Carnivale Edition>Previous>>98393826>Pastebinhttps://pastebin.com/WiCHizn0>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>5e Megahttps://mega.nz/folder/7rQQ1LbQ#16_AiXVGo0P3_rVOJuoZyA>VtM to VtR fan translation guidehttps://mega.nz/folder/LhYTUD7b#cRDFTcMXSB_2TjD7eJoE5Q>STV content foldershttps://pastebin.com/9i9zhydQ>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 QuestionHave you ever had a session to cut loose and revel in some sort of festivity?
>>98402171>Thank you bakeslave>Bakeslave?>You know, cause you bake, and you're a slave Thanks for the thread though
Fuck, I don't remember ever having a "beach episode"-session.
Okay, so I think ive smashed enough things together to get the best crafted weapon you could ask for, piling everything together.The Dark AthameA jet black knife/sword>Changeling Treasures 5 for every Art contained in a ring on the hilt or gemstone>access to all Demon Lores 5 dots as a hilt ring>Imprisoned Wraith granting 5 dots to all Arcanoi>A Wraith Artifact 5 hilt ring>A Garou Fetish 5 hilt ring>+5 damage>+5 accuracy>-5 difficulty>cant be dodged>hits spirits & ghosts>can attack from range, any distance as long as you can see them>enchanted with every Ward vs. Thaum Ritual>enchanted with Path of Warding 3 glyph that deals (Successes x2 Agg damage) to whoever touches it except the owner>Blade of the Forbidden Flower for all Vampire Disciplines at 8>Flaming Sword of Mars>Verdant Blade>Enchant Talisman>could have sworn there was a ritual to make the weapon drink Vitae when it hits but couldnt find the nameTheres probably some extra small time rituals & buffs you could add & invest into it. Mostly the idea is to construct it in parts so that each component is its own buff that comes together in a whole beyond just the Sorcerer Enchanting 6 benefits to pure combat.By all means pile more shit onto this monstrosity
>>98402189When your Rokea every episode is a beach episode
>>98402193JAWSOME!
>>98402193What about the Sea World episode?
Choose your destiny!
>>98402220Ah yes the universal brothel side quests.
>>98402179Youre welcome. Im gonna go back to my depressive stupor now. we have to put down our dog down tomorrow
>>98402231Not a furry & i dont have a degenerate mommy dommy fetish, dont want a blown out slut who traded her pussy for power, cant trust a vampire with a dead vagina, hunter would probably kill me. Where are the sexy Changelings or Mummy girls?
>>98402231Magician all the way.
>>98402237Fuck, that sounds rough. Hope you make it through anon.
>>98402231I will take the furry.
>>98402257>Changelings Can't get online.
>>98402190>>could have sworn there was a ritual to make the weapon drink Vitae when it hits but couldnt find the nameBone of Eternal Thirst, level 7, in Blood Magic. Also Bone of the Kindred, level 8, in Player's Guide, if you're an asshole. I could have sworn there was a third level version of the damn thing somewhere but I can't place it for the life of me.
>>98402305Thats what I thought! It was a 3rd or 4th level ritual that would let an enchanted blade drain a handful of vitae
Sex with gangrels and nosferatu and cappadocians
In a twist of cosmic balance, the universe has created a perfect match for the Tremere. Describe said splat.
>>98402322Truly the hero we deserve.
>>98402346Surprisingly enough, its Clan Tremere. Only Tremere can fuck over Tremere
>>98402346A sect of English monks who dedicate their lives to stomping out magic and are totally not discount wizards themselves. They study martial arts and the like.
>>98402317Wield the Spear of Damnation, V20 Dark Ages Companion. I don't know if that was the correct one; it's not great, so you'll want to use Vires Acquirit Eundo (Blood Magic) or the Ritual of Holding (Player's Guide) on it.
Can someone tell me the attributes, skills, and disciplines you need to have at char gen or what you need to build to in order to have relatively painless combat in Dark Ages?I get that world of darkness combat is bad but there is no guide out there to explain traps and other options to be aware of. For example, as a vampire you can boost your stats with blood. Does that mean you should only increase fortitude rather than stamina because you can soak aggravated damage with fortitude and armor, but stamina you can boost when the situation demands it?I just want to make a competent combat character but actually be able to spend my experience on niche shit like seneschal or finance even if the gm might not ever use it. Any help or insight?
>>98402182Couldn't a mage literally just do all of that with sphere magic?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2lnOkhCUpoSeems like it's official for all intents and purposes: we are getting a new VtM edition that will be unveiled at GenCon
>>98402190You're missing a few things.>Dark Age Inquisitor Forge of God enhancements>A source of the Mastery background for demon lores>Mummy ward enchants through Alchemy, Amulets, Effigy and Necromancy rituals>Sorcery Wards to give -6 to all dicepools for your enemiesI'm probably forgetting somet hings.
>>98402419>hi, vamily
>>98402419Magefans dodged a fucking NUKE.
>>98402380Anon, fortitude is a discipline. You can't boost the number of points you have in it with blood-buffs.Blood-buffing only lets you boost strength, dexterity, and/or stamina. Fortitude, Celerity, and Potence add passively to those dicepools, you can spend blood to turn potence/fortitude rating into successes instead of dice, and blood can be spent on celerity for extra actions.
Hypothetical: Let's say I ran a WtA chronicle set in 2026, and nothing after ToJ was canon, the wrinkle being that no new woofs (including BSDs) have been conceived since 2004, and the Red Star/Wormwood faded as mysteriously as it appeared in 2005.How do you think the Garou Nation would change? Would kinfolk be better or worse off? Should fera also be in decline?
>>98402367That's just the Technocracy, though
>>98402380Vampire is a social game. Looking to win in combat is dumb. Look to win standing, & favors. Powers that let you do odd stuff is better than fighting powers. That being said, stack Celerity (more actions means you dont need to split dice pools & you get to kill people faster) & go with something like Typhonic Maw or Obtenebration tentacles for an easy grapple win
Have you tried DriveThruRPG's print on demand?
>>98402380Worth noting that archery lets you make attacks equal to your dots in archery as a single action. Volley attack + celerity lets you put out an incredible number of attacks, if that's something you want to play with.
>>98402482>the wrinkle being that no new woofs (including BSDs) have been conceived since 2004sounds like lotta adult women fetish pandering
>>98402482>How do you think the Garou Nation would changeIt would be going extinct. The youngest Garou, the absolute youngest baby, would be 22 years old. So probably they would muster up for one last brave charge against the end of days and die in a blaze of glory. So I would say that there is no Garou Nation unless you're trying to run Messiah Complex.
>>98402436I dont think those will add a ton of extra bonuses, just a little feature here or there.Mastery would need to be possessed by the player, not the weapon I think, but you could do that.Thought sorcery capped at 5 not 6, I can change that>>98402370Thats the one.
>>98402482Massive Nationwide harano & a big old suicide charge against whatever big bad they pick after 10 years let alone 20+
>>98402538>I dont think those will add a ton of extra bonuses, just a little feature here or there.Anon, Forge of God can take you from 0 to True Faith 5. That's a passive "FUCK YOU" feild that protects from the supernatural.The convenience features, like making it indestructable, let you always know it's location, warn you of danger, etc, are nice thoughYou're out of your fucking mind if you think mummy hekau are minor convenience features though.>Mastery would need to be possessed by the player, not the weapon I think,You can't use mastery on the weapons lores if the weapon doesn't have mastery. You NEED to bind a demon to the sword if you want it to be able to toss california into orbit.>Thought sorcery capped at 5 not 6Anon, toss your sorcerer 20th anniversary edition book into a fire and get sorcerer revised from the mega links in the thread post.>
>>98402491I wasn't aware the technocracy employed Kung-Fu Friars.>>98402482>No new woofs born for 20 yearsKinfolk are becoming third class citizens at this point, but more realistically I suppose the Garou, with their propensity towards extremism, would devolve into nihilistic theories on how to prepare the Kinfolk for a no Garou battle against the wyrm after a decade.Effectively, Kinfolk would become a Hunter faction.>>98402534>>98402552This also, though Harano is a W5 concept it'd be do or die for the Garou. No sense preserving the Nation if it has no warriors.>>98402524I imagine this also, for all the Ronin and the hedonistic liberal Garou who don't believe in the Apoc at all which would be quite hard seeing that they hear the screams of Gaia nightly
>>98402583Harano isnt a w5 concept...
>>98402597Ah, sorry for being retarded
>>98402572>Anon, Forge of God can take you from 0 to True Faith 5. That's a passive "FUCK YOU" feild that protects from the supernatural.>The convenience features, like making it indestructable, let you always know it's location, warn you of danger, etc, are nice thoughMy bad, I didnt see the True Faith thing>You're out of your fucking mind if you think mummy hekau are minor convenience features though.Not at all, Im probably the biggest Mummy fan in this general>>Mastery would need to be possessed by the player, not the weapon I think,>You can't use mastery on the weapons lores if the weapon doesn't have mastery. You NEED to bind a demon to the sword if you want it to be able to toss california into orbit.Are you sure? If so we can do that. Im not one to argue>Anon, toss your sorcerer 20th anniversary edition book into a fire and get sorcerer revised from the mega links in the thread post.Will do. Im not claiming to be any kind of expert
>>98402583Of course they employ those. Do you think black suits have sex at all?
>>98402237My sincere condolences.>>98402419Less than 15 seconds into the video and I already feel my skin crawling from the greasy groomer-vibes.
>>98402419No way those losers could ever write a half decent game.
>>98402462I could have worded that better. What I mean is it's just better to invest in fortitude because it lets you soak agg. You can spend blood to raise your physicals as needed for the moment, but stamina doesn't let you soak aggravated damage to my knowledge. So it's just better to raise fortitude with xp>>98402504Vampire may be a social game at the core of it, but most storytellers are going to force a combat situation at least once. It's kinda of the reason I assume you can buy physical disciplines without a tutor, but all the magical crap or odd ones you have to get blood bonded for it.>>98402523I never concerned the archery angle because how hard it is to reliably get range attacks in some combat situations. That's a good combo but not sure how often you'd be able to pull it off. A lot better than I thought. I fell into the trap of assuming most of the combat options were mostly bad save for clinch, strike, and situationally tripI appreciate the advice. It sounds way more simple than it should be though. Is it just really celerity to win?
>>98402775The occasional combat should be met with a couple of combat ghouls or a gargoyle bodyguard. But being a grapple guy with multiple attack is pretty sweet. Take a look at Typhonic Maw, its nasty.
>what the theurge has been up to the entire time while everything is going down at pentex meat factory
>>98402419I'm guessing the gencon playtest is trying to sell a new edition to the higher ups, rather than something set in stone. If it isn't well received, they scrap it. Also, genuinely who is this for? There's three Vampire games out now. All three have similar but distinct mechanics. All three have their own feeling and lore. Most importantly, all three are competing for the subset of TTRPG players that want to roleplay as vampires in a nominally real-world setting. There's also third-party stuff, like rules for porting over to other systems (GURPS and more recently D&D 5e). Just who is a new edition going to appeal to? Are you just going to reprint 20th and pretend you're not? If so, you might get some of the 20th fans, but also, they might just stick with their largely complete game. A middle ground will likely please nobody. And I don't believe they can make a game that will be good enough to outright replace either VtM or VtR, and they've already expressed intent to move away from V5. It all feels very ill-advised, and like a last-ditch attempt to "save" the IP that they sunk in the first place. All they had to do was not cancel 20th and CofD.
I missed most of last thread, but I want to say: People storytiming your games, you are appreciated, even if you don't receive many replies.
>>98402906>A middle ground will likely please nobody.That's probably what we are getting. Some Frankenstein monster made of V5, Requiem, V20 and some random ideas from the morons we saw on the video.With some luck, this shit tanks immediately, paradox decides to get rid of the IP and we may hope for a good edition in 4-5 years.
>>98402869Granted spirits are way more interesting than real world shit.
Is Robocop what peak Iterator performance looks like?
>>98402956Nah that would be the TX from terminator 3
>>98401723Basically you're either on the path of guaranteed paranoid schizophrenia or you're sucking off shadow demons and hoping that doesn't screw with your head.
>>98402929>Bone Gnawer pack meeting
Vampire: the Aubade
>>98403041No need to insult v6 developers. Can't you see how hard they are working?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_lpKcjS3Yo
>>98402444I had to burn a lot of quint on that Entropy ritual to make this happen instead of M5.
>>98402419Did the fact that players prefered "street level play" instead of "revenants in trenchcoats fighting with katanas on rooftops" (like the writers intended) end up killing R:TR? Of course, its also a bit ironic that that Oxymoron entertainment would acquire black dog game factory, especially since oxymoron dice played a huge roll in encouraging warlocks to really wave their dicks in public as their eldritch patrons would punish them for being too discreet with their sexe magicque.
>>98402419>Vampire is a given>Mage could be possible, lots of potential to establish cosmic world building, but it's also esoteric and nitche>Werewolf modern isn't WoD, and Werewolf classic is simply too racist to be published todayWhat will join Vampire in being this Edition's new Big Three? I feel like Changeling could absorb the spirt world and shape changing pretty easy. Maybe a whole new splat? There still isn't an offical Creature From The Black Lagoon splat.
>>98402906As a newer fan, I do feel like the metaplot is a bit impenetrable at times. If I'm gonna run a game in my hometown, I'd feel like I have to read the thirty years of metaplot that take place there. A new edition could always be a way to make a clean break in lore.
>>98403288Mage, please.Vampire is getting raped a second time and the magefags haven't even been molested*. *Brucato doesn't count
Cappadocius was a jerk
>>98403366>t. dirty Gio
>>98403292You don't need a clean break in lore. You just need to ditch the retarded concept of "metaplot" and the idiocy that you need to advance it, and treat the old metaplot stuff as established history that is occasionally referenced.But the idea of just polishing things through iterative effort and sticking to a setting as an overall concept is alien to modern corpos and their basedguzzling committees.They think they need to use their platform for "le message" and that they can "do better" than the things that actually made something popular to begin with. All the while listening to hardcore autismos that form a loud minority clamoring for demystification and categorizations instead of broad strokes and unreliable narration.It's all so fucking tiresome.
>>98403391Okay, if we're playing together and I establish something that goes against a book published twenty years ago, you're not gonna sperg out and Um, Actually me? If anything, how is changing unreliable narration from one political extreme to another seen in modern books different from what you're talking about with not worring about established history?
oh yeah, THAT happened
>>98402668Just looking at them should demolish anyone's and everyone's faint hope of anything worthwhile being done whatsoever.Who the fuck is going to tard-wrangle the bulldyke and the three tehee-so-nerdy karen-wannabes into producing anything at all worth even skimming through? It sure as shit isn't going to be limp-wristed ramones-hipster with the faggot mustache.That video has honest to god negative T in frame. It actively sucks the joy out of life. They didn't even plan for it to be black-and-white, they just uploaded it and the colors drained right the fuck out.
>>98403405>you're not gonna sperg out and Um, Actually me?No, why the fuck would I, especially if the information can be treated as unreliable? What my character knows is not what I know.>how is changing unreliable narration from one political extreme to anotherWhat the fuck are you talking about, you schizobabbling fucking loon? Actually take your meds. Literally nobody was talking about political extremes or switching one to another
>>98403426>nobody was talking about political extremes>>98403391>use their platform for "le message" and that they can "do better"
>>98402869C'mon, do something. We're spending our time and money running surveillance here.
>>98403417>tard-wrangleRelax, our Muslim-inside will surely do a good job.
>>98403436Thank you for pointing out the source of your schizophrenia, but that is all you did. You need to realize that that is your problem to deal with, and you shouldn't make it everyone elses.>>98403453As a Swede, I can do nothing but apologize profoundly for the crimes of Stockholm, and only reference the fact that the rest of us calls it a fagswamp for a reason. Literally "sissy-swamp", but it doesn't have the same ring and intonation to it as fagswamp.
>>98403410In defense of The Chaos Factor, at least they tried. Sadly, oWoD may be cool, but not everything in it is.
>>98403496oWoD is all about separating the stupid stuff from the cool stuff, nWod is all lame stuff.
>>98403288I'm sure people would be lining up to play Fishman: The Pursuit>you are the spawn of ancient things that dwell in the deepest depths >once plentiful varied as the stars and your kind has been cursed by the [mysterious progenitor] to be infertile, unable to breed with any creature of the sea, any beast of the field, and any thing that flies.>thus your only recourse is to breed with that most curious creature that dwells in the dry world above: humankind>that is the singular responsibility of every fishman and fishwoman, to mate with a soil-dweller and produce offspring who will, in time, join you in the Deep BelowYou're all creatures of the Black Lagoon (and a bit of a nod to the Phantom of the Opera) trying to find a surface dweller to love and to be loved by in return--or failing that...
>>98403417
>>98402419>problem glasses wanted to delete the Tremere
>>98403492Why don't you explain to the class how "le message" isn't being used in the established political context?
>>98403522Why don't you explain to the class how criticizing message-pushing suggests the switching from one political extreme to another?And before you answer, the question is rhetorical, I actually have no interest in whatever schizo ramblings you've got stored up and ready to fire. It will actually, factually, genuinely be ignored.
>>98403520>But you don't understand, the Tremere is heckin' problematic because it's got like structure?>The Nosferatu turning pretty girls into twisted mockeries just for laughs though? Toooootes girlboss energy haha don't worry about it.>Oh btw if I can't delete the Tremere I'm going to make my own faction with menses magic and it is canon now because the legal department said so.
>>98403545So, you can't. I guess that's an answer in itself.
>>98403554You got a timestamp for that? They said they've found the franchise golden cows according to the audience and will be very respectful of them. Even the ones they don't agree on.
>>98403564>You got a timestamp for that?Actual autism, goddamn.
>>98403564>fuck the tremerehttps://youtu.be/O2lnOkhCUpo?t=1018>getting rid of the Tremere>it took some convincing not tohttps://youtu.be/O2lnOkhCUpo?t=1242
>>98403643Yes, that proves my point that they are doing things they might not personally like because they want to make authentic world of darkness. It took convincing, that worked in the end, to tell that one person to drop it.
>>98403643holy fucking kek I hope they get rid of like 5 other vampire clans because they are problematic and it's a bigger shitshow than w5. It would be so fucking funny.
>>98403643>the clan that changed the most are ravnosno? that would be the tzimisce who changed two disciplines, all their lore and themes and their clan weaknesswhile the ravnos are still disliked cheats and roamers who only changed one discipline and clan weakness>the clan that changed the least is ventrue because even in chronicles of darkness the ventrue are just ventruefactually incorrect ventrue changed even between 1e and 2e picking up some of the malkavian madness themes in 1e and dropping it in 2e for power isolatesthe clan that changed the least between all editions thematically and powerwise are gangrel you idiots
>>98403649You can pretend to no understand things as much as you want, but their attitude reveals the tone the game will have.
>>98403665*1e and 2e of vtrthey also changed one discipline when going from vtm to vtr unlike gangrel
>>98403667We'll see. Who's right, the one who listens to words being said, or the one listening to their schizo ghosts? Only time will tell.
>>98403292Bro you don't need a new edition to ignore the metaplot. There are sections in Revised books telling you to do exactly that. Who are you even playing with where you're afraid of getting um actually'd by a gigagrog but said grog will also be fine with a new edition? Nights of Prophecy, the big dumb metaplot book, is filled with caveats saying "You can amend these events to fit your table and the story you want to tell". Metaplot rigidity was mostly a player base problem, and trying to forcibly solve old player-centric problems is the reason V5 turned out so restrictive and narrow in scope. More importantly, V5 wasn't a clean break, it was a muddled mess that makes actual discussion of "canon" VtM far more difficult and confusing, what with the many retcons soft and hard. People often don't clarify which they're talking about, leading to confusion and misunderstandings. A new edition isn't going to have the balls to say "V5's plot never happened; we're starting from scratch". >>98403681>Who's right, the one who listens to words being said,nta, how on earth are you so innocent you actually believe what people with a vested interest in selling you something say about said product?
>>98403665>>98403669Them actually bringing up CofD/Requiem just makes me angry. I will genuinely never forgive this company for what they did to Hunter: the Vigil. I hope everyone involved with Paradox's WoD loses their job and dies alone.
>>98403665the dyke said she started with V20, they probably used chatGPT to compile these statistics lol
The amount of people who assume that playing WoD is a similar experience to arguing with people about WoD on the internet is astounding. Even the writers seem to make this mistake a lot of the time.No, just because neckbeards argue about the metaplot and white-room bullshit online all of the time, that doesn't mean that any of it is going to come up in your actual game at all.
>>98403391>>98403692I think the issue is that some people can’t come up with the state of affairs of the supernatural for their city and prefer having something official setting it up even if they are going to modify it
Something occurred to me that really highlights how absurd this entire thing is. So they're trying to pander to the "grogs" here, with lines like "old powers are stirring" or some shit like that right? It means that the V5 stuff all happened, at least the stuff to big and obvious to vaguepost about. Actually take a minute to think about that. Most of the world's elders felt magically compelled to go somewhere vaguely in the middle east, something happened, and now they're just coming back like nothing happened. The Sabbat followed them because they thought the apocalypse was coming (but um actually some stayed behind), and what, are they also doing the walk of shame back out of Iraq? Not to mention all the clan-sect swaps. Anything that actually follows from the V5 plot is absurd, especially if it all suddenly settles back into a status quo. "Oh hi, my Prince, back from your vacation I see? Cool clothes. Do anything interesting at that decade long Elder power meeting?". V5's basic setting fixtures were far more extreme and radical than any revised era metaplot, and writing something that actually continues off of it rather than deletes it outright is going to be unwieldy at best, and far more likely ludicrous and suspension of disbelief breaking.
>>98403758It's happened before with D&D 4e's Forgotten Realms and no one really cares. That edition completely fucked up that setting in countless different ways, only for D&D 5e to basically reset the Forgotten Realms and bring the setting back to where it was in 2e. Almost all of the changes of 4e and all of the things that were important to 4e were smoothed over and never, ever mentioned again. Spellplague? What's that?The point is, no one gave a shit. Over a hundred years of the setting was effectively retconned by advancing the timeline by another hundred years, only for the world to be identical to what it was like a hundred years before. None of the players cared. Everyone's just happy to sweep 4e under the rug and not think about the consequences of it.The same will apply to V5. Beckoning? What Beckoning? The Vienna Chantry got nuked? Who cares, it's rebuilt. Schrecknet got taken down? It's back, baby. Everyone will revert to its pre-V5 state and anyone who wants to think about the consequences of V5 and factor them into their game will be told to shut the fuck up.
>>98403758>like nothing happenedWell, I assume they'll go into that. I'm gonna guess the plot will be something like, "Hey, we've all been coasting on our jobs and the boss's boss's boss is coming to check our work for the first time in decades."
>>98403758>Actually take a minute to think about that. Most of the world's elders felt magically compelled to go somewhere vaguely in the middle eastit's actually worse than that. the gehenna war book retconned the gehenna war to be a global conflict and the beckoning really is just ancients methuselah pulling lesser elders to them to serve as food and minions... please ignore how older books had vampires that the gehenna war book classifies as "blood gods" been affected by the beckoning...the entire "oh shit antedeluvians are running around in the middle east" thing that caused clan lasombra to jump ship from the sabbat turned out to be younger vampires confusing methuselah for antedluvians yet again just like the gangrel back in the original metaplot who been convinved that a neonate empowered by a 4th gen was a 3rd gen
>>98403736not everyone is a professional writer and game designer, that's why there's an industry in the first place, "just homebrew it" is a lazy copout, official material should cover as much ground as possible
>>98403786>the entire "oh shit antedeluvians are running around in the middle east" thing that caused clan lasombra to jump ship from the sabbat turned out to be younger vampires confusing methuselah for antedluvians yet again just like the gangrel back in the original metaplot who been convinved that a neonate empowered by a 4th gen was a 3rd genThat reminds me, didn't 5th ed also change that so he really did find himself briefly inside Ennoia when he earth melded in the wrong place?
>>98403783>Spellplague? What's that?Ask Gale, he studied it and blew himself up over it.
>>98402231Hunter
>>98403783Problem is they don't have the luxury of a 100 year time skip to soothe the damage to suspension of disbelief. They have at best a few years. >>98403784It's still an absurd premise to start from. You have this global phenomenon that has never happened before (in an age where it can actually be documented and shared easily), where every old vampire seemed urged to go to a specific place. There's no writing your way out of that in a way that is both satisfying and returns us to a pre-V5 status quo. Plus all the other changes...
>>98403799Oh yeah, there are so many smartphones recording the middle of a desert at night. Maybe small city nearby, or satellite images. Not exactly New York City in broad daylight.
>>98403758There was also the Second Inquisition, which was plot armored nonsense that couldn't actually happen.
>>98403758>>98403799If they are returning, you can do a lot fo power struggle plots involving the ones that were left behind running things, I don't think it's a problem at all, depends on the quality of the writers more than anything, am I one of the few people that really doesn't hate that whole beckoning thing?It was a way to give a chance to new people to do something relevant, the power scaling in vampire is so brutal that things can easily become too stagnant.
>>98403726I have seen some oldfags claim that metaplot police spergs were a thing back in the day, and presumably before the internet got big people were limited to whatever player base they could find at an LGS. It does, however, feel irrelevant to things currently. There is kind of an equivalent today, the second-hand loreheads, but they're not nearly as bad. Fortunately, I haven't dealt with either directly. I agree with you, but unfortunately "just tailor it to fit your table", while the correct advice, doesn't have legs in online discussion because it's so personal.>>98403736I agree. Putting aside my elitist feelings on the matter, I agree a baseline is necessary. The devil is that setting fixtures isn't the same thing as metaplot. Setting fixtures are stuff like: >Here are the major sects, and the clans, as well as which sect they're usually in.>Vampires have Generations, each vampire's blood is a little less potent than that of their sire. >Many vampires believe in a first vampire, often associated with the biblical Cain. This belief is called Noddism, and is pervasive privately even in the sect that officially denies it. It gives you enough to work with while still giving you plenty of room to fill in the blanks and do your own thing with it.Metaplot is having specific key events that play out a particular way and result in changes to this baseline. Stuff like the Gangrel leaving the Camarilla because of one Elder's bitchfit. You can have strong setting fixtures, and example cities, without needing a metaplot at all.
>>98403822>Maybe small city nearby, or satellite imagesWasn't Ur-Shulgi going around deleting cities without a single fuck given for the Masquerade?
>>98403822Acquire better reading comprehension skills. Mentioning documenting the beckoning refers to vampires themselves being able to document it, and not just assume it was only their Prince that suddenly went on walkabout. >>98403823Yeah, exactly. I think V5 made the setting too implausible to realistically unfuck it without just ripping it up by the roots and retconning the whole thing. Weird how often that's happened in the last decade and a half. Halo, Star Wars, Star Trek. >>98403825>am I one of the few people that really doesn't hate that whole beckoning thing?Yep. It's insanely unwieldy. It's something you can't really adapt either, its very nature makes it all-encompassing. Struggling to change things due to powerful elders, besides being a core theme of vampire, does create some practical problems. But the beckoning is the epitome of V5's tendency to see a problem and create a solution that creates a far worse problem. What if I want an Elder in my game? Now I need a convoluted excuse to make MY Elder excepted from this global phenomenon. In trying to unrestrict the player in one way, it restricts the setting to an absurd degree. Plus all this is only taking it in a vacuum. Combined with the rest of V5's metaplot, you're honestly still more restricted than you were in V20.
>>98403643You're engaging with a pathologically dishonest autist and likely schizophrenic. You're not going to get anything meaningful out of this line of interaction. His loyalty is to the brand because it is the brand, not to anything of substance or meaning. All he deserves is second-hand derision and being ignored.
>>98402171>Have you ever had a session to cut loose and revel in some sort of festivity?There was a party in our haven in the first V5 chronicle we playedit ended with a Ravnos elder getting put to torpor and everyone else rotschrecking
>>98403898>Weird how often that's happened in the last decade and a half. Halo, Star Wars, Star Trek.Warhammer TWICE, Forgotten Realms, etc. It is honestly wild.
Reading War of Ages and it's got some nice summaries of how exactly the political ratrace is what dooms elders to lose their humanity instead of just some inherent happens with age nonsense. Also accidental comedy with this section on gerontocracies.>Kindred elders hold onto power for power’s sake, even when their communities begin to decay as a result. This reflects the very worst in human political systems,which are often loath to allow new generations a place at the table. Whenever an entrenched ruling class uses its influence to cling to power, political rot sets in.>For example, the autocratic regime of the People’s Republic of China is composed exclusively of aged men who thwart any attempts at power-sharing with new generations of leaders. This gerontocracy has little connection to the needs of the nation. They resist much-neededreforms and are reduced to keeping order by slaughtering dissenters. It is an instructive lesson for Storytellers,since the Beijing regime is a fine example of the paranoia, isolation, arrogance and desperation that mark vampire elders.>Even democracies are not immune to fears of passing authority to a new generation. Politicians who came of age during World War II kept a lock on the U.S. presidency for an unprecedented two generations because many voters were loath to allow younger leaders to take over the White House from World War II era leaders. This generational imbalance created a tilt toward autocratic, imperial administrations that were remote from those they governed.This passage talking about the US's problems with old leadership might have aged even worse than Kindred of the East.
>>98403665>the clan that changed the least between all editions thematically and powerwise are gangrelBecause Gangrel are perfect and the best clan.
>>98403665Gangrel's weakness going from permanent to temporary is a pretty big change
>>98402419>>98403520>>98403554>>98403643I wanna say my cautious optimism has guttered, but I knew, from the moment that these new devs tried to play apologist for the photography garbage in V5's "art" but very transparently felt mogged by the JP cover art, that this wasn't gonna go like anyone wanted.https://docs.google.com/document/d/1J2faRdc-EAWmQdyz4E7DAS9yWXNR7-9TL48-LIdYAfI/edit?tab=t.0>Outstar: [...] A principle we have is human-made art. (Applause). [...] with respect to Legacy. We approach this [...] through all the art of before Vampire, from the Base edition, but also Dark Ages and Victoria. And so many other things we are seeing. And I've seen people connecting to the art that was made 25 years ago. Some of it is still appealing. In media, in recollections what you love about vampire. [...] What you connect with the most and what is really pecking your imagination. What can you connect to when making your own character. And that is why we are very much focusing on illustration going forward. Instead of photography, which I very much like>Jess: [...] and we can also really understand the world and characters, and narrative through that artwork. Illustration just provides really a lot of that space for people, why photography can sometimes be taken more literally. V5's approach with photography was extremely innovative at the time and very cool. But we want to really focus on; the things we are going to do with Vampire moving forward, giving everyone the space to really inhabit that power fantasy.
>>98404002>transparently felt mogged by the JP cover art>literally never mentioned itMan, y'all love inventing reasons to be mad, huh?
>>98402231I like burning my enemies alive too much, hunter it it.
>>98403919I'd argue that the claim of U.S. gerontocracy aged quite well. It's also just refreshing to see them shitting on China. Although, I would have a personal quibble as to the differences between mortal gerontocracies and Elders. Mortal politicians rarely have to hold their position for longer than 50 years. Elders have to make it to 300 just to be worthy of the term Elder. Politicians also tend to be protected, nowadays, by how destructive modern warfare makes civil wars, ergo even violent agitated populations are fairly gun-shy when it comes to crossing the Rubicon. Vampire government is still intensely parochial to the point 20 dead kindred is an insane local demographic blow. My point being: Elders do unironically have to earn their position and hold it for far longer. While it is a good resource, I think the important difference is that most Elders are genuinely impressive people with strong wills and sharp minds. Most shitty vampires don't last that long. >>98403932They're not my favorite but I've always liked them. The feral "wild" vampires with animalistic features are nice. Definitely my go-to if I wanna play a not very talky vampire. Feel like they don't get enough love on account of quantum werewolf doctrine limiting rural play, the Ravnos infringing on their nomadic angle, and the general difficulty of being a not very social clan in a very social game.
>>98404023You're right. There's no particular reason why they'd suddenly go back on doing photography despite their clear preference for it. Just something that happened all on its own and had no connection to the vastly superior art that someone just published under their brand, and the attention it received.
Looking to find a list of media to use as reference for each ClanVentrue>UnderworldNosferatu>NosferatuToreador>Interview with a VampireMalkavian>Drusilla from BuffyBrujah>Lost BoysWhat other movies or shows can be added?
>>98403823>SII like how the writers decided to make one tumor that would plague both V5 and H5
>>98404054nta, I haven't seen anyone talking about the jap V5 art outside of this place. Complaints about V5's shitty photobash art are very old, and people have been waxing nostalgic about the old black and white illustrations since V20. I would know, I'm one of those guys. I think it reached a fever pitch in W5, when people were able to accurately spot the google images being used as the basis. Including a folk singer, an actual IDF soldier, and a Maori activist. Besides, the V5 japanese cover was honestly just generic anime. Here's the real SOUL Japan adapting western tabletop stuff.
>>98404062I will always argue that Interview is a better representation of Malkavians than anything else. If you want Toreador, look at Only Lovers Left Alive or Bliss. Nosferatu are not found in Nosferatu, that's just ugly Dracula.
>>98404045>>98404080they should've just said that the photobashing was a cost cutting measure and they'll try harder this time, how can I trust someone who genuinely thinks that visual design was good?Do you really need market research to know people would prefer drawn art over those sterile photos?
>>98404062Salubri
>>98404062>>98404107These suggestions are more "squint and you'll see it";Innocent Blood is about a Brujah accidentally creating a 0 humanity fledgling.Near Dark is a Gangrel pack, but more likely just a nomadic Sabbat pack of Panders. Speaking of Gangrel, the original Fright Night 1 & 2 has some cool use of Protean, but it's debatable if they work as Gangrel. Same goes for Vampire Circus.The best depiction of Lasombra is probably Ganja & Hess, which deals with vampires that are only out for themselves and their struggle with God.
>>98404062i feel like underworld is kinda hard to map to clans because the original movie copied entire pages from the fictions novels but a lot of the characters got united like selene is mostly lucita without shadow powers but the first scene where she hunts lycans is a theo bell scene where he hunts sabbat in new york in the clan novels but the main ventrue of those books is a complete side character kraven is literaly jan pieterzoo as he appears in Lucita's books with the only difference being that he has a childe (his feeding preference does not show up in lucita's books)
>>98404167The biggest stand-out to me is the insane bullshit Selene pulls with Celerity as the series goes on, but she is a 3rd generation vampire (5th in WoD, since they start counting at 3).
>>98404202oh yeah the later movies are a completely different beast and selene also get's a powerup by drinking the blood of what in wod would be adam
>>98404218Oh yeah, that's true. It even cures her of her weaknesses so she can walk in the sun. I was just thinking of that scene where she speed-blitzes an entire room of other vampires and they can't even see her move, and she's gotta have Celerity 8 to do that, which coincidentally matches perfectly with her 5th gen background. But then with her power-up I think that's basically like Golconda or something and she has no gen limits anyway.
Can you guys link some of this bad art? I never really looked at anything in V5 after I flipped through it & realized it was trash
>>98404144Is this real? Is it any good?
>>98404244Yes, just watch it, it's fun.
Talking about donating blood powers, a few threads ago somebody complained that elders should be able to give blood to sufficiently low gen vampire and bump them up in generation, but they actually can do this after a fashion. Just Embrace some chucklefuck off the street for the younger Vampire to Diablerize.
>>98404282But this is wasteful, path dots are expensive.Counter-argument: From Marduk's Throat
>>98404282yes that is possible and implied to be what the tremere are doing as all chancelors in the council of seven are somehow raised up to 4th gen but of course awful for both you and the other guy's humanity meter
Rolled 2 (1d4)>>98402231Left to right, top to bottom
>>98404136>Do you really need market research to know people would prefer drawn art over those sterile photos?More like they needed to purge the Mind's Eye LARPers they put in charge of V5 in their entirety to make it possible to go back to drawn art. Karim Muammar is the only member of his group who dodged the mass firings following the Chechenya Gay Genocides book incident (though he somehow got promoted to WoD's Lead Developer by Paradox, which ruined W5).
>>98404282>>98404305It is actually amazing that I have never thought of this before. I mean yeah, it should obviously be absolutely devastating to your Humanity, but it can also make for a genuinely solid plot device or award to the coterie - especially if you task them with finding the unlucky victim that is going to be embraced and then diablerized in the span of a night or two.It might cause issue, whatwith your aura being stained by the diablerie, but it can work in domains where diablerie is on the table.. such as exactly the one I'm working on.>>98404239I mean you can just.. flip through any gWoD book and immediately see that it is trash.
>>98404282>>98404380I feel like this would be extremely frowned upon, like biological warfare tier, if one elder started doing this all the other elders would set their differences aside for one night and gank up on them to prevent upsetting the balance of power, otherwise some nigga would come out one night with an army of low gen vampires and conquer everything.
>>98404080holy shit now this is kino, fuck the v5 jap cover literally who cares
>>98404002>V5's approach with photography was extremely innovativeThe fact that they can say this with a straight face is genuinely insane.>giving everyone the space to really inhabit that power fantasyAnyone that approaches roleplaying games from the idea of "power fantasy", let alone the genre of Dark/Gothic Horror/Fantasy in general but the Worlds of Darkness in particular - where the awful is central to the themes and people's enjoyment of the game - belong on a fucking cross.They have misunderstood both the point and appeal of roleplaying games as well as the World of Darkness at a level that cannot be considered anything other than absolutely foundational. They are consequently unable to produce anything of even remote value. Like all evil, they can only corrupt in the service of their vices.
>>98403961They did that? When? Where?
>>98404305>>but of course awful for both you and the other guy's humanity meterIf you can get one dot of Bardo, you can actually negotiate intentional humanity loss by setting aside time to regain it afterwards.>>98404407I imagine it being only for special favors or basically adoption. The flipside to having an army of servants one generation below you is that they are all aware they can replace you, and once enough of them get seditious thoughts they'll start a conspiracy to overthrow you. Don't forget that the Nectar of the Bitter Rose ritual allows six such diablerists to benefit from a single act.>>98404429I'm sorry you had to find out this way, but vampires are a type of superhero character.
>>98404463It would be another one of those things that makes everyone distrust the Tremere, I can't see it being a thing that anyone would do and still claim to be part of polite vampire society.
>>98404407i could see this as a cautionary tale (that may or may not be true) because don't forget guys diablery is addictive and the "adoptive sire" just now created a vampire who is very likely addicted to diablery, low humanity due to serial diablery and aware that there is exactly 1 generation between him and his adoptive sire
>>98404429It's because this isn't actually a self-reflection, they're just gritting their teeth and pandering to the "chuds". They're talking about power fantasy because the V5 crowd liked to categorize anything that wasn't misery porn as a power fantasy. They don't actually understand that there is a middle ground between having a cry session with your undead polycule and playing Coldsteel the Vampire and stomping under-statted elder after under-statted elder while the ST talks about how cool you are. Any actual tabletop player knows that good games have enough challenge to make victory feel earned, and that said victory isn't a forgone conclusion. Ones with a few notches on their belt know that there should be hardship and woe especially in a game like vampire. But they're trying to pander to a gestalt of everyone who hates V5, and not even an accurate one at that. So they say "power fantasy".
>>98404463>vampires are a type of superhero charactert.
>>98404463>vampires are a type of superhero characterYou really do belong on a cross. In a better world, you would be dead, and if you were dead the world be better. Because not only is this not true, but it would not be a mere vapid power fantasy by necessity even if it was.
>>98404487>the V5 crowd liked to categorize anything that wasn't misery porn as a power fantasyThere's also the inverse, people who like to label anyone who wants to focus on vampirism as a curse to be wrestled with as misery porn theatre kids.
>>98404062>MalkavianVampire's Kiss.>Followers of SetLair of the White Worm>GiovanniInnocent Blood>Gangrel30 days of night >Tzimisce Either Possession, From Beyond, or Beam Stoker's Dracula>Lasombra Just play the 2 The Darkness games>Ventrue Main villain from Blade >Nosferatu Main villain from Blade 2>Cappadocian The Hunger? I don't know, I just think The Hunger is too good not to include. Cool to see here's where they lifted the Ankh thing off fromAnyon got a good one for Assamite or Ravnos? A girl walks home alone at night isn't really there beyond "Muslim vampire" and Wanted has the Assassin Guild vibe but no vampire.>>98404152I dunno man, Innocent Blood seemed pretty Gio coded to me, it's got the literal vampire mafia
>>98404487>It's because this isn't actually a self-reflectionIf they were capable of self reflection, V5 would have never left the drawing board.
Question for the Storytellers here, how does this guy fare in your chronicle's city?
>>98404556>There's also the inverseThe inverse is in the vast minority. Complaining about them is a waste of everyone's time when actually important issues are killing the game.
>>98404547
>>98404569He doesn't make it passed the first night. Any idiot that talks back to the elders is asking to be staked and left for the sun.
>>98404556Oh sure, they're just not the ones controlling the IP right now.
>>98404580>Average TzimisceThe modern era really is the best thing to happen to the freaks isn't it? This isn't even a masquerade breach.
>>98404569As mentioned in the other thread, he would make more sense as a Brujah than a Gangrel, but that kind of reductive straight-jacketing isn't really necessary. He's a violent rabble-rouser still integrated into mortal politics, which makes him a useful tool to manipulate the masses and flush out dissidents in a city with strong Anarch sympathies, but I imagine that if his movement gets squashed he'll feel betrayed and burnt out before moving on to fresher territory to repeat the cycle. Ultimately, he doesn't have enough punch to actually make an impact on Vampire society, but he's also not problematic enough to be a priority target, and being a Gangrel means he has an easy time dipping out of danger and moving on.
>>98403510Isn't that the plot of Leviathan: the Tempest?
>>98404577While they don't control the IP, the power fantasy guys who sneer at the prospect of roleplaying someone who sees vampirism as a curse instead of a bundle of superpowers are the majority in online spaces. If they weren't, /wodg/ wouldn't be dominated by power level autism.
>>98402190>Shatters on enemies without doing any harm if a lemon is involved
>>98404620Eh, they just have the highest rate of yapping. Especially without poster count they can seem more oppressive than they are. I'm convinced it's like 2-3 guys that do 90% of the circlejerk power speculation.
>>98404380>gWoDYou can just say the edition. We're not putting one whole game in it's own category. At least Chronicles had two editions across several monsters.
>>98404639Why a lemon specifically?
>>98404620Anon, are you retarded? Have you actually not seen how the vast, Vast majority of players are reddit and discord theatre kids? Do you genuinely, unironically think a 4chan General is an accurate representation of reality?
>>98404612Sort of but yes.
>>98404661Zerglings are fatally allergic to lemon juice, which means you can fend off zerg rush by squeezing a lemon on the ramp outside your main.
>>98404660gWoD sperg has been trying to make "gWoD" a thing for years now, despite WoD5 being the more prevalent term. Please understand that it is core to his being and he will go on lengthy rants about it if prompted, best to just not call attention to it.
How would you build Johnathan Ried from Vampyr? He's sort of a lone wolf on the edge of vampire society, so maybe a Caitiff. He also has strange visions of a "god of blood" claiming to he his sire. Maybe he's a Malkavian?
>>98404679But anon, there are no ways to make lemonade in game
>>98404664Reddit is dominated by memes, cosplay/art attention whoring and Lasombra worship, almost to the same degree that /wodg/ worships Tremere. Anything that doesn't fall into those categories is usually a rules question. Most Discord servers, even the official one, are dominated by rules questions and history/metaplot debates. The only ones that are remotely dominated by theatre kids are the cliquey PbP servers.
>>98404706That explains why it's three minutes into the game and there are already zerglings in your mineral line.
>>98404722Good thing I only play the campaigns, then
>>98404429>giving everyone the space to really inhabit that power fantasyThis is so funny because it is an extreme minority of larper that will have access to the level of costuming and makeup on display in V5. The old MET books actually did this because those were all photos of normal schlubs in normal clothes, exactly what you'd expect to see at a larp.
>>98404718>Lasombra worshipOh, ew, it's Reddit that's responsible for all the Lasombra glazers? Just another reason to hate that place.>/wodg/ worships Tremere.The white room autists do, there's also a different cohort that despises the Tremere with every fiber of their being. They're also Tzigger apologists, mind you. In any case, I wouldn't call us a monolith.I however am the ascended Ventrue glazer. Honorable mention goes to Nosferatu, Gangrel, and Malkavian.
>>98404547Left to right: Gangrel, Toreador, Nosferatu, Tremere, Malkavian x2, Brujah. How'd I do?
>>98404735>Oh, ew, it's Reddit that's responsible for all the Lasombra glazers?Apparently. Spooky Obteneration shadow magic has them spellbound, for some reason.
>>98404735If the Tremere weren't meant to be the best clan why can they start with both Traumaturgy and Vicissitude?
>>98404735Where do Toreador glazers like me sit?
>98404741Case in point.
>>98404620>/wodg/ wouldn't be dominated by power level autism.We do it because number crunching is fun.
>>98404739I've met people like that. They go absolutely gaga for Obtenebration, but also want to whitewash and sand down all the ugly parts of Clan Lasombra. Which just makes their identity issues so much worse. People give Tzimisce shit for being a Discipline with a Clan, but I think the Lasombra have it worse as far as the actual playerbase is concerned.>>98404749As long as you're not the guy that posts the same Toreador copypasta in every fucking VtMB thread for the last decade, you're cool. Toreador can sometimes suffer from people treating them just as "ooh pretty sexy I'm stacy", but there's actual meat on their bones conceptually. They're obsessive, perfectionist, prone to purity spirals about what "real" art and culture actually is, all secretly hate each other, not to mention the propensity for debauchery. Very rich clan that's sometimes done dirty by players that go after the surface level "sexy art hoe" stuff.
>>98404775>the same Toreador copypasta..............what?
>>98404775>Very rich clan that's sometimes done dirty by players that go after the surface level "sexy art hoe" stuff.heh
>>98404775>Very rich clan that's sometimes done dirty by players that go after the surface level "sexy art hoe" stuff.Anon, your post literally described a good chunk of art hoes.Toreador are art hoes. There's no way to get around that.
I once played a Toreador who was an MMA enthusiast in life and his kryptonite was a high-octane fight between two highly skilled and equally matched opponents. Yes, I'm aware that's a cliche in its own right.
>>98404775>People give Tzimisce shit for being a Discipline with a Clan, but I think the Lasombra have it worse as far as the actual playerbase is concerned.Most of the clans with unique Disciplines have this issue, but the worst culprits are Tzimisce ("my personality is Vicissitude") Lasombra ("look about how spook and shadowy I am") and Tremere ("what do you mean I'm hated by everyone and the blood bound bitch of an elder, I thought this was the power fantasy caster supremacy clan")
>>98404702Anyone without anything specific is Caitiff by default
>>98404784I'm not making this up. Bloodlines threads on /v/ often gets a dude that posts the same copypasta talking about how ToreaCHADs are the best ever, like how everyone wants them and how they might have helped do the holocaust. >>98404786God, that's blatant. >>98404791You must be hanging out with the champagne of art hoes. Say what you will, but even poseurs can put in impressive work when it comes to playing the social game. I also can't possibly imagine any art hoe I've ever met putting in the effort required to throw a Toreador ball. They might be hoes, and they might like art, but they aren't art hoes. Ya feel me?>>98404798The Wareador might be baby's first atypical Toreador concept, but it isn't a bad one. It's like Detective Malkavian or Gangster Ventrue. It's a good staple that fits within the clan while not falling within the purview of the stereotype or default. and I'll take a fight sperg Toreador over the ethical plastic surgeon Tzimisce any day of the week.
>>98404749On your knees below the table.
>>98404688I wish my "1WoD" had caught on. That was a weird fad.
>>98404798>and his kryptonite was a high-octane fight between two highly skilled and equally matched opponents. Yes, I'm aware that's a cliche in its own right.That's Toreadors living up to their name for you
>>98404803>I thought this was the power fantasy caster supremacy clan")It might help you make an argument if you don't get distracted trying to make potshots at people Playing the Game Wrong.
>>98404775> People give Tzimisce shit for being a Discipline with a Clan, but I think the Lasombra have it worse as far as the actual playerbase is concerned.tzimisce get more backlash because of both how badly written Vicissitude is rules wise and because the Eldest who is deeply tied to Vicissitude is such a central character in the metaplot
>>98404822>and how they might have helped do the holocaust.I can see that being true
>>98404822Or "The Good Doctor" tzimisce
>>98404775Lasombra has never been anything much more to me than shadow power Spaniards & hot dusky vampire nuns
>>98404741how the fuck do you start with vicissitude as Tremere?
>>98404943Because that's the only two ways to use Vicissitude unless you are using some homebrew bullshit.You don't even get upgrade your retainers using Vicissitude Modifications.
>>98404971IIRC, thats a 4 dot merit in DA and v20. Not even that unusual.
>>98404976Just a standard issue Tremere neonate with Thaumaturgy 5 and Vicissitude.
>>98404822What about a fight sperg Tzimisce and a Volgirre Toreador who enjoys bogging people?
>>98404973Which is why Tzims had to be fluffed up & they added kolduns so you could have a different archetype & flavors
>>98404973>You don't even get upgrade your retainers using Vicissitude Modifications.Why not? Just add a mechanism to hide them to preserve the masquerade like wolverine's claws or those vampires from blade 2 that can split their face open.
>>98404996Yeah you get one of those every now and then, BioThaumaturgy became a thing for that exat reason.
>>98405019Because as written, Vicissitude has no actual rules. It does whatever you can convincingly argue it to do, but has no mechanics in the rulebook to guarantee anything, which means it ranges from pretty useless to gamebreakingly overpowered depending entirely on the referee's permissiveness and the player's cleverness.
>>98405019>Why not?Because the rules for that don't exist. I am sure most STs would be reasonable and allow you to give a bodyguard ghoul a carapace or B8 5 dots of Appearance it is just inconsistent for no other reason besides "fuck you for trying to play one them".
>>98405036E have plenty of examples of what it can do n the form of vissicitude modification merits, guide to the low clans has an even larger potential selection than v20.
Let's make a list of things a given Toreador would go gaga which don't fit the usual stereotype:>Liveleak videos>physical comedy>complex machinery>vehicular stunts>tile patterns
>>98405045What's wrong with the usual stereotype? You can't tell me you really don't want ten foot tall paintings of yourself, marble showrooms, and statues of the gods.
>>98405036I don't think you can call vicissitude gamebreakingly overpowered because, because of the nature of the discipline it requires prep time and material.Like yeah, a smart Tzim can create a very powerful horde for him but if that horde is gone, it will take him years to re-create them. Vicissitude simply takes too much time and material to be called gamebreakingly overpowered imoThough even with that limitation it's very powerful, I won't say it's not
>>98405045>vehicular stuntsI feel compelled to make a toreador version of roxy rocket.
>>98405053Variety's the spice of life, anon. And unlife too.
>>98405093Honestly, not a horrible way of marrying the Toreador's obsessive, creepy fixations with their overwhelming horniness.
>>98405045Sourthern Tories loving monster trucks or the "pagentry" of WWE sounds hilarious
What's the worst subversion of a clan stereotype?>Civilised cosmopolitan Gangrel>Seemingly sane Malkavian>Strait-laced puritanical Giovanni>Gregarious Nosferatu socialite>Lowbrow Tremere bruiser>New money Ventrue>Kind and charitable Setite>Erudite Brujah>Loyal and honourable Lasombra>Ethical Tzimisce>Trustworthy Ravnos>Humble Toreador ascetic>Pacifistic Assamite
>>98402231House Murnau represent
>>98402231I'm not that much of a furryMagician
>>98405113>>Civilised cosmopolitan GangrelFine; they choose childer based on how well they fight back when fed on, so there's no particular restriction that they be ignorant savages.>>Seemingly sane MalkavianFine if their derangement is simply negotiable in public, but only if they have a very clear understanding of what is wrong with the character.>>Strait-laced puritanical GiovanniPlausible as a kind of reactionary sentiment, particularly if they have a lot of outside influences.>>Gregarious Nosferatu socialiteThere are canon examples of this, I think. A disfigurement that can pass in public; most art for Nosferatu doesn't warrant the treatment they get to begin with.>>Lowbrow Tremere bruiserPlausible, especially with somebody who washed out of the internal politics and is kept around as a disposable fixer.>>New money VentrueUnlikely, maybe a big ego that offended their sire and has to prove they can back it up.>>Kind and charitable SetiteUnlikely, maybe a PR ploy.>>Erudite BrujahThey like to play at this, at least.>>Loyal and honourable LasombraThey'll certainly say that.>>Ethical TzimisceTend to have strong ethical codes, they just aren't the same as yours. Especially Old Clan. Plausible regardless.>>Trustworthy RavnosYou can always trust an dishonest man to be perfectly dishonest.>>Humble Toreador asceticI got nothing. It's this one.>>Pacifistic AssamiteHardline religious beliefs could lead one to say that they don't have the right to take a life. Plausible, but probably an error on the sire's part.
>>98405113>>Gregarious Nosferatu socialite
>>98405165>>>>Humble Toreador ascetic>I got nothing. It's this one.Thinking about it more, I think it's the "humble" part that fucks it. I could believe a Toreador ascetic who lives in harmony with the natural world, but I just think they'd be obnoxiously pretentious about it. All about the beauty and efficiency of nature and how you're too stupid and sheltered to understand.
>>98405113>Strait-laced puritanical GiovanniSlightly off topic but I had a hunter concept of a rebellious Giovanni who specializes in vampires and ghosts.
>>98402171My werewolf character's first moot and the Hawaiian hunter game's luau.Also my party of gabaghoul gangsters has just killed 5 technocrats and broken out a narco mage. On top of their previous actions of instigating an Ashirra Ghoul Jihad against the government on US soil, killing two sheriffs and assaulting a camarilla prince.
>>98405113>>Lowbrow Tremere bruiserPath of Mars exists for a reason
>>98405110>Sourthern Tories loving monster trucks or the "pagentry" of WWE sounds hilariousWrestling is just telenovelas for men anyway.
>>98405226Is the Path of Mars standard issue too?
>>98405113Bloodthirsty Salubri
>>98405301For the lowbrow bruisers, sure. Maybe when they get that Thaumaturgy rating up to snuff they can apply to be considered for a job to earn a promotion back to apprentice.
>>98405195Sounds like the kind of guy who grew up in a farm and ended up getting embraced out of gratitude for the hospitality or some shit like that. After somehow not getting killed they just look around every once in a while at nature and are like "Wow".Standard gangrel bullshit but change the clan.
>>98405301nah it's a sabbat path
>>98405307>Those rare Sabbat who have retained Thaumaturgical talents have turned their focus to the assistance of the Sect in times of war. This path has proven useful, turning the tides of several confrontations with elder vampires. The path adopts a very martial stance, whereas other blood magics tend to have subtler, less violent effects. It is rumored that some Camarilla Tremere have learned this path, but very few of them have the right temperament to wield this path effectively.
>>98405324I was being sarcastic but way to go on the bait and switch there.
>>98405305in modern nights that's the most common salubri around because despite the name the Salubri antitribu outnumber the other bloodlinessame with ravnos antitribu after the week of nightmares
>in modern nights that's the most common salubri around because despite the name the Salubri antitribu outnumber the other bloodlines>same with ravnos antitribu after the week of nightmares
>>98405307You could be a dick and take bruiser as someone who likes to argue with people and max out Dominate.If that doesn't work there's always at least one guy around responsable for moving stuff and Potence is fun.
>>98405170Nosferatu Male-Malkavian Female is an oddly common pairing.
>>98405301If a Tremere is gonna mess with demons he learns a ritual (& Paths) to mess with demons.If a Tremere is gonna fuck it up in melee hes gonna learn Mars & Flaming Sword of Mars.The idea is to compartmentalize & delegate so that you have multiple people & methods & knowledge to respond to different threats. This is how the Pyramid wins
>>98405113>Kind and charitable SetiteHey!! I'm trying to teach you how to liberate your soul and ascend to your true, divine birthright over here! What could be more kind and charitable than that!?
>>98405113Ethical Tzimisce 100%. While rare, some Lasombra started buying into the religion thing as more than a grift. Most of those aren't even that bad. Hell, I'm not sure new money Ventrue is even really much of a subversion in the modern nights. They don't care as much about pedigree anymore. Doesn't matter if the wealth is generational or if you're self-made, it's about if you can walk the walk of undead nobility. >>98405196I'd allow it at my table.
>>98405361>the pyramid wins by casually teaching infernalism and sabbat blood magic to its goonskino
>>98405398Look, all you have to do is make sure everything is above-board in time for your review. Dealing with demons is exactly the same as dealing with bankers, and it's only going to hurt you if you don't know the rules going in.
>>98405361are you shitposting or do you really have such a warped vision of the tremere?because for all people whine about the pyramid they are not that hands on on the ground level they don't pick up a guy and decide that he is going to be the conjurer or the warding experet or the spirit expert (something the clan looks down on anyway) they teach you the same thing (path of blood) and then let you do whatever and if you become something that fits in the picture of the clan you get promoted and if not then you get ignored. beside the path of blood they don't even standardize which paths are stocked in each chantry, same for blood magic tomes or which teaching styles are okay and which are notand if you can't do the path of blood you are fucked! the tremere even lost their warmaster because they wouldn't do that, funnily enough the story involves the path of mars: They couldn't accept that the guy who managed and lead their war efforts during the omen war and first masassa war wasn't a thaumaturge so they tossed him in the trash despite the fact that he did a awesome job he then joined the sabbat and found that he was a natural at using this path while he couldn't do the path of blood and that's the only reason why he was kept down by the pyramid for centuries despite saving it multiple times
>>98405436Specialist training in obscure paths and rituals that best befits their role in the Pyramid is standard issue for your average Tremere neonate with Thaumaturgy 5 and Vicissitude.
>>98405195Humility is for people who can’t be sure they have good taste
Thinking about the potential WoD versions of the CoD exclusive splatsPromethean: The Created -> Promethean: The WanderingDeviant: The Renegades -> Deviant: The RunawayBeast: The Primordial -> Beast: The Nightmare
>>98405343>the politico-syntactic debates about whether antitribu means anti-clan and defaults to the actual commonly held position of the clan or just means "not aligned with the camarilla [except Lasombra and Tzimisce]">YOU'RE EITHER WITH US OR AGAINST US>steel chairs thrownThis is why I show up to salon
>>98405491ah okay so you are shitposting and i can ignore you
>>98405513and then the serpents of light show up and call all of them cringe for not picking their own new name
>>98405436The Pyramid doesnt need to be that boots on the ground. Did you forget i said delegate? Each Sire grooms their own childre, & the childre pursue their own interests in time. When you have a lot of people with a common root, & all competing with their peers & wanting to move up, & pushing their lessers to new heights. What this translates to is a bunch of people turning themselves into specialists & experts, usually with a group of underlings & everyone working together toward large goals while pursuing their own goals. The Path of Blood is the most common but not everyone learns it first.And think about how everyone bitches about entrenched elders not keeping up with things & then you see Clan Tremere kick out an old dude who couldnt learn shit, he should have pursued Path of Mars early & he might have kept his job. Those who get crushed by the Pyramid deserve to be crushed by the Pyramid But yeah im about 50/50 shitposting/glazing the Tremere
>>98405500promethean would be like wraith but you're a whole new personality/abomination struggling with being a living being and being persecuted for thatDevaint is heroic fomoriBeast would be widderslainte the game
>>98405595Deviant is a deliberate potpurri, so you can play anything from a Mage's escaped creation to a half-fomori graft, to a changeling's chimerized henchman.
>>98404661https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=q-43l_paCtw&ra=m
>>98405653This is so funny I will die of laughter
>>98405670I mean, it was pretty fitting with anon wanting to make the ultimate MY BLADE, with like every enchantment that grants powers from every splat
So how about those Hollow Ones, huh?
>>98405683making it into a talisman was already enough because its basically asking for another sam haight-tier karmic backlash
>>98405723Closer to the truth than any other faction of mages, but they react to that truth with teenage angst and nihilism.
>>98405723>human nature is terrible and the masses aren't worth going to war for so let's just be introverts >askhually let's build a alliance of rejects and go to war with all other wizards because.... yeah!
>>98405723>>98405747How can mages see each other doing similar effects with different methods and not realize the truth immediately? There are traditions that have been studying magic for a long time, are they slow?
>>98405723would he be a good hollow one avatar?
>>98405725>make your super sword with the help of a Mage>stack up a billion paradox that seemingly doesn't affect you>One random afternoon a boulder instantly kills you after you fall off of your carriage/car
>>98405761they just think everything is consensus-determined. thats the entire point of the ascension war, its not that they know that others are doing true magic its that they want their paradigm to be the universal one
>>98405761>are they slow?yes. with the exception of a minority of etherites (they need a merit for this) all other tradition mages assume that their allies are using magic in a slightly wrong and ineffective way and that their way is 1000% correct and all spells would be better if they would be casted in a style that fits their tradition
>>98405769>the exception of a minority of etherites (they need a merit for this)Do you the name? I'm curious about this.
>>98404620You are clearly new to the TTRPG hobby. The theorycrafting people do as discussions between eachother in online spaces is completely different from what people actually play, 99 times out of 100.This is like saying that 3.5 optimization discussions are representative of 3.5 gameplay. Utterly delusional.
>>98405761While most mages are willing to acknowledge that every faction of mages has its own magical methodology that works, they're still so devoted to their own paradigms that they're usually incapable of incorporating the magic of other Traditions into their own methods.The Hollow Ones are one of the only exceptions to this rule, as they've developed a form of chaos magic that allows them to trick themselves into believing anything and making magic out of anything.
>>98405785metagaming, the faction?
>>98405723>the virgin hollowed one chaos magick fan>vs the chad warlock sexe magcique enjoyer
>>98405772>Scientific Mystic>(3-point Mental Merit)>Some Etherites have a special aptitude for>interpreting other magical styles through the lens of their own theories. As a result, they can use mystical methods, even if their own paradigms are devoted to scientific truth. Polymath Adventurers are known for their “secret studies in the East” or esoteric technologies pulled from ancient legends>For example, a rune-carving Son of Ether isn’t using “Norse magic,” but the geometric, psychological and psionic insights of a culture whose discoveries were, no doubt, downplayed by the enemies of Sciencerules wise this allows you to use foci from another tradition, but technically you would need to buy the merit for each sphere if you want to be a omnimage
>>98405788they don't get the -1 exp discount for favored spheres which adds up to about 80 xp - 70 xp in savings, (around 3-4 games) lol who isnt dumping their freebies to start at 3 dots anyways
>>98405788Yeah, but the price of that is that almost none of them take magic seriously, so a lot of Hollow Ones are just jackass gutter mages who make magic out of mall goth shit because they find it funny.
>>98405788in exchange hollow ones tend to be more wrangled by their avatars than the rest (which they like)
>>98405723They put a lot of money into the Syndicate's pocket, some of them might grow up and join [insert faction]
>>98405791All of those dots for something which can be achieved with Forces 3 and a thrown lighterT
>>98403643The fact that they hate the Tremere so much proves they dont understand the setting or the game at all.
>>98405768I'm not sure if the average mage is really conscious of all of that.
>>98405854I really hate generalizations, but I get it when people talk about "millenial writing" and such, now I get it.
>>98405723
>>98403783The good old Shadowrun strategy. Burn down the Matrix every time the rules change. Make big prophetic comets I to nothing burgers. Shuffle the Megavirod a bit & fly all the nanotrannies to Mars
>>98405904Translation please, I don't speak Communist.
>>98405855Anyone who has to work with other Traditions has to be somewhat informed and open to the existence of other systems of magic, otherwise they run the risk of causing a diplomatic disaster. For example, the Order of Hermes isn't retarded enough to send a crotchety old Hermetic supremacist to liaise with the Dreamspeakers, when all he's going to do is sneer at them and call all of their sacred rites and rituals "nigger magic."
>>98403825Yes youre a huge faggot too
>>98404639Theres like, 7 different ways you can make the weapon unbreakable. I dont think a lemon is gonna endanger it
>>98405926Yeah haha they would never ever do that..
>>98405920>If your mother does not recognize you at all>Learn whose looks yours resemble in mirror today>And remember - should meet you one such anywhere>Don't ever come close to those like him
>>98405855arete increases as your ability to explain and incorporate more types of magic and the result is the ability, wisdom, power, and authority to stop using some foci, and ever mage explains that in different ways, some like a chorister would say their paradigm is becoming more powerful as they begin to truly take in and understand the multifaceted reflection of The One, an Ecstatic would say their paradigm is being broken down as they lose themselves in the primal unconscious of unfiltered realty where all magick and the human mind comes from, thus truly understanding how other paradigms break down to like hers and how that lead to unconscious underneath allowing you to break down the need for your foci.
>>98405961This. I thought the point of arete was that as you advance you advance from your paradigm into the "purple paradigm" and mages generally know this. But knowing something and actualizing it are two different things, you need the training wheels of the paradigm.
>>98405946Maybe they would have five hundred years ago, but post-Doissetep Hermetics have had to come to terms with the fact that they're no longer the hottest shit on the Council. In Revised and M20, they're defined by the realisation that they can no longer afford to be arrogant assholes and have to start kowtowing to the other Traditions.
>>98405971no thats not what im saying, im saying purple paradigm...is just another paradigm. you CAN describe you arete increasing as that, a hermetic sure would. a chorister would explain it as closer understanding of God, which is everything because he created everything. so you are closer to understanding everything.
>>98405974This is like the 1000th time hermetics have been assblasted into oblivion and get a "wake up call". I think this is less to be read like "hermetics stopped being arrogant assholes" and more like "some younger hermetics with vision (e.g. the player characters) have locked the fuck in". Because as I remember that text it goes like yeah Doissetep blew up and we lost a lot but shit happens and hermetics are the best and we always come back stronger.
>>98403898I agree. Every "fix" they did in V5 was a huge table flip. Elders can be a problem? Exile them! Tremere are a problem? Blow them up! Fascists are a problem? Ban them!
>>98405978basically every paradigm ultimately is an explanation for EVERYTHING, everything you encounter in the universe could be translated someway with vary accuracy into any other paradigm and as your arete increases you get closer to understanding and being able to manipulate everything through the description of your paradigm
What’s the best way to play a kind of devil who makes Faustian bargains, and can actually do wonders while fulfilling contracts?I’ve just finished the Hearts of Stone DLC from the Witcher 3 and I want to play a character like Gaunter O’DimmI guess Changeling is the closest thing?
>>98405999literally demon the fallen is about making pacts and fulfilling them and how badly you fuck them over is up to you.
>>98405997>>98405978I think this is a cool take and makes sense but the problem is sort of there is an implied in-setting truth, which is the purple paradigm.
>>98406009because the rules and books were written with hermetics as the default since its based on ars magicka, the hermetics created the traditions and common lingo modern mages use, and the irl writers subscribed to the hermetics (and some verbena and ecstatics)
>>98405988The latest developments in M20 makes a point that the fresh-faced Hermetics who survived Doissetep and Horizon and the Avatar Storm are remaking the Order of Hermes into a more tolerant and egalitarian Tradition, and that there just aren't enough of the old masters to maintain all of the bad old ways.
>>98406016Frankly a huge and retarded take from the writers, just like blowing up all the chantries and horizon realms in general. And I am speaking from an out of setting sort of "does this make the setting cooler?" point of view. This is the same kind of storytelling approach that got the entire metaplot removed in fifth edition, got elders neutered and so on. The first ugly traces of it, anyways.And why? All in service of not even hypothetically having the setting contain old masters which could oppress the young'uns and stop their righteous quest for tolerance and egalitarianism. Garbage.The Order of Hermes SHOULD be retarded chuds, it's their whole characterization. It's why they are allowed to be so powerful, aside from being objectively the most popular by far.And they are trying to make them less squicky and oppressive because umm we can't have our players play that..I wouldn't be surprised if Br*cato thought he was turning people into actual real life Nazi Occultists by portraying hermetics as both prideful and technically the strongest.
>>98405920And have some woofs as a bonus.
>>98406038It would be retarded if they remained crotchety old assholes yelling slurs at every other Tradition, considering everything that they've gone through. They've basically lost everything at this point. At no other point in their history have they ever lost this much. All of the upper echelons have been wiped off of the map, along with 90% of their stockpiled resources. Thanks to the metaplot, the setting has to progress and an Order of Hermes which just stuck to their arrogant old ways despite no longer being the top dog (arguably the Dreamspeakers are the strongest Tradition as of Lore of the Traditions) would end up being dropped by the rest of the Traditions. They're no longer so powerful, so they can't afford to be cunts any more, simple as that.
>>98405988>hermetics are the best and we always come back stronger.The hermetic says as he continues to seeth about the past. War with the Tremere? You bet. Losing Mistridge? Never recovered from that one.
>woofs when the funny homid tool starts downloading the trvth of the wyrm straight into their brain
>>98406009So? The fun of Mage is committing to the bit of your character's paradigm. Just shedding all of that personality and going full purple paradigm out of a desire to be 'right' is boring as hell.
>>98406063>>wyrm*Weaver
>>98406048Translation pls
>>98406060I can't actually find any pdf for lore of the traditions with a casual search but I remember m20 material more or less implying that even though hermetics got shafted the most, it's because they had the most to begin with.Nowhere have I ever seen it implied or stated that the dreamspeakers are anything but kind of irrelevant in europe.
>>98406062Yeah thats the point isn't it? Hermetics never ever learn and by their nature are arrogant, prideful bastards. Hubris is always their downfall.Going uhm actually hermetics need to be heckin "wholesome chungus good guys now because they lost" is just retarded and takes away from the setting, just like making verbena etsy witches instead of forest blood and sex witches that curse you for literally no reason at all.
>>98406097They are irrelevant in Europe, but they're all over the world elsewhere. Until now, they were barely a Tradition, Dreamspeakers was just an umbrella name for a bunch of different indigenous factions that paid lip service to the Council. With the 21st century though, they're able to make contact with other and collectively organise like never before. For the first time ever, they're a unified Tradition and until that point, they had mostly been overlooked by the Technocracy and Nephandi because they were a dozen different groups of literally-who nobodies scattered across the world. They never suffered the same targeted attention as any other Tradition, until now.
Who is the worst Awakening faction and why is is the Free Council?
We all agree that blood points is much better than rouse checks, right?
>>98404463>>98404407>>98404282That was me. I find the idea of "uplifting" being a really good motivator for ancilla to suck up to Elder's, tripping over themselves looking for that coveted promotion. It would probably be even rarer that being approved to sire a childre & need to be documented & approved by the Inner Council. A Second Embrace would also be risky. Maybe your sire just drains you completely cause he wants you to die. Maybe theres a slight failure rate. It would also put a target on your back with every lick that thinks you don't deserve it gunning for your throat. I just like a non diablerie method, for vampires who arent using stolen secret blood rituals
>>98406173>We all agree that a good system is much better than a bad system, right?I dunno, man. You tell me.
>>98404547How so when every tv show & movie is basically 1 part blood fuelled badass & 1 part brooding badboy?
>>98406168That art turned we away from the whole faction even though im a Sons of Ether/Technocracy type guy in oWoD.
>>98406168lol
>>98406168Trick question, Awakening is the worst, did they ever retcon an edition out of existence harder than Awakening?
Here's your virtual adept avatar, bro
>>98406278>did they ever retcon an edition out of existence harder than Awakening?Beg your pardon?
>>98406106You're right, I just find the idea that hermetics believe that they'll bounce back after always getting their asses kicked. I don't like how they made mage factions more "progressive".
>>98404773This is true. I just love fiddly bits. Its less white room autism & more just puzzle solving autism>>98404735Tremere glazing is fun because by all rights they are the biggest motherfuckers in the setting stealing their way into everything they do & even helped found the Camarilla when they arent even "real" vampires. Its hilarious
>>98403643I'm not saying they should go back to the kitchen, but... other than Rebecca Sean Borgstrom, women have been awful for the trpg world.
>>98406251I prefer yandere psychotic vampires
>>98404002I'm sure it will be a blast
>>98404045>I'd argue that the claim of U.S. gerontocracy aged quite wellThe part where they talked about it as an issue in past tense very much did not.
>>98406302In the first place I haven't found any evidence that says hermetics are on the out and dreamspeakers are now more important.Lore of the Traditions says exactly what I expected. Hermetics are the biggest, most influential guys around and they are hubris incarnate. It even almost quotes me in saying how the loss of old masters is leading to political change is more like they are back with their sights on power, not to become wholesome.It acknowledges yes, they kind of are retarded chuds, but ambition and being political players still has them arguably at the top.Another criticism for the M20 Lore of theTraditions book is the new signature NPCs. I don't want quirky gender-fluid stage magicians as my hermetic core characters, I want the "stodgy old mages" that the lorebook is happy to denigrate and I believe that is not an opinion restricted to me. No, actually, I do not want hermetics to dance and sing. I want them to be 2000 year old greybearded wizards in robes which can barely handle a computer. Powerful but blind to the future.I don't know why they have to make every single fucking hermetic NPC I read a quirky chungus, why are these people even hermetics? At best they pay lip-service to the supposedly universal rules like embroidering enochian symbols onto their clothing. It's like they conceive of hermeticism as the anything goes tradition and stick to no theme whatsoever.
>>98404045>My point being: Elders do unironically have to earn their position and hold it for far longer. While it is a good resource, I think the important difference is that most Elders are genuinely impressive people with strong wills and sharp minds. Most shitty vampires don't last that long.Funnily enough, the book throws that into doubt too since the next passage is talking about how being stuck in the same patterns over and over again without anything to shake it up and make them use their brain makes their wits go to shit.
>>98406435Intelligence and wits are often a matter of adaptability.Having fuck all to do for several years will will leave you bored out your mind.
>>98406408
>>98403919>>98404045Something that bothers me today is that the Technocracy feels very much like an american or western deep state on steroids sort of deal, which fit well for the 90s and much of the 00s, but now that an eastern axis has risen to effectively challenge the western world order, what does the technocracy look like, the east asian members just follow the guidelines made up by people in the west? I just can't seem their paradigms fitting that well together.
>>98406519The top level technocrats have obviously fallen to nephandic temptation anon. The Nephandi are clearly more influential in IRL politics than china and russia combined.
>>98406519China has had no cultural spirit ever since Mao's purge though, it's unlikely they can even make a world order that isn't a facsimile of their government
>>98405762>give power to the powerless>if they abuse it you get a personal liveleak compilation to commentate while talking shit about them>if they restrain themselves you might actually respect them
>>98406519>the east asian members just follow the guidelines made up by people in the west?Social conditioning helps with accepting a lot of things, Anon.
>>98406543but on a more meta level, do you really find that a satisfactory way to go about it? wod always had this thin connection to the real world, like we don't pretend the soviet union is still around or that ww2 didn't happen, so I feel like some new geopolitical developments are something that maybe should be reflected somehow in the game's world somehow, like a big schism in the Union.
>>98406558After the Gypsy book I think old WW just didn't want to touch Asia with a ten foot pole so they get general notes about them having their shit together compared to the west while staying mostly offscreen. I doubt modern WW would even do that.
>>98406558since asia is basically an alternate dimension as far as wod is concerned, they could just make china the kuei-jin parallel of the technocracy
>>98406558>do you really find that a satisfactoryI honestly think that most they'd have their differences when it comes to culture and approach. Most conflicts would be about how the union goes about spreading it's influence (china going full colonialist in Africa) and about moving most important union projects to asian from america.>the east asian members just follow the guidelines made up by people in the west?I have a feeling that anyone who joins the union, no matter where they're from, is already into wester culture and way of life.
>>98406591isn't china actually more like how the technocracy wants things to be as opposed to the west?They want an autocratic atheist state that suppresses mysticism and other "bad influences" and the population. I find that's actually quite comparable to the CCP and the way the chinese state works. They'd consider it a big win, no?
>>98405762if we are talking dishonored 1 outsider than yes the lead designer explictly wrote him as the player's shadow archetype who beside the supernatural powers he gives has no proof of his own existence and his cynicism fits the hollow ones like a glove dishonored 2 turned him more into a archmage stuck in the umbra and with actual stakes in the plot
>>98404569You can not dismantle the Master's house with the Master's tools.
>>98406519>the east asian members just follow the guidelines made up by people in the west?The east Asian “members” are an entirely separate organization hiding within the Technocracy and using the Conventions as covers.
>>98406660>player's shadow archetypeThat sounds more like Daud's role in the plot.
>>98406662sounds wise until you give it literally any thought whatsoever. Yes you can destroy a house with the same hammer used to build it. Like bitch, what?
>>98405747That's the only sensible reaction. The only winning move is not to play.
>>98404569There's nothing wrong with being a fag and practicing Islam, as the history of the men of al Zutt tells us.
>>98406676different shadow archetype Bare has written the outsider as the Jungian shadow archetype or shadow self>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_(psychology)>the unconscious, repressed aspect of the personality that the conscious ego does not identify with>The shadow may be personified as archetypes which relate to the collective unconscious, such as the trickster>Shadow projection is a psychological mechanism through which an individual projects their own Shadow attributes onto others, meaning that they often see and criticise the traits, characteristics, or behaviours that a person cannot accept in themselves. For example, someone who denies their own anger may often perceive others as unnecessarily angry or hostile.>It is a defence mechanism that deflects attention from one’s unconscious behaviours by focusing on the same behaviour in others and judging that person for itthis was why the outsider was so cynicial in the first game as they didn't had his backstory down yet and also why he always claims to just be watching despite that obviously not being true
>>98406168I think you mean best. Finally, I can get laid at Pride.
>>98406608>isn't china actually more like how the technocracy wants things to be as opposed to the west?Depends on the version most of them would see China as a sad middle ground between whatever ideology they actually hold and whatever ideology they hate.
>>98403288>Werewolf classic is simply too racistliterally never heard this before, explain
>>98405500Promethean: the Wasteland
>>98406733The tribes are kind of a shit show apparently but in a way that doesn't hit home.
>>98406519Not a magefag but didn't the technogarchs have guys in the Soviet Union? You're a shit illuminati if you can't hold influence over two powers in a cold war, especially with previous experience.
>>98406608Didn't the current president purge the local tech millionairs because they been on the side of the previous president? doesn't sound very technocrat to me
>>98406424>I don't want quirky gender-fluidhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unity_of_oppositeshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebishttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Kadmon
>>98406752>Not a magefag but didn't the technogarchs have guys in the Soviet Union?the union had members on both sides and unlike with nazis white wolf even resisted the urge to make the soviets nephandi, but the union nearly split into west and eastern sides during the cold war and that was before baba yaga's shadow curtain kinda just made it so that they couldn't contact each other for a few years
>>98406752>Not a magefag but didn't the technogarchs have guys in the Soviet Union?They had and there were disputes over how things should be done moving forward.
>>98406662sounds retarded and is retarded
>>98406758Based knower.
They should have used Jiāngshī instead of Kuei-jin.
>>98406758I really want to create artifical humans with the immortal merit, twin avatar things and have them be twin brother and sister who represent the Rebis in a weird incestuous way, but ive never gotten around to playing the right Mage game for it
>>98406758yes anon, this is exactly what this is about and not another garbage and retarded white wolf NPC. Not to mention the unity of opposites is very different from "genderfluid". If this NPC was portrayed as a two-headed double genital abomination I'd almost accept it as being so out there that it's cool again.
>>98406758>>98406782holy anachronism
>>98406786Just read what Requiem did for fuck sake
>>98406758we actually had a rebis solificati npc in sorcerer crusademakes me sad how far they have fallen in m20 where the craft is mostly just hippie cartel cooks
>>98405762>Original voice actor's online tag was "Troon Destroyer"Yeah, he would be.
>>98406786Fought one this session of CtL. Dude kinda kicked our ass not gonna lie.
>>98406758>>98406782is baphomet not the modern occultist version of the rebis and explicitly tied to the holy spirit according to Eliphas Levi? iv had cool ideas about a widderslainte character with baphomet as his avatar and interpretation of his own holy spirit, combining the evil in his nature with the goodness he obtains with God, Wisdom, and The Savior. basically a mix of hermetic, ecstatic, and chorister, maybe a little verbena too.no sure how connected hed be to the actual baphies craft of the nephandi but theyd definitely want to recruit him and hed be interested in their practice and philosophy but would draw the line at outright human trafficking and mass murder. the red thorn dedicates would also be interesting craft to associate with him.
>>98406823>"Troon Destroyer"
>Tremere: The Tremere are the clan most consumed by Disciplines as a road to power, and they are masters at their use in manipulation. Their superior Auspex and Dominate make them formidable in a one-on-one confrontation, but is Thaumaturgy gives them an edge no other clan has. It tips the balance of power toward the Tremere by allowing them to counter many kinds of Disciplines. They constantly try to shift the playing field to the arena of supernatural combat, because that is where they excel.Nice to see this book agree with the Ravnos assessment that the Tremere are ungatards at heart.
I hope you all enjoy Paradox's presentation of Mage: the Ascension Fifth Edition!
>>98406952Any actual rules or announcements?
>>98406952Source?
>>98406424From that section alone:>If you are using the relevant Future Fate, infighting among their own led to the death of their most powerful Archmage, the loss of their greatest Chantry, and was primarily responsible for the fall of Horizon to the Technocracy.>Internally, the Order is infamous as a shark tank of political machination, crushing bureaucracy, inflexible discipline, and exhausting apprenticeships. Perhaps less rigid and obtuse than in centuries past, this reputation remains well earned by the Hermetics.>Thus, despite their many flaws and many setbacks, the Order emerges from the ashes of the past as a phoenix, bursting with fire and vitality. The shattering of the Order acts as the shattering of shackles, freeing the remaining Hermetics to rebuild on the storied foundations of conviction, learning, brilliance, Word, Will, and Force.Then there's the entire Current Events section focusing almost exclusively on how the mages of yesteryear completely fucked up and how the young are doing things differently now.
>>98406952oh nononono... magebros I thought Paradox would never get us???
>>98406969>>98406952Please, God, it's about time the magefags get the paratrash treatment.
>>98406969They won't but it still pretty funny to imagine how it would work out. Like paradox being turned into some kind of Karma dice or whatever the hell H5 has.
>>98406978Just because you actually asked for it it ain't happening no more.
>>98406870Ok I have to ask, fucking How?
>>98406965So.. exactly what I said? They took a loss, now they are reinventing themself or something. They are still the biggest tradition. The Overview states so outright.The original argument was about hermetics becoming one of the irrelevant players in the traditions which is just plainly retarded and untrue as it turns out. Hermetics are still the strongest and any change they experience is due to old masters dying and a galvanized youth, not a position of weakness and groveling.It wasn't about hermetics not changing if that's what you are getting at, and again I literally mentioned they ARE experiencing political changes according to this book, just not the way it was implied.
>>98406987Please, God, never let any anon actually turn into a cute girl.
>>98406952Alright you H*rmetic dogs, who tried seducing Bastet girls with magic again?
>>98406982>The hermetics are either gone (evil white colonizers) or everybody is a hermetic a la awakening or ars magica (nobody cares about anybody else, right?)>magic as fascism as the main theme>Elon Musk is a nephandi or something and actually statted up>Any edge from all traditions is completely gone>Technocracy is either whitewashed to be arguably good guys even more than now, or portrayed as super hitler and unplayable with a 3 page disclaimer about how you are LITERALLY HITLER for even thinking about wanting to play themwhat more?
>>98406993Reverse psychology doesn't really work on gif despite how much of a dumbass he can be most of the time.
>>98406885are there any non-nephandi awakened in the goatkids faction? are there any 'regular' mages in any of the other nephandi factions?
>>98407002I gave all of my magic tomes to a pretty talking cat, she said she would return them to me in a bit but it's been a month. Is this gonna be a problem? The local Verbena coven told me I am a "retarded fucking mistake of a craftworker" but they always say this anyways. What do I do before my pater notices half the library gone? Does the cat actually want me? Should I put on catmint perfume?
>>98406820>Just read what Requiem did for fuck sakeI'll take "What is the solution to 3 outta 4 problems people have with Vampire the Masquerade?" for $15000, Bob.
>>98406519India & China are drowning in wyrm taint. Theres no way they arent basically lost to all the different Entropic forces. The Kindom of Jade literally packed to the gills will the dead, their forges unable to even process enough souls into Chinesium to make a difference. Fomori walk the streets of Bangladesh. The technocracy already feilded their surveillance state prototypes over there so they could build flocks over here. Asia is a hole. Maybe put Japan as a satellite on the horizon of that great black pit of evil, but thats all
>>98407004>what more?Let's see what else they would add>AI data center geomancy >Matter spirits as cursed Cyber trucks and AI porn.>Something aping the digital circus.>Something about the AI replicas of people despite the fact that Hunter already did that shit.
>>98407021In that the question is, "what are the downsides of setting the difficult to 8 and letting modifiers alter the dice pools instead?"
>>98407002I WILL pet the pussy anon
>>98407033wod5 is the same edition that told werewolves to not do terrorism and made getting a oil company leave a area alone a bad ending in a premade chronicle so there is no way mage 5 would have the balls to touch data centers
>>98407033>>98407004Shit. They better not steal my notes. I was already writting up "Ian Funk" as a joke Illuminati member & Data Center wyvr spirit geometry/matrix for my DC Mummy stuff damn it
>>98407021Theres literally only one thing actually wrong with VtM
>>98406820The only thing owod did better than nwod in is keeping a consistency of theme. Which is actually important.Nwod kept ping ponging form idea to idea until basically everyone except Rose Bailey gave up on the setting and it just became "The metaplot is back and its all strix". Like it wasn't even about keeping stuff vague, they fully introduce setting themes and gave up on them by the next book
>>98406990The primary argument always was:>The latest developments in M20 makes a point that the fresh-faced Hermetics who survived Doissetep and Horizon and the Avatar Storm are remaking the Order of Hermes into a more tolerant and egalitarian Tradition, and that there just aren't enough of the old masters to maintain all of the bad old ways.And considering how most of the Order of Hermes section focuses on how the old guard is being replaced by new blood and how most of the Dreamspeaker section focuses on how they're more connected and unified than ever, it's evident that the Dreamspeakers are on the rise while the Order of Hermes has been humbled. Hence, I stand by statements like:>Maybe they would have five hundred years ago, but post-Doissetep Hermetics have had to come to terms with the fact that they're no longer the hottest shit on the Council. In Revised and M20, they're defined by the realisation that they can no longer afford to be arrogant assholes and have to start kowtowing to the other Traditions.
>>98407075First of all, fuck you for having something related in your game.Second of all, anything near that line Requires more bullshit than people can remember most of the time.
>>98407080There's a million things wrong with vtm man Like the fact that half the cast is people's rule breaking pcs that they wanna show off the coolness of at all times to quite a few of the rules being garbage.
>>98407042>he didn't pick up Professional TrainingEVERYONE POINT AND LAUGH!
>>98407052
>>98407124Yet another flaw of CofD.>uh oh stinky you didn't pick up one of the mandatory merits required to make a functional and competent character during character creation i guess your character is just gonna eat shit for the entire chronicleIvory tower game design is garbage.
>>98407124Professional training, status in certain groups (and later mystery cult dots) being such no brainers was a lapse in judgement.They tried to thread the needle with koresheets in v5, but I'm not sure they hit the mark.
>>98402504Vampire works as a combat game as Anon. It really grinds my gears when players or ST's feel combat is something not wrth having in your games. Plaeyrs love my table cause I have great combat champagnes. >>98402419Fuck. I dunno what it is about outstars face but I just wanna curb stomp that dumb cunt. It's sad to see what WOD has come to
>>98407139You are not criticising character creation of nwod in favor of owod are you?Because that would mean you were retarded.
>actually taking this obvious bait again.As an actual nWoD/CofD defender, I have literally never claimed it to be perfect. Just better. It still has its own issues, in fact I'd say one of its biggest advantages is that its issues are easier to fix via homebrew than oWoD's issues.
>>98407145Sorry, can you tell me how many points I require in which Styles to not be a suboptimal retard?
>>98407116DC Mummy needed a third faction of fuck ups to just sort of be there & get in the way of the two bigger factions. So they are the Illuminati. They're a bunch of tech bro sorcerers heavily aligned with the wyvr. Ian Funk was gonna be a nobody NPC I thought was just tongue in cheek. They are using Data Centers built on caerns/nodes to advance the wyvrs goals & make the world more shitty. Cameras & all that jazz too. I was contemplating an idea for Data-Clones of people that the techbros are replacing people with. The idea isnthat the Data Centers are collecting all your info so the wyvr can make false humanity that it can control better than normal humans. Theyve already replaced some celebrities & politicians. Sadly sometimes they go a little rogue... poor McKenzie Pike, shaved her head & everything>>98407119
>>98407130Surely nothing bad can happen if I try petting the pussy
Japan always gets the better cover art.
>>98407144I km not saying you shouldnt have combat. Im saying that if you want a powerful character you focus on Social
>>98406989He had a lot of celerity, and we got baited into fighting him in the dark steerage of a boat. It was also a 2v2 where he had a witch helping him out. And the dice were really dicking me over for most of that fight.We did manage to "kill" them both, but it was a shockingly tough fight. Kill in quotes because the Jiang Shi reconstitutes itself in its grave after being destroyed like a D&D vampire. So he's gonna respawn back in China, but we're in Britain so he won't be an issue. And IC we don't know that, it looked like he collapsed into a pile of dust and died.
>>98407162As far as ive looked into the best way to do damage is to get 9 again on your attacks & then use a shotgun to further push the window. I think given the right stuff you can get something like 6 again. Then fill the shotgun with whatever will do the most damage to what youre aiming at
>>98407105Nobody ever disputed the Order of Hermes having been humbled, I say this again and again.You are confounding something that is descriptive "The Order was devastated" and something that is prescriptive "The Order must stop being chuds if they want to repair relations". One has happened, the other must happen in order to achieve another thing. Note: "A chance" "Has much work ahead". They COULD do this. They do not have to "kowtow to the other Traditions" so much as they could attempt to unfuck things. Nor is it implied they will stop being arrogant assholes, that is called out as a double edged sword at the core of hermetic philosophy that makes them so political and powerhungry in the first place.It was implied by someone they were doing this because they were forced to do this or become irrelevant, which is not at all how the book reads.Either way, the overview is clear. The Order of Hermes is the biggest tradition and arguably (probably) most influential.So let's speak about what's said about the Dreamspeakers, mainly that they're taking the most severe losses of all from the avatar storm, with an entire faction of them destroyed by it. I seriously doubt that they are "the strongest tradition right now" - there's zero things to support that thought from this book alone, as opposed to plenty of (hedged) admission that the Order remains incredibly powerful.This makes sense if you consider the strongest suite of hermetics is their political structure, which you can contrast with the dreamspeakers to come to a conclusion regarding their weaknesses in this department.Out of all the fucking traditions to replace the hermetics as the topdogs, dreamspeakers is one of the worst choices, based solely on what amounts to them discovering facebook being called a major powerup. They went from so irrelevant they are ignored by even the nephandi to now actually being literally anybody.
> It all seemed so real that I could hardly imagine that it had ever occurred before; and yet each episode came, not as a fresh step in the logic of things, but as something expected. It is in such a wise that memory plays its pranks for good or ill; for pleasure or pain; for weal or woe. It is thus that life is bittersweet, and that which has been done becomes eternal.Who writes this garbage?
>>98407203Pretentious goths in the 90s. Its was kino
>>98407163Some other dumb shit im putting into DC Mummy is Wraiths helping the Mummy. One is "Lancer" & is JFK. The other is "The King" who is Elvis of course.
>>98407124That has been banned for over 4 years.
>>98404660It's not about edition, it's about setting. The distinction is more relevant than ever, with W5/H5 having been released and now when they're threatening V6.And nWoD was nWoD immediately. They only tried to rebrand it much later.
>>98407016Cats work on cat times anon. Have to show some dominance if you want to get your books back in a timely order. I know that's hard for sensitive young Hermetics but it must be done.>>98407052You fiend you'll ruin us all
>>98407258I care not for potential of ruin. I am a man of Will & Word. If I say I will pet the pussy, then it is so
>>98407285Roll for it. DC 8
>>98407304What attribute/ability?
>>98407310>BastetManipulation + Occult I say though not the anon
>>98407310If you are a man of Will and Word then Charisma and Empathy or Leadership
>>98407310>>98407326Clearly Charisma+Animal Ken.
>>98407327>>98407331If he's using using spellcasting and triggering paradox wouldn't he be rolling Arete + a Sphere to pet the pussy? Or is the magic already a foregone conclusion and he's rolling to pet?
>>98407347anon petting a cat is not magical even if the cat is magical, unless you are rolling arete to enhance your cat petting roll, in which case justify what hermetic spellwork you are doing. Do you just have a "pet cats really good" spell on standby? Do hermetics really?
Rolled 3, 5, 3, 10, 8, 7, 9, 1 = 46 (8d10)>>98407326>>98407327>>98407331>>98407347Rolling Manipulation + Empathy because that makes the most sense (its a Bastet not an animal)My Arete is hard & my pets are soft
>>98407361>Do you just have a "pet cats really good" spell on standby?...I bet the Tremere do...
>>98407366Much less likely than a life 2 effect or something considering how fucking niche such a spell would be. And the teensy weensy fact that you most likely read as wyrm tainted unless you are a particularly very nice tremere.
>>98407361Don't judge, it keeps the misses around without needing to whore out my library.
>>98407381>whore out your body and magic(soul) instead of your library>claim this as a winyou are a prostitute and a disgrace to the order
>>98407363>8 diceIm going to assume there is an unspecified specialty at play and say 3 degrees of success is sufficient to pet the pet. Congratulations anon.
>>98407393Just jealous you aren't loved by a willing cat girl. It's okay king, you'll get one some day.
>>98407363>>98407403Perhaps there is hope for Hermetics yet
>>98407363what kind of schizo wizard has a stat array that rolls 8 dice to pet Bastet? That's insanely skilled.Is this what they teach in their curriculum?
>>98407425Bakeslave here. I might not be a cat girl but I love each and every anon! Also how do I remove the trace amounts of lingering Verbena magic? I have 4 fucking ears and a tail that my tentacles attack because they think its an imposter!
>>98407463RRRAUF! RRUFF!GHRR-RAUF! WUFF!RRUFF! RAUFF! GHRR! RRUFF! WOOFH! RAUFF! RRUFF! GHRR-RAUF!WUFF! RRUFF! RAUFF! GHRR!RRUFF! WOOFH! RAUFF! RRUFF!
>>98407463>VerbenaGoing to have to go set up an HR request for a corporate sorcerer. I don't imagine HR or the process will be pleasant though
>>98407425Here's your cat girl, bro
>>98407569SESSAYYYYY
my autism is almost complete
>>98407622the fact that the sims 4 furaffinity werewolves are still more threatening than the W5 ones is wild.
>>98407622Fun fact, Sims 1 is the only Sims game where Werewolves looked like Werewolves but they were completely cosmetic, also Mummies existed but IIRC they were just interaction with a coffin
>>98407630sims 1 making magic was really funlike going to a hermetic theme park
>>98407638Yes, it had a zone associated with it. IIRC you could even buy houses there. You could gather supplies and mix them for spells. I had a heavily modded Sims 1 in my old laptop and it's still very fun imo, but then it died and I got too lazy to re-mod it. A lot of its mods are on now dead websites so it's just annoying to hunt them
>>98406733You seriously never saw all the tribal stuff and literal wendigos in Werewolf, all written by white people mind you, and thought "hmm, this probably looks bad to Indians." Like, it's the number one complaint everyone has with Werewolf, and it's why chronicles tried to rip all the shit out, or at least acknowledge it where there was no other choice.
>>98407004>magic as fascismY- You mean technocracy?
>>98407728I would consider dreamspeakers to be a better representation of native culture since they aren't a seperate race from humanity who's gaia given role was to cull the natives in the first place.
>>98407254>it's a different setting >eight years later and can't find a single setting breaking change
Is the mass combat rules in dark ages okay or are they trash?
Did Holden ever finish that exalted vs chronicles of darkness game?
>>98407016Yeah, haha, that's crazy. Mind telling me what telling us what's that cat's name? Maybe you could also tell us what kind of cat it is and where it lives and what identity it uses and who it's friends and family are? If you could speak very loud and clearly that would help, my mi-my ears aren't so good anymorw haha.
Would a straight male bastet do all sorts of gay shit in the name of getting access to crumbs of magic?
>>98407763>
>>98407850>take a leftist quote>swap "right winger" with "leftist">pwn libsIt's that easy.
>>98407822>straight>do all sorts of gay shitI assume this is some kind of disgusting fetish of yours, but you can only pick one.>>98407173That's actually fucking sick. What is that the cover of, specifically? Is it only the cover or can their books be mined for cool art?>>98407732They would want to do that, but at the same time it would go completely against the Technocracy's universalist/globalist/internationalist/one-world-no-identities angle. So they'd probably cock up the Technicracy too just so they can call it racist and nationalist and fascist, etc., to fit in with their shallow understanding of politics/ideology/philosophies ("everything I don't like is bad and everything bad is everything bad all at the same time, and everything I like is good and agree with me on everything", essentially).
>>98407869>Technocracy's universalist/globalist/internationalist/one-world-no-identities angle.Y- You mean fascism?
>>98407850>>98407865Which effectively means that both oil barons (who pretend to be righteous, but actually fuck kids) and minorities' right defenders (who pretend to be righteous, but actually fuck kids) both are just a powerhungry tyrants with the only difference being who is currently in charge and how open they are about their perversions. "They patrol both sides of the border." Literally Camarilla vs Sabbat.
>>98403758>"Oh hi, my Prince, back from your vacation I see? Cool clothes. Do anything interesting at that decade long Elder power meeting?"I would literally bust out laughing if some big old Elder Prince comes back and sees what mess a Neonate Prince did to his stuff. There will be blood and gore everywhere.
>>98407885>oil barons want to fuck kids>black and Asian people don't want their kids to be kidnapped for fucking>these are equal becomes some some black and Asian people fuck kids, unlike oil barons who all want to fuck kids
>>98403822I be honest...Sabbat literally wiped out american military bases in V5.I know no one gives a shit about it, no one in WoD nor RL, but I had to tardwraggle something out of V5 mess because my players wanted to play V5
>>98404239Here is your vampires bro, you rike?
So having finished the Anarch's Cookbook, based on how people talk about the Anarchs vs how the book does am I right to assume that concepts such as:>the Anarchs being a growing movement that already held most of the west coast>the Anarchs actually having significant numbers of members who plan for after they've wongot taken out behind the shed and shot for Revised?
>>98407929Oh fuck thats god awful
>>98407944They DID hold the west coast, but that collapsed twenty years ago. I'm pretty sure they've still got numbers though.
>>98407910>black and Asian people don't want their kids to be kidnapped for fuckingYou kidding? Most of the defenders that >>98407885 mentions are lily white.
Very important questions. Have you guys ever bought a print on demand book from DriveThru RPG? How was the quality? I really want to buy one of the 20th anniversary books buy they are so hard to find, so I imagine I'll have to get one printed. And would the premium color option be worth it?
>>98407850>>98407865>Right wing projection
>>98404786God damn it.....I hate outstar and I hate she's in that game >>98405113>Lowbrow Tremere bruiserdoes Victor count? he's an assassin for clan tremere
>>98408162Yes
How does it make you feel that this is the most popular, influential and well written character across all available World of Darkness media ever released?
>>98407732both m20 core and lore of the traditions have an entire page dedicated to how the traditions are actually kind of the bad guys and wizard-kings are not a cool and liberal form of govenment and more like an evil occult autocracy.
>>98408239can you give the cliff notes anon? Technocracy seem like assholes, traditions seem like people doing their own thing
>>98408239I mean, yeah. The way I see it, the traditions are like different philosophies. Communism, Anarchism, and so on. Are they perfect? No. They genuinely believe they will make the world a better place though. And, maybe with some new discoveries and growth, they might. Or, they might get us all killed. The Technocracy is fascism. It's Neoliberalism. It's the rotting lack of passion for anything besides personal gain. They absolutely will get us all killed with no exceptions, even themselves in the end.
>>98408068I bought the WtF and HtV2e books from them, the quality is fine enough, I think one page in the HtV book has a print error in an image but it's nothing major.
>>98408319Go pirate the books. A simple google search will give you PDFs. You can use a website to download shit from Scribd if the "click here to continue reading or sign up" thing annoys you.The cliffsnotes were what I already gave you - it equates magic to fascism by way of comparing the "perfect societies" of the different awakened e.g. the city of poimandres and so on to enlightened autocracy, reckoning that being an awakened gives you no right to rule others and basically the technocracy are actually kind of the good guys because witches in woods cursing people is no system of government worth pursuing.It has a few points but it also reads as a pre-emptive screed against things that any adult should realize and thus comes off far more like being chided for liking the ideal of a medieval fantasy utopia by some retarded idiot who thinks he is all mature. It implies it's take of making the technocracy less evil and the technocracy more morally gray is some sort of more nuanced moral high ground, only to then realize it still needs a big bad and thus has to fill in the gaps with the far blander Nephandi.In other words, I think it's condescending, infantilizing and a midwits take in general that misses the original point. I do not believe many people treated Verbena wanting to return to the woods and cursing people as a complete moral good, yet this seems to imply people equate this.Reading this in full is a good way to understand how W5 happened though and how it had to portray "not all corporations are evil", completely missing the point about how Werewolves were characterized as often times hurting themselves by striking at innocents, a large part of the "horror" within Werewolf comes from that.
>>98406225Are you truly so uneducated that you think that "power fantasy" means "being powerful"?
>>98406106>>98408239This is precisely why Lore of the Traditions had to push all of the Traditions, including the Order of Hermes, in the direction of reformation with much stronger moral and ethical standards.When viewing the Traditions in the most jaded and cynical way possible, they're a bunch of regressive and mentally ill reality warpers who want to drag humanity back into the dark ages so that they can rule over them as wizard-kings, who are wrong about most aspects of the setting. When confronted with such a negative perspective of the supposed protagonists of Mage, it's no wonder that so many people flock to the Technocracy and declare them the true good guys and would rather play a Man in Black or cyborg or space marine who gets to kick the ass of these crazy misanthropic warlocks and witches.So in order to make things a little less black and white, the Traditions have to become more humanitarian and liberal and open-minded. Otherwise, they just come across as retarded, evil and unlikeable, which is why the majority of Mage fans are actually Technocracy fans.
>>98408353>muh good intentionsTechnocracy is Liberal Democracy, the only force to substantially improve the life of average people and free them from the oppression of both local petty lords and wannabe Emperors of mankind.
>>98408406Control approves of this post. 0.0001 Syndcoin has been deposited into your account, agent.
>>98408406Ah, yes. Because people in the US, China, and Russia are currently living in utopian societies. I can acknowledge improving upon the previous feudal systems with capitalistic and democratic systems was a good thing, while still acknowledging there are still flaws in society. We still have local petty lords and wannabe emperors. You refuse to acknowledge that, because you believe the lies you were taught to repeat. You are literally a textbook Sleeper agent of the Technocracy.
>>98407874That is the literal opposite of Fascism, anon. You'll find some federalistfags in the mix but the vast majority of people who can reasonably be called Fascists even under relatively stretched definitions are nationalists. Even Mosley who (especially post-war) favored a form of European superstate saw it more as a cooperative alliance than an overbearing (faux-)European federal government like the one the EU is building.In this context, the Technocracy are essentially the ones building both rightoid globalism and leftard internationalism towards the same goal of one-world governance and division into heterogeneously blended economical zones of a singular predictable culture based on transactional values.
>>98408383I was responding to the "super hero" part midwit.
>things aren't instantly 100% perfect so we should burn it all downthis is what the average Reality Deviant unironically believes
>>98408393I reckon if we ran a statistical on that you'd come away with a lower number. Even in the most accomodating editions (M20) this remains firmly placed as a "you could do this" not the core assumption.Nobody truly cares about the supposed good or bad guys on a meta level, this is determined entirely on how the ST plays either faction, and even then your cabal is the big exception anyways, for good or for bad.Thus, whether you play technocracy or tradition is going to really come down to laser rifles vs fireballs and not some whinging argument about what is or is not morally right to do.People wanting to play technocracy were right from the start, seeing the potential of fighting mad wizard kings just as valid and fun as fighting the NWO with fireballs.I don't need or want a page on why actually the NWO putting chemicals in the water to turn the frogs gay is good for society or why a wizard cursing unawakened with testicular torsion is not morally right because he is awakened and they are not.I do not need you to liberalize the traditions to make them the unequivocal good guys to justify fighting the technocracy. It's just tiresome to be bludgeoned with how the cool fireball wizards HAVE to become modern and gay to win only for them to be outdated again when M5 releases in 2036.Not like that won't be a completely butchered take on the setting either, going full steam ahead on making the traditions the no edges good guys probably.
>>98404407>I feel like this would be extremely frowned uponI don't actually think so. While it would be frowned upon by those that still have or try to maintain their humanity, as well as those that consider diablerie an unforgivable sin, vampire society - especially the Camarilla - has fairly strict rules when it comes to embracing. The Sabbat regularly flaunts defiance, but ultimately someone that embraces recklessly is considered a liability outside of special cases (such as the Sabbat's employment of shovelheads).I think a lot of gravitas would be attached to this type of reward, and whomever engages in it would likely be held at least partially liable.And we have to remember that someone doing this recklessly, to the point of "an army of low-gen vampires" would have to be monstrous, as every one "uplifted" in this fashion will see a human first turned into a vampire and then immediately murdered, again and again. Nevermind that each one of these "gifts" would create a potential rival.Diablerie can also be detected and it is straight-up "illegal" almost everywhere; you engage in it, you're detected, there might be blood-hunts. And this could be yet another reason for that. It doesn't mean that it cannot be done - it just means that it needs to be sanctioned, in the same way that a Prince can sanction diablerie whenever he wants (sometimes even retroactively).So "frowned upon"? For sure. Biological warfare-tier? I don't think so, unless someone actually does it in that fashion, but at that that point it is frowned upon for reasons that goes beyond the specifics of gifting lower generation.
>>98408406>Technocracy is Liberal DemocracyI agree. They are an incredibly gay collective of degenerate plutocrats divorced from any responsibility for their actions, relying on systems of governance that rewards psychopathy and no-one can be held accountable since the decision-making process transfers guilt to a faceless collective of easily manipulated midwits.
>>98407455I'm a middling hermetic but I'am naturally seductive. The other Hermetics keep me around to handle rogue succubi & other sexy supernatural creatures when they break free of the goon wards>>98407440Not really. More & more of them are holing up in their goon towers & not doing anything else worthwhile. 20 years ago my position didnt even exist. Now were looking to appoint 3 zmore by the end of next year
>>98408422Oh, so you are just an illiterate issuing non-sequiturs, then.
>>98408481..what the fuck are you talking about?? Are you saying the hermetics are appointing dedicated cat-petting wizards in ever increasing numbers? What the fuck is going on in the traditions? What??I thought Bastet Subversion was a joke and or contained within House Shaea.. how the mighty have fallen..
>>98408234Its a Malk
>>98406519I don't see the conflict. If anything, the technocrats just have a more hands-on and direct control of places like China and India. The Technocracy isn't monolithic, either; it is made up of people, and different people will handle different things differently, and some will recognize that different places and different ethnic groups have to be dealt with in different ways.The Technocracy engineered the Cold War, too. Right now it's playing both the "East" and "West" against eachother while importing millions of foreigners into the European world in order to force policies that expand the mass surveillance state, among other things.The Technocracy is neat because you can use them to schizopost and attribute every potential societal ill onto them if you just have the mind to do so.
>>98408353Its not fascism. Everyone pretends like all Authoritarianism is Fascism these days.
>>98408433>unequivocal good guysYou don't need to liberalise the Traditions to make them the unequivocal good guys, you need to liberalise the Traditions because otherwise, the Technocracy are the unequivocal good guys. Not just the good guys, but the smart guys.If the Traditions don't reform, they aren't just evil, but retarded and factually incorrect. They're delusional and regressive. If they were evil in a cool way, that would be something, but they're not even that. Orthodox Tradition mages are psychotic idiots, who genuinely think humanity would be better off if everyone gave them their firstborn children as a blood sacrifice and are irrefutably wrong about the nature of the world, thanks to their demented paradigms.Why should anyone want to play a protagonist who not only morally in the wrong, but a complete fucking moron with an utterly irrational perception of reality on top of it?
>>98408480democracy means that you back down from a failing military adventure to increase polling for the midterms instead of suiciding a third of the country to save face
>>98408319Look, in the end both the Traditions and the Technocracy are powered up humans who want the world to behave to their specifications. The Traditions also have a death penalty with no appeal and kill squads that will carry it out if you fuck things up.
>>98408524First of, It's cooler. I would prefer playing an actual child-sacrificing witch than a moralist bureaucrat even if one is objectively kind of evil. Just like people like playing a vampire or somesuch. That is the whole point. Hunters are morally in the right, and yet vampire remains far more popular because it's just cooler.Either way, I don't view a hermetics enlightened autocracy more evil than the enlightened autocracy of the NWO. Heck, the city of Poimandres as an example is perfectly governed by definition, it's a step further than Callipolis as a thought experiment.If you think their Paradigm is "wrong" and they are delusional you don't understand Paradigms at all or consensual reality and should reread how it works. Instead, ask yourself whether you would prefer to live in a world full of mystical wizards, dragons and other fantastical shit or a reality completely devoid of such things because that is the "moral" core of the ascension war.Hint: it's a personal preference that's inherently unanswerable
>>98408564>I would prefer playing an actual child-sacrificing witch than a moralist bureaucrat even if one is objectively kind of evil.Even if the actual child-sacrificing witch is also a genuine retard incapable of pragmatism and cannot prioritise anything over their witchcraft, to the point where they would rather watch their way of life get annihilated than agree to stop sacrificing children?
>>98408420Ah, you're a bit outdated there. Folks like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg in fact ARE nationalist. They just don't believe in a physical nation. Zuck has specifically said he sees himself as the Roman emperor of the Facebook ecosystem. A nation for the modern era with no physical borders. Elon has always dreamed of making his version of this as well. He desires to create an "everything app" for social, business, and educational uses. PayPal, before he was booted from the board of directors, was also called X.com. Why name your product? Everyone uses it for everything. It will have no competitors it can be confused for or rival with. Modern tech-fascists are much less worried about physical borders, as governments are just things they can bribe into being complacent. Once your whole country depends on Facebook to access the internet for free, which is a real thing in parts of the world, are you ever going to be the politician who takes the internet away from your people? You'd be dragged from your office and strung up in the street. Now your "independent" country is but another fiefdom under the Facebook Kingdom.
>>98408590>they ARE nationalist >if we just redefine the word "nation" until it's unrecognizeablewhy not just come up with a more suitable word than nationalist
>>98408543>in the end both the Traditions and the Technocracy are powered up humans who want the world to behave to their specificationsThe Technocratic specification:>We put humanity first because we're humans and while we think we know best and want to be in charge, the purpose of our work is to make a better world for humanity and we're willing to make difficult decisions to make that happen.The Traditional specification:>I want the world to operate according to my delusions and I despise anyone who doesn't adhere to my delusions and I will devoting my life to fulfilling my delusions at any cost, even if it leads to the destruction of everything that I believe in.
>>98408599Hey, you got straw all over my man!
>>98408406Wrong. They are an Authoritarian Oligarchy. Only the Sons of Ether come close as they are a liberal democratic meritocracy
>>98408598Because everyone but you feels it still fits. If you want a new term, invent it and popularize it.
>>98408587The answer is very simple. First I would think about what's fun and cool for me in the chronicle. Then I would think about the sort of person this implies, and then I'd look at how the actual systems involved function. This is all to say I would do so if I thought the concept was more fun than the other, which it probably is.And I would prefer the writers write a story that makes fun concepts fit in the world, rather than write a story that forces cool concepts out of the world for the sake of bludgeoning me with childrens morality.You must remember there is an author behind the setting that writes the events, and they have written the events to change the traditions to make them more bland and modern, and not that certain events were mandated to happen and thus the organizations had to change. There was a desire from the authors to make this change of less objectionable traditions, and thus they created a justification. This really only made the traditions less cool and characterful.
>>98408606>meritocracyAnon, none of the traditions are meritocracies. They literally can't be, because that would require willingness to admit some paradigms are objectively wrong.SoE literally left the technocracy because they disproved ether theory.
>>98408615>disprovedanon have you ever heard about the term "consensual reality"?
>>98408615Do you understand how paradigms or consensual reality works? A paradigm can not be wrong, only unrealized.
>>98408615>disproved ether theoryArbitrarily decided to discard*
uh oh Eth*rcucks didn't like that one
>>98408615ether is real, otherwise none of the SoE inventions would work
>>98408587Nta, but a) yes, it is a role-playing game, cool things are cool even when they are retarded, b) if the way of such witches is sacrificing children, then stopping to sacrifice children would not only be the same annihilation of their way of life you are talking about, but also committed by themselves - in which case it would be much more cooler/in tradition to either keep on truckin' their own way or outright go out in a blaze of glory (provided there is a hatred toward those filthy non-child-sacrificers) by committing a super hecatomb aztec style, but with children (preferably of your enemies), if only to inspire some other madmen to either resurrect and maintain your tradition, to kill those, who are killing you, to just commit chaos so everybody will suffer or even to actually wipe out if not the entire enemy faction than at least a sizable chunk of it. A giant farewell "Fuck You", so to speak.
>>98408234Eh, the Voermans are good but they're not even the most interesting character in Bloodlines.
>>98408619doesn't the bloodline stuff in the verbana paradigm disapprove that?
>>98408618Anon, have you ever heard of Earthly Foundations or Metaphysical Constants?For example: Verbena bloodline theory is objectively, provably, and repeatably WRONG.
>>98407914More GMs across the hobby have to learn to say no to their players. If you're the one putting in all the extra work to run the game, you should be able to say "fuck that, we play V20."
>>98408614>>98408614>You must remember there is an author behind the setting that writes the eventsRevised came out over twenty years before Lore of the Traditions. The Avatar Storm and the destruction of Horizon and Doissetep weren't all planned with the intention of making a book two decades later about how the Traditions are modernising. It's an organic and natural reaction to plot developments that occurred ages ago that makes sense. The senior leadership of the Traditions has been wiped out and young mages who have grown up in a liberal world order have more power than ever before - this was written in the late 1990s. Therefore, it makes sense that these younger mages would shake things up to try and reform the Traditions so that they can actually continue to exist in the 21st century instead of being wiped out due to a refusal to change - this was written in the 2020s.
>>98408615Wrong. Other paradigms have no merit
>>98408626*Avatars are real.The fact all etherite inventions start exploding in non-etheric reality zones proves they're dynamic magic rather than science.
>>98408643If your understanding of the text is that everyone involved is an idiot, then the problem most likely lies with you, the reader.
>>98408654Modern technocrat science like electrical computers were just as magickal 150 years ago. The thing that changed was consensus.
>>98408615I love how triggered magefags get when you point out their setting is built on a house of cards. "Concentual Reality" sounds like a cool idea, unless you actually have the braincells to understand thar it's self contradictory at every level. It literally Can't work as a setting rule, so the writers keep inventing things immune to consensus in their desperate attempt to hide the obvious.
>>98408643Yet even though they are wrong about their magic coming from their Wyck heritage, the Verbena factually has maintained unbroken lineages of Awakened mages for centuries if not millennia, even though that should be statistically impossible.
>>98408660Anpn, the greeks invented the first mechanical computer thousands of years ago. We literally have surviving examples of it.
>>98408615>SoE literally left the technocracy because they disproved ether theory.actually dark matter proves the SoE right and the technocrats are seething about it because they couldn't find the etherite who influenced it... because they don't exist it's 100% sleeper science and the technocrats can't delete it meaning dark matter is a metaphysical constant
>>98408663Sorry, but you need a higher IQ to be able to understand Mage at a conceptual level.
>>98408654No. Terrestrial Zones just cause dysfunction with Erheric energies. Are you going to say that a gun not firing underwater is such a problem?
>>98408667>electrical computer
>>98408649...in our world. The way the lorebook portrays it, these events are pretty close to each other. Either way just because something is retroactively used as justification does not mean it's not the author wanting a certain development. Everything is the author wanting a certain development. The author can do anything and take something anywhere by inventing new facts.They could just as well have said that magic has been discovered to be linked to the ur aryan spirit and that you must convert to national socialism to be the best mage and something equally retarded to justify the traditions becoming more evil and retarded.In essence what I am saying is regardless of their justifications, the effect is bad and they shouldn't have done it. Evil Witches and Haughty Hermetics are simply cooler than them being reasonable, and thus the setting should be written to make that make sense. Doisseteps/All the Horizon Realms destruction was itself stupid and served no purpose but to get rid of cool things the authors didn't want in the setting anymore.
>>98408666>the Verbena factually has maintained unbroken lineages of Awakened mages for centuries if not millennia, even though that should be statistically impossible.Sorry Satan, but they haven't actually. Verbena magical bloodlines get "lost"(aka stop having Any awakened) on a regular basis and force them to "find" new ones. Verbena bloodlines have the same issues as hermetic training, they go out to find already awakened mages and parade them around as "successful" initiates to maintain the illusion their theory actually has any merit.
>>98408663this is what makes mages fun though and why it's far spicier than awakening. The fact it's inherently such a bizarre idea that forces to ask so many questions. And it mostly works, within it's own gameline. It's just not very compatible with the rest of WoD, but then again, many lore tidbits aren't.
>>98408590You got two sentences in before I stopped reading, because anyone capable of producing something so profoundly retarded and genuinely nonsensical is not worth engaging with on any level.>>98408610>everyone but you feels it still fitsI cannot even begin to imagine what kind of just absolute adamantine-grade bubble you must be living in. >>98408353This is a loser's worldview. Boiling various factions into discrete ideologies beyond those faction's own beliefs simplifies them to the point of irrelevance. Factions - especially in fictional worlds that defy the conventions of our own world by their very premise - become interesting precisely due to all the ways they defy simple categorization, and the questions they subsequently raise.>The Technocracy is fascism.>It's Neoliberalism.You're so unbelievably lost in the sauce I don't think it can even be medicated. I implore you to actually attempt to talk to people outside of whatever sociopolitical bunker you've dug yourself into, take a breath somewhere free from lead pollution, and touch grass.
>>98408663But that's completely untrue. I don't want to pull a "You actually need to have a high IQ to understand Mage"-type thing, but I genuinely feel like you don't understand consensual reality or the concept of the collective unconscious. Mages are special precisely because they are not beholden to it (outside Paradox).
>>98408686>got two sentences in before the illiteracy kicked inNot my fault.
>>98408663I feel like they dont go far enough. If you want to make conceptual reality a thing, then I want to run with the idea that reality is actually a story, or maybe an TTRPG, or a dream, or anything more interesting than a different set of physics like 99% of paradigms.Consensual reality is stupid. Ascension should basically be an internal issue realizing something close to the Purple Paradigm, you can be off by a degree or two like thinking anything is possible with God, or through a layer of metaphysics like Ether or whatever, but it should be your own bespoke retarded ideas that hold you back & cause paradox, NOT Consentual reality unless they want to really buy into wacko realities like turning the world into a comic book, or a video game
>>98408590This is just the next step in the natural evolution of the way humanity organizes itself.The Nation State represented the ability of an entire people's to pool their resources in order to accomplish some great task and better their lives.But now the Megacorporations can pool resources from all over the World without restrictions allowing them to provide cheap, high quality goods and services where Nation States fail, these archaic institutions can only lash out with autocratic methods impeding development locally for a limited amount of time.
>>98408666no they don't? what a waste of a 666! verbana just larp that everyone they meet who awakened must have been a member of a bloodline that they been unaware of and they don't have any ability to make sure their kids awaken at all at which point they teach them hedge magic and act like it's the same thing or more often than claim that their blood is too weak and abbandon themand they justify not keeping track of those bloodlines by just pointing at how the druids didn't write down anything either
>>98408667Not only did he clearly specify "electrical computer", but the mere invention of something doesn't by itself affect the overall consensus of reality.Like he said, the Technocrats had "technocrat science like electrical computers" 150 years ago. But the consensus needed to change to make them usable and replicable by sleepers.
>>98402171>TQAnother very late TQ. Our next session of Changeling is going to be all about Christmas, though it's not a raucous revel. As for previous games, Vampire has a lot of parties, but I can't off the top of my head think of a session where it was just about recreation. No beach episodes for us. There are always agendas and plots at play, meaning one's guard always had to stay at least partially up. Our previous Hunter game had a session that was the aftermath of a wild party, with us having to figure out what happened.
>>98408654Fun fact: If you take a plasma gun into reality, it doesn't work. There's even primal reality zones in which mundane technology doesn't really work. If you fight a Marauder, he might just think guns aren't real and don't work, and thus they don't, within his bubble.Within a hermetics sanctum, medicine literally does work according to humor theory, and if you knew it you could, as a sleeper, use it to treat somebody.
>>98408686I said the traditions are LIKE political ideologies. I didn't say each tradition maps one to one with a real world ideology. If one table wants to use the Hermetic Order to explore, like, socialism and another wants to use it for communism that's fine. If you want to preach "Cult of Ecstasy-ism" in a campaign detached from any real world ideology that's fine. When you shape that fictional ideology you will give it beliefs and principles. Since you are a biased human who lives in the real world that fictional "-ism" will likely draw from your real world feelings on a variety of "-isms" because you're probably not a master of political nuances capable of creating an entire philosophy entirely from scratch. I'm just saying I'm aware I'm no revolutionary, I'm just larping as one like everyone else playing Mage is doing to an extent.
>>98408695>provide cheap, high quality goods and services where Nation States failHey, by the way companies only test if their food will kill you because governments make them. There's actually a mega diarrhea virus eating it's way through American lettuce right now because mega corps fail to provide basic necessities without federal boots on their necks.
>>98408712Except all of that instantly stops being true the moment something like weavertech, vampires, fairy magc, ghosts, etc, Is involved.A lot of vitual Adepts straight-up don't believe in ghosts, right up until an artificer uses inhabit to turn their foci against them.
>>98402171>Mage "discussion">It's just a thin pretense to engage in midwit political debate
>>98408695You can certainly argue that - and I would argue against it if this was the proper thread to do so - but calling this literal opposite of nationalism "nationalism" is nothing short of nonsensical, and entertaining the notions of someone that does so is retarded.>>98408703>and they justify not keeping track of those bloodlines by just pointing at how the druids didn't write down anything eitherBased Verbena. Civilization and the concept of writing, even the invention of the alphabet, and its consequences have been a disaster for telluriankind.>t.anprim gang gang
>>98408727Is that not what the other splats do all day?
>>98408489Lol. Not my fault youre retarded & cant read
>>98408727better than build autism
>>98408733Disagree. At least that stuff is particular to WoD. This shit is just a twitter argument, with all the bad faith, purposeful misunderstanding, and team sports, forcibly grafted onto 4chan.
Everybody likes to be a wizard, but let's pull away a little. Ruling out Mage, Vampire, and Sorcerer, what would be your flavor of choice?
>>98408724Yes, WoD crossplat is very very fucky and all the other splats were not written with mage being true in mind. Does this help you? Are you going to point out all the other contradictions, too?If you play a mage-centric game, these splats might literally be affected by paradox. For example a vampire might indeed be affected by Paradox - their fear of the sun and the drinking of blood are paradox flaws of some sort. When they lose vitae by using their discipline, Paradox actually hits them and they have to drink more blood to negate their Paradox Flaw.Or perhaps they are simply bygones all naturally capable of the high level prime ability to use quint to burn off paradox. So a werewolf using Gnosis to invoke a Gift is actually using that Quintessence to negate the Paradox.
>>98408724>Trvth NvkeMagefags love to pretend mage words perfectly fine if you ignore the other splatbooks, but the fact those splats exist is In Every Mage Corebook. Consensual reality doesn't even work with mage alone unless you retcon and rewrite the setting to not have vampire or werewolves at all.
>>98408724I always figured it's more of a spectrum than a hard line in the sand. Dragons are not allowed in reality because no one believes them anymore. Vampires and Werewolves can still exist in reality because enough are willing to believe in something supernatural. There really could be a monster down that dark alley. A person who wants to use me and devour me. A vampire, or any other creature, think it's maintaining it's masquerade (or equivalent) for their own safety, but the consensus is actually forcing them to remain in the shadows. No matter what Vamps or the Inquisition do, they will never make international headlines or be "revealed." Eventually, the Technocracy will push them out completely just like dragons way back when.
>basedjaknot looking good for anti-mage iqlets
>>98408739Kinain with Contract, Naming, and Kronos.
>>98408744This is another theory. Another is the supernatural anchor theory. Where there is a large population of people with avatars that fanatically believes in them that keeps them anchored to reality.Kinfolk and Ghouls.
>>98408738>bad faith, purposeful misunderstanding, and team sports, forcibly grafted onto 4chan.that's just 4chan thoughever
>>98408744>Dragons are not allowed in realityWhat are Mokole for 500, Alex.
>>98408713>I said the traditions are LIKE political ideologies.That would be a fair point, if not for the fact that you immediately followed that up by mapping the Technocracy to Fascism and Neoliberalism at the same time.If I misunderstood you, I genuinely apologize and I actually agree with you in that the traditions and the like are indeed more like ideological/philosophical collectives than discrete organizational structures (even if many of them do have discrete organizational structures to varying degrees).>>98408727You misunderstand. You call it midwit, but it is in fact profoundly retarded.
>>98408615Masterful Bait anon. Good Show!
>>98408759>by mapping the Technocracy to Fascism and NeoliberalismAnon, Neoliberalism is a fascist ideology. It's perfectly technocratic.
>>98408759Technocracy are bad guys, so they draw from different "bad guy" ideologies.Capitalism v CommunismCapitalism v FeudalismDemocracy v FacismSocialism v Neoliberalism
>>98408703>>98408681There's an entire faction of Verbena dedicated to tracking genealogy who snub their nose at any Verbena who can't genuinely track their lineage back to the Wyck. There's an entire Verbena cabal and Chantry in Kansas that is literally just one blood-related family of mages. There are multiple instances of Verbena mages having children who are also mages. There's an instance of Verbena twins who are mages. The Verbena has a significant number of these statistically improbable Awakenings, and you're both coping if your only response is "it's all fake actually none of them are really related all of the lore is just lying to you :^)"
>>98408768>Neoliberalism is a fascist ideology
>>98408668this kind of shit is why I love consensual reality, the implication of dastardly etherite sneaks bits of his paradigm into modern science and normies are obsessed with it so it can't be gotten rid of is just so fucking funny to me. It's a perfect overlap of retarded mage conspiracies and real world science.
>>98408780Truth. Primers are an artifact that exists in Mage and Verbena are known for their ability to make Relics(rtifacts that are body parts). Why wouldn't the verbena be able to enchant their Wombs into primers thatawaken their children? Paradigm Proven.
>>98408739Just make me one of those newfangled mummies. I'll take the kind who's weakness is 'gets tired at night' and put my dots in Effigies, thank you.
>>98408780Relatedly, some posters try to claim that Hermetics aren't any good at teaching and all of their success stories are using divination to snap up students who would Awaken anyway, but if their divinations are good enough to accomplish this far in excess of anyone else, including the Technocratic Union with their pooled resources and global espionage, that's not exactly a mark of failure for the Hermetics. Clearly, even in the most reductive interpretation, their teachings are meaningfully better in some way, since they can produce such an outsized result.
>>98408799>enchant their Wombs into primers thatawaken their children?Anon, primers need to be read and understood by the user. I don't thing verbena are stuffing their kids back up their to read the folds of their vagina.
>>98408799Not the trampstamp of mage breeding..
>>98408801>>98408799As much as people like revelling in the retardation of the Verbena and the Order of Hermes, they do have to be doing something right, in order to have so many mages who have Awakened heritage or who Awaken through apprenticeship respectively. These canonical numbers contradict the assertion that the methods of these Traditions have no merit, let alone the notion that they harm the probability of Awakening.
Is there anything particularly headache-inducing specific to Sorcerers Crusade?
>>98408499Hermetics are summoning all manner of spirits & bound creatures to fuck. I blame the wizard/succubus memes personally. So now that theres all these poorly contained sex slaves in great numbers, we have had to dedicate a few people to what is basically Animal Control positions to wrangle them when the apprentices let them loose.
>>98408814The primer could be psychic anon. The verbena could have mind magic slowly imbuing the contents of it into their subconscious as a kimd of "Genetic Memory".
The venebra are a nurture verses nature discussion. Is there something in their genetic family lines? Are they creating an environment that encourages anyone to awaken at a young age? There will never be a definitive answer to this.Personally, I feel like if you teach your kids in a way that isn't just forcing them to copy your beliefs, but actually encourages them to do their own research and come to their own conclusions you'll have the best results. That's where most mages fail, since they're mostly neurotic fucks who just want little clones that agree with them, not independent human children that might have different beliefs.
>>98408790read again that's just what the technocrats assume happened but it didn't just like with quantum superposition schroedinger's cat and all thatthe union is looking for the dastardly etherites who sneak bits of his paradigm into modern science because that would be a nice way to explain why the timetables aren't working but that's not how the SoE operate so modern science (modern as of the early 2000s) just keeps agreeing with them
>>98408769All ideologies are bad guy ideologies by that metric, anon. That is a nonsensical statement. The truth is>>98408507>The Technocracy is neat because you can use them to schizopost and attribute every potential societal ill onto them if you just have the mind to do so.>>98408780It's actually a funny part of the Verbena, to think that their paradigm likely affects the awakening of blood relatives; the awakened among them believe it, so it is so.Meanwhile, the same is not true for the hermetics; training sorcerers does not seem to lead to a great rise in the number of awakened among their members. Which suggests that a non-insignificant number of hermetics do not genuinely believe in it and know that they are retarded.Truly enlightened genius is to know that you know nothing.>>98408768>It's me, I am the profoundly retarded one!Grim confession.
Can I get a "THANK YOU TECHNOCRACY!", chat?
>>98408799>>98408814Anons, don't Verbena practice a lot of sex magic? It's possible it's not their head going up there... or at lead not That head...
>Technocracy: "We're warring against the Traditions because we don't want insane witches that rape and eat children in charge of reality">Also Technocracy: *has insane witches that rape and eat children in charge of the Conventions, and, by extension, reality*
>>98408853Anon, they said Verbena, not Giovanni.Granted, I don't anyone would be surprised.
>>98408842well, it doesn't matter what the truth of it is. It's funny either way. It's funnier as a deliberate conspiracy though, like saying harry potter is traditions propaganda that completely owned the technocracy and J.K. Rowling is actually a powerful mage.
>>98408814
>>98408853>Verbena practice inect magicIs there any functional difference between verbena and nephandi?
>>98408872Not all Nephandi regularly have sex with werewolves.
>>98408872No, but that isn't because of literal mother-fucking. That one is just anon's fetish.
>>98408877>Only SOME Nephandi fuck dogsWhen the designated evil faction has higher standards, you've written your hero's wrong.
>>98408853Anon, that sounds more like an ecstatic thing.
>>98408849>Meanwhile, the same is not true for the hermetics; training sorcerers does not seem to lead to a great rise in the number of awakened among their members. Which suggests that a non-insignificant number of hermetics do not genuinely believe in it and know that they are retarded.I think I might just make a tally of how many Hermetics Awakened as apprentices and how many joined the Order of Hermes after Awakening, just as a way of demonstrating how this assertion is complete bunk.
>>98408881Bestiality is just some obnoxious Chinese dude's astroturfed fetish. Ignore it.
>>98408888Noce quads man, you work out?
>>98408881He’s lying, it’s a well known fact that part of becoming a nephandi is surviving an orgy with the black spiral dancers>>98408886We don’t have a monopoly on sex, y’know
>>98408872yeah verbena are mostly stuck on lilith and don't go further down the Qliphoth!jokes aside somehow they aren't even the tradition who has the most nephandi converts according to the books that's still the euthanatoi which must mean they have a -lot- of mages who jump into a caul because the verbena lost nearly a entire faction (norse rune mages) to the nephandi in ww2 and if the trenchcoat guys have more...
>>98408852nice AI image and complete lack of details
>>98408888Heil Hitler, anon.But anyway, I think it's been outright stated that the shenanigans of the Hermetics are largely non-functional.>tally of how many Hermetics Awakened as apprentices and how many joined the Order of Hermes after AwakeningWell obviously the ones that awaken while already in the order are going to be hermetics, while those that awaken outside of the order could end up belonging to any kind of paradigm or tradition, based on how or why they awakened or who got their hands on them first. Any such tally would by its very nature be skewed.That said, I am fully willing to admit I may be wrong here and misremember completely. I just had it in my head that it came up some time ago and someone pointed out where it says that the hermetic schooling does very little.This is not a hill I intend to die on.
>Pyretic 5So, like, how often do Changeling just fucking kill themselves? Because this really seems like suicide is the most powerful resource generation mechanic available to them.
>>98408925>he doesn' deny it>he can't
>>98408925Its just an image used as a puff for an article, anon. Whether its AI or just bad 3D modeling (I'm inclined to believe the former) you have to read the actual articles for details.
>>98408934It's stated that the hermetic training works but is propped up by House Fortunae finding good candidates in the first place. If you combine this with the lore about primers, e.g. a book you need to understand that is specific to a tradition and takes a lot of preparation, a picture forms.Hermetics use entropy to determine the chance of somebody awakening, then put them through a sorcery training programme with the intent of making them read a hermetic primer and awakening.We know this somehow works because this is how the majority of all hermetics awakening, something along the lines of for most hermetics awakening is not a single event so much as a long and gradual education.
>>98408947a screenshot of the article or a unpaid link to it is the basic 4chan etiquette
>>98407929Bottom left has aesthetic but it all looks better painted
>>98407728Natives should be happy to get any representation though, it's an urban fantasy game where you play a murderous bastard with supernatural rage against modernity. Yeah, it's a little bit racist to have shit like the Fianna, the Wendigo, maybe even the Stargazers, but criticizing the corporate murderer simulation RPG as racist because there's a group of native american werewolves who like to eat people is pretty retarded when there's an alternative that's reasonable enough. Some populations will complain no matter what they do, pandering to them is only going to make a product worse.
>>98408955No it's not. You're not on fucking /news/ and this isn't for /pol/ infographics. It's a throwaway meme-image you slobbering idiot. It wasn't posted for the purpose of a genuine discussion on the contents of the article or the event it concerns, and it would literally be off-topic if it was. If you want the fucking article you can literally just google the words.
>>98408971You don't understand Fianna are OK to be depicted as drunkard killing machine sexpests, Wendigo or whatever are not. This is because of the well known fact that the irish are inherently evil
>>98408877I imagine only some Nephandi regularly have sex, and even then it's probably some snuff film shit.
>>98407929Imagine thinking that "Hipsters" is an appropriate moniker for the fucking Brujah, a clan defined by how much they actually *aren't* posers, even if they were before the embrace.
>>98408955>>98408977>he doesn' deny it>he can't
>>98408980>The Nordics are angry berserkers larping about Strength>The Scottish are actually evil rapists>The Irish are drunk angy sex pests>The French don't exist>The Greeks are evil feminists>The Spanish don't exist>The Germans are all inbred>The Slavs are all criminals>The Italians are lazy or pretend they're part of the mob>The Americans are all hobos>All Asians are seeking enlightenment>The few Natives that exist are either cannibals or doing black magic with demonsWtA was written by an Englishman
>>98408991gaia save the queen, mate
>can't make splats too based on historical cultures because muh racism>can't make splats too standalone because players can't get into them
>>98408994How much do Garou respect human authority anyway? If you said that, would you get funny looks? If you get arrested for a crime (that you actually committed), are you expected to just murder the cop for the audacity?
>>98409008There is a solution to this, use only the cultures of people that are of superior intellectual stock and won't sperg out too much if you "misrepresent" their culture, e.g. europe.Thus the least racist and safest approach is the remove the existence and identity of all other people in the world and make everybody european.
>>98409008Somehow the wyrm is behind this
>>98407487Uhh n-nice doggy? Would you like some rotisserie chicken? Please dont eat me...
>>98409017Depends how much your kinfolk are involved and how much of an inconvenience it is. Getting arrested for creatures that can break out of a jail cell or get teleported out probably isn't a big inconvenience if you aren't actively close to finishing an assignment, though you can always just go Crinos and get them to shit their pants too and leave you alone
>>98409020Ah and then you get complaints about how you're being racist for not having any representation
>>98409045fucking WYRMFOOD
>>98409008>can't make splats too based on historical cultures because muh racism
>>98409073Uhh uhh what about this flute? An old native american woman gave it to me as thanks for helping pick up litter along a forest trail. She has it was blessed by the spirit of the sparrow or something like that.
>>98409073>Average Gaian response to hospitalityThis is why the Kinfolk leave, you can't be eating genuine venison hunted during the morning every day
>>98409114Just serve it RAW so I can at least purify the fucking thing!
>>98409133That's why it was cooked, dumb dog.
>>98409112>bread slave trying to give people new fetishesmust be the work of the wyrm
>>98409133Purify? Raw meat? I hope you're a Lupus, else your family must look at you like you're an albino.
Do Lupus like kibble?
>>98409200My research indicates wolves would eat it but that it probably wouldn't be a good replacement for raw meat, pretty interesting.
>>98409112... Did you steal it from her before or after fucking her into a coma?
>>98409045https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEkAQwBkxes
>>98408709Hunter: the Hangover sounds kind of interesting for a starting premise
>>98409173By Luna's shine there's a GIFT to do it!
>>98408971>Natives should be happy to get any representation thoughThis isn't the era of white savior western movies. The bar has simply been raised past the stance that table scraps are acceptable.
>>98409008>all historical cultures have to accept they will always be depicted as evil baby eating monsters if they aren't white enough
Holy shit talking of gifts I wish Cooling System was real, it's too hot like holy moly the Technocracy are taking the piss
>>98409237She said I was too feminine for her tastes. That probably explains the picture of the very buff Scandinavian man on her mantle... But I swear on my love of bread baking that it was a genuine gift!
Also new bread in the oven. Should be ready soon.
>>98409284The bar doesn't exist though, relatively little native representation
>>98409306
>>98408934You're welcome to not attribute any meaning to the results I gathered, but I read through a whole lot of pages on Hermetic NPCs.Out of all of the NPCs whose origins were disclosed and who Awakened after the founding of the Order of Hermes:>28 of them Awakened after being inducted into the Order as an apprentice.>12 of them Awakened before they joined the Order.I really find it hard to believe that studying as an apprentice doesn't impact Awakening chances at all, or negatively impacts them. I'm not saying that the majority of apprentices Awaken, but it certainly seems like apprentices have a much higher chance of Awakening than your average human, even if that's only because House Fortunae is good at sniffing out students with the right potential.If apprenticeship or the process of finding a suitable apprentice didn't impact the chance of Awakening at all, the Order of Hermes would be lucky to get one mage out of every hundred thousand students that they train.
>>98409351*aggressive tail swishing* You know little spider, we wouldnt be in this mess if y- *tentacle bites tail* AAAHHHHH FUCK! OW, OW, OW! GOD DAMN THAT FUCKING STINGS!!
>>98409387Enjoy the all natural version of viagra. I just hope you kept up with your physical.
>>98409286>evil baby eating monstersthose are the red talons, the wendigo was explained as having a false version fall to the wyrm while the tribe summons the "good" version to scare off colonists. both the utenka and wendigo tribes have been presented as more or less heroic. its a subversion of native beliefs but considering how they literally made satan a good guy in demon the fallen, id say the scales are fairly balanced.
>>98408866>like saying harry potter is traditions propaganda that completely owned the technocracy and J.K. Rowling is actually a powerful mageThe Syndicate literally loves Harry Potter
>>98409073That's it, I'm getting me arcmaul.
>>98408866No, that doesn't work. Harry Potter is presented as fiction. Magic being presented as fiction reinforces the belief that it is not real.
>>98409384Doesn't Mage claim that being entangled with the paranormal increases the likelihood of awakening?
>>98409286>Subsect of Native American Furry Murder Machines post cleansing by Euros is a rumored cannibal tribeThat doesn't seem very offensive considering the nature of the setting and the fantasy elements but midwits and sensitive people will find anything to be offended by. Getting hung up over it is what lead to shit like W5 gutting the soul of the setting. Being afraid of offending people leads to compromises that lower quality most of the time.
>>98409429>>98409580Lasombra controlling catholic churches doesn't offend anyone though, really makes you think.
>>98409286>all historical cultures have to accept they will always be depicted as evil baby eating monsters if they aren't white enoughWell duh, they are. Why lie?
>>98408428Just gotta ignore the elephant in the room of them nearly locking themselves in stagnation with their plans.
>>98409591They don't outright control it and any hardcore Christian is staying away from "satanic" games like these. It is kind of weird how edgy the writing can be when the audience is predominantly liberals somehow. I don't quite understand why liberals are drawn to edgy things and then balk when it's too edgy
>>98408739Mummy absolutely. You're an immortal champion of good and dont really suffer any penalties outside of the deadline to return to the Web if you empty your tank of Lifeforce. If you get some Mana Manipulation you can recharge your Lifeforce without being in the Web of Faith if youre careful. If you also take Mana Background & the Mana Merits there shouldnt be much you cant achieve between the lowered difficulties & the powerful attribute bonuses you get as a Mummy. Personally id also try to get Arcane & live a quiet life.
>>98409661Because they're losers that got bullied in school and decided to become the bullies themselves. The leftist always cries in pain as he strikes you.
Are there any existing rules for buying spirit powers through something like Investment by a spirit?
>>98409008I don't care about racism, if anything my takes on WoD Middle East and WoD Asia would be far harsher than the "canon" material, which has a nasty habit of lionizing any culture the writers weren't close enough to in order to have contempt for. My issue is that it's either very monolithic, boring, and silly. Or it's something like a clan of immortal vampires that emerged at the dawn of civilization all matching perfectly 1 for 1 with a modern ethnicity/religion.
>>98409661When they originally wrote most of the edgy stuff people didn't care much, notice how the setting got worse as they had to scale down the edgy.
>>98409668>If you get some Mana Manipulation you can recharge your Lifeforce without being in the Web of FaithIf you're just worried about running out of Sekhem you're better off investing in a Vessel.
>>98409661me and several friends got into VtM partially because it said christianity was true and we got into discussions what other parts of the bible are true but just different in WoD and related to supernatural creatures. this is before we knew a lot on the splats
>>98409795Well if youre gonna use Mana buffs youll want to have a good way to keep yourself topped off. Plus with Mana Manipulation ** you can make Vessels without the Background. Too bad Mummies cant learn bootleg Disciplines as far as I know. Its the one advantage Kindred have on them
>>98409678The closest thing to that is the Demon Investments with Daimonion 6. There's also stuff from Exalted but that's kind of a pain to translate.
>>98410133>>98410133>>98410133
>>98407929If top left was inked in black and white, in a book from 2000, you'd be praising it. You're just mad because it's a photo
>>98407929These are okay...
>>98410912No they're not.
>>98409286https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JObnr5e0TIg
