooters today. While FPS games have branched out into a wide variety of genres, they all trace their roots back to Doom, even if they're vastly different (and even though Doom itself has roots of its own, but so does the original D&D). And, like FPS games, RPGs are not referred to as "D&D clones" because the genre has diversified so much over the years.When you compare the World of Darkness to D&D, it's more accurate to compare it to specific D&D settings like Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance, rather than the brand as a whole.
>>94606991Before anybody homorages here:YES I know there were other FPS's before Doom. I acknowledge it in the same breath as I say "all FPS can trace themselves back to Doom". Doom changed everything that came after it and thus everything that came before can also be traced to Doom, with Doom being the chokepoint of the genre. Like I said before, time is not a garden hose.
>>94606991I'm not comparing WoD to D&D retard, read the post before replying instead of regurgitating your AI-slop tier wordsalad at anything in the thread.
>>94605751I think the idea of a mentor figure that hides his power and knows more than he lets on is a fine narrative device. The issue is they've dumped way too much too quickly to the audience. The big question isn't "what does he know that we don't?" it has become "How the hell does he know this?". Makes him seem incompetent rather than calculating and holding back strategically.Like >>94605794 says, he's currently on fraud watch for good reason. Sandbagging in the tunnels against some dipshit sabbat to teach his children is fine, but getting got by Pyotr was a tremendous L from the one guy with an idea what a double diablerist is capable of. Now he's fucking up the Arcanum ghoul hunt royally. He needs to lock in and save the day soon or he will never beat the fraud allegations.
>>94607096Anon, if you're not comparing D&D to the World of Darkness then why did you brought it up when we were talking about 4th Edition?Have YOU read your post before bitching about how other people interpret you? Put some fucking effort and you might make yourself understood, instead of writing 3rd grader school essay slop.> AI-slop tier wordsalad Not everyone has such a great capacity to communicate like you. I'll try to be more Ooga Booga in the future so little kids like you can understand me too.
>>94606507When I say Corpos, I'm talking about the managers and business owners anon. Paradox's pennypinchers and Whoever they put in charge of managing the division they hand the IP too.I don't necessarily Like some of the people who worked as artists and writers(the writer of Sorcerer 20 can suck cock), but they aren't corpos by default.
>>94607246That makes more sense now. Many of those managerial types can stifle creativity if left unchecked, I agree, buuuuut they're also necessary to keep the business afloat. Without them, it'd be the other way around, the creatives would be unchecked, and our hypothetical company would very likely struggle to stay afloat. Shit needs to be balanced, it's what I'm saying. Now. Knowing how to navigate those corporate constraints is key to getting a good product out the door. Do you feel this is what is lacking for the World of Darkness to succeed? Genuine question.
>>94607132>Anon, if you're not comparing D&D to the World of Darkness then why did you brought it up [sic]Reading the post explains the postHere's your (you)
>>94607333>Reading the post explains the postYes. It explains that you're a faggot and a schizo.
What are the main rule differences between Mage 1e, Revised and 2e?
>>94607333>Noooooo I couldn't have possibly expressed myself poorly, you don't understand I HAVE to be a little bitch online, my ego depends on itThe trips were really nice though, faggot.
>>94607425as far as i remember very little there are the generic rules changes between wod editions that hit all story teller games, revised made umbra travel harder because of it's meta plot and the unions isn't playable in the first edition and one of the editions stated familairs differently than the other
Does Caine listen to Slipknot?
>>94607544yeah and only slipknot. You can actually find him by looking up uber drivers who play it too much
What should be the next TQ?
>>94607646how about "what faction do you think has the most missed potential?" as in what faction could have been way cooler than what white wolf ended up printing
>>94607655I'd say the question has potential.Any ideas on what image we could use? Something faction-agnostic if possible.
>>94607665Crop something out of the comics in the daeva clanbook
>>94607665how about this? it's from the dead mmo which is peak missed potential
>>94607698I was thinking about using a picture of the Unsullied from the AGOT show but I think you've hit gold there. New thread coming up in a few. Not gonna fuck up the title this time, pinky promise.
New Thread>>94607730>>94607730>>94607730
>>94606590I'm pretty sure Musk is a normalfag, he probably doesn't know what the fuck a World of Darkness is considering he's totally focused on D&D.
>>94607990I`m pretty sure "Musk" does not exist and it's seven different people with a lot of plastic surgery to look similar working as the frontbumper of some weird shadow government deep state faction. God knows if there was ever a real Elon Musk.
