General WoD Discussion #4: Rage Against the God-Machine

[Blackhawk748]

Ok, in Werewolf 2e, do the Werewolves get a Condition every time they suffer a breaking point?

[Blackdrop]

Ok, in Werewolf 2e, do the Werewolves get a Condition every time they suffer a breaking point?

I don't think so. It only says that you lose a point of Harmony if you fail a breaking point roll towards spirit or gain a point of Harmony if you fail a breaking point roll towards flesh.

[SiuiS]

This is the second time dragons have been the subject of a major fansplat. If you're interested there's another project that seems to keep going on and off by. It's pretty well developed. Look up Dragon the Embers if you're interested. I am not the guy who worked on it but I recomend it though it's the subject of so many revisions.

Regardless I'll look in on your project Tin..... Pony Soilder. I need go think of an easy way to refer to you instead of writing out your whole name. I feel Tin might work bit I dunno. How do you feel about it?


On the subject of fansplat my personal favorite is Leviathan which has you playing a lovecraftian sea monster with Summerian mythology baked right in. It basically with the right set up allows you play Godzilla.

I call him Tinsel~

I don't think so. It only says that you lose a point of Harmony if you fail a breaking point roll towards spirit or gain a point of Harmony if you fail a breaking point roll towards flesh.

Huh. That's vaguely dissatisfying.

Need to buy the book and find out

[Almarck]

Alright, Tin man, Tin, or Tinsel, or OTS, I have spent an hour providing you feedback. I hope you like it.Though, I also hope I do not sound too overly critical.

[Blackhawk748]

Huh. That's vaguely dissatisfying.

Need to buy the book and find out

It makes sense, they have a lot of breaking points for Harmony as its a sliding scale, hell in my last session my Werewolf had like 4 breaking points while the non werewolves had 1 or 2. Personally i think its a good idea.

[Kiero]

It makes sense, they have a lot of breaking points for Harmony as its a sliding scale, hell in my last session my Werewolf had like 4 breaking points while the non werewolves had 1 or 2. Personally i think its a good idea.

Exactly. Harmony is not a downward spiral, it's a sliding scale with breaking points in both directions. Actions in game can move you both towards and away from Spirit.

[One Tin Soldier]

Alright, Tin man, Tin, or Tinsel, or OTS, I have spent an hour providing you feedback. I hope you like it.Though, I also hope I do not sound too overly critical.

Thanks a bunch! Your feedback is great, and I'll go respond to it soon.

[SiuiS]

So, open drafting for hurt locker is going on, and I'm reading some of these merits and wondering at the decisions made.

Mostly, the "extra attacks" ones.

Boxing lets you add dexterity as an extra pool only on a hit, to reflect extra attacks in combination. Iaijutsu lets you make a sword attack against [dexterity] separate opponents by spending a point of willpower and only in the first [athletics] rounds.

Both of these seem odd (actually, boxing sounds legit, I am okay with boxing). Because, as has been suggested, we can achieve the same effect in a manner we know is already balanced; The autofire rules. That makes more sense to me. Sacrifice defense, autofire your fists at some guy. Spend a point of willpower, make an autofire sword attack using a bust size equal to number of targets. Fire two handguns rapidly, autofire for one turn.

Am I missing a point of balance here? I know they requested to keep all feedback in the proper thread; I just first want to calibrate that this feedback is even worth mentioning.

[Kiero]

I agree, stick to using variations on autofire and have done. Otherwise we end up right back and the bad old days of nWoD 1.0 and multiple attacks.

[SiuiS]

So far the two variations are either just extra damage (about 1/3 your dex, so likely 1 or 2), and an area of effect.

My only real concern right now is the last merit, which lets you switch brawl merits to weapons and vise versa. Because right now it looks like that's exactly possible – that you end up spending 5 rounds where you can hit everyone within melee distance and follow that up with extra hits using dexterity to apply extra doses of poison.
It's merit intensive (and maybe not broken, since by that time you can do worse) but it's interesting and worrisome. I'll playtest and see what's up.

[Sith_Happens]

autofire your fists

Like this, right?

[Rater202]

Has anybody here been keeping up with the Beast teasers?

We've got the fifth family, to match with the other four-they represent fear of being powerless to stop something and are called the anakim or something like that. They're named after a race of giants from hebrew mythology. Godzilla was given as an exceptionally large and powerful example of a beast from this family.

Known hungers are Hunger for Prey, Hunger to Hoard, and Hunger for Punishment(that is, you hunger for the feeling of doling out punishment)

One of the Beast Endgames is called Incarnate, though we don't know if it's an endgame like Golconda for Vampires or if it's an end game like archmastery for mages, just that incarnates scare the crap out of other beasts.

Beasts powers are called Nightmare's and Atavisms, and Atavisms involve altering your physical body to manifest traits from your monstrous soul exploding into spiders to slip behind someone was given as an example. All we know about Nightmares is that they're highly cusomizable, and that it might be where Kinship Powers come it.

speaking of Kinship, they apparently work based around the supernatural creatures you know if your beast happens to be friends with a nosferatu, you could develop kinship powers based on vampires, or on nosferatu, or even based on that specific nosferatu.

Beats are like werewolves in that they're born beasts but don't manifest powers until later on-Beasts have nightmares throughout their lives of being stalked by some monster in spooky environment, and eventually while dreaming it becomes lucid and they realize that they're the monster that's been terrorizing themselves. The working name for this is Homecoming.

The Beast's lair isn't a merit, but is actually part of the template. It's sort of a pocket dimension that connects to some other worlds. Beasts in a brood together can combine lairs, lairs can be accessed from anyplace where you can invoke their themes(a black sand beach could be entered from a swimming pool), the Beast can metaphorically hand out keys for other beings to enter their lairs, and it's possible to sneak into one, which is bad if a Hero gets in, because if the lair dies, you die with it.

A Beast usually looks human in the real world, but in their layers they assume their true forms because there, they don't have to be separate from their souls.

Beasts originate from an entity called "The Dark Mother" and believe that other supernatural splats are likewise her children. It's up to interpretation if they're right, but there's evidence for it.

Mages are the cousin who went to college and knows lots of big words, with other things on his mind, Prometheans are adopted, and Unchained Demons aren't family.

Mages are the closest to Beasts in nature, as both boil down to "discovered untapped potential within their souls"

Examples of Beast's interacting with other splats were given as "helping a werewolf hunt, playing watch out for a vampire while they feed, calling down lightning so that a promethean can escape the angry mob, and opening up their lair so that a changeling can hind inside from their keeper".

[Sith_Happens]

Sounds awesome.

[Elderand]

Huh. That's vaguely dissatisfying.

Need to buy the book and find out

That's because werewolf's harmony has far far more consequences than integrity or humanity.

Integrity has no influence on anything except on itself. The only thing low integrity does is make loosing integrity easier. The conditions are there as a way to tie up integrity into the rest of the system.

Humanity for vampires has a few more consequences, social penalties, accidental embraces, limit on voluntary embraces. Even the social penalties aren't that big a deal with how easyly vampires can bypass social encounters entirely with disciplines.

Demons's cover system has more consequences but demons have a lot of way to regain cover and can maintain multiple at once.

Werewolf has the most severe and numerous consequences, consequences that do not provide beats and harmony can not be bought. There is no need to add conditions on top of that.

[Almarck]

The most obvious and mowt used purpose of the werewolf harmony system is that it determines how fast and how easy it is to change. The higher (more human) you are the harder it is to change. To the point that changing takes up a whole round and that clothes get ruined more easily (by default clothes end up getting merged with the form or resizes to fit when appropriate). As harmony decreases it gets easier to change... too easy. At the low end you'll end up reflexively changing form against your will based on situation. (Need to find someone, gp to urhan to sniff em out, human for talking... in a gun fight, gauru... in a school fight) to stop yourself from changing... you'd need to burn essence and actions.

In short unstable harmony itself is a condition that it is redundant to add more conditions.

[SiuiS]

Like this, right?

That's an accurate representation of my tabeltop game actually. The guy who came from D&D and built a martial a trust? He brought a friend who built a morally suspect pugilist. They do training montages.

That's because werewolf's harmony has far far more consequences than integrity or humanity.

Integrity has no influence on anything except on itself. The only thing low integrity does is make loosing integrity easier. The conditions are there as a way to tie up integrity into the rest of the system.

That's an honest relief, I've been struggling to make integrity at all relevant. I've tied hallucinating and hearing creepy undead whispers to it. But really, it's so disconnected...

[Rater202]

More Beast: Depending on how you build the character, "Thinks they're a different splat" is a viable concept.

an example given was a Namtaro(fear of the dark/Unknown) with a predatory hunger having his homecoming in a city with no other beasts but a thriving kindred community would likely encounter vampires and might find himself developing kinship powers keyed in to vampires and nightmares customized with vampire aesthetics. clearly he's not one of the kindred, because he doesn't rage, nor is he burnt by the sun, and certainly becuase he still breaths, but he has hunger within him that he sates with blood, and his powers are like the kindred's.

There are all kinds of vampires that aren't kindred, and the kindred themselves came about from multiple kinds of vampire evolution into similar organisms over the course of centuries or even millennia(See the Jiang-Shi in V:TR 2E). Perhaps he's a distant cousin?

He has this feeling, about some dark and terrible maternal figure. It haunts his dreams and though he can't say why, he knows shew's out there, somewhere. He'd do well in the Circle of the Crone, yes?

Learning about your family is a major theme in the game, as has been stated, and it's written with crossovers in mind, so they fit very easily into mix splat games or even as the odd man out in a mostly one splat game.

And, apparently the idea that would become beast started life as an official dragon splat.

[Elderand]

That's an honest relief, I've been struggling to make integrity at all relevant. I've tied hallucinating and hearing creepy undead whispers to it. But really, it's so disconnected...

Harmony ties into shapeshifting, triggers for death rage, ease of travel between flesh and shadow, time in control during soft rage, possible bans.

[Rater202]

Something I forgot to mention: Beasts have more to do with Dreams than just their homecoming nightmares and the fact that a starving Beast's soul may fly off and rampage in the dream scape.

Beasts have access to what they call the Primordial Dream. It is explicitly connected to the Astral from Mage, and in order to avoid the "Arcadia Problem" that resulted in much arguing and pointless debate between made fans and changeling fans, they're going to explain exactly how they're related, and that's coming strait from a Dev post on the Onyxpath forums.

[Sith_Happens]

Learning about your family is a major theme in the game, as has been stated, and it's written with crossovers in mind, so they fit very easily into mix splat games or even as the odd man out in a mostly one splat game.

So basically it's going to be the go-to option for every nWoD player that wants to be special snowflake. Oh well, no pain no gain I suppose.

"Arcadia Problem"

That being...?

[Almarck]

Perhaps. But then again I could argue that it being universally designed ales it not special enough.

Anyways the authors have stated that they wanted to do a heavily crossover centric game line that approaches lots of miscellaneous monster types not done before. I feel beast is a step in the right direction.

Now.... when will they do space invaders?

[Lord Raziere]

That being...?

I think I can guess:
Mage Player: so I'm thinking that the Gentry are a creation by the Exarchs-
Changeling Player: No Arcadia is just a name, they're completely separate, stop putting your Awakening explanations into my mystical mysterious Fae game!
Mage-P: Why would they both have the name Arcadia if they weren't the same? Mages are supposed to be detectives figuring out the magical world works!
Changeling-P: No there are some things you should keep mysterious!
Mage-P: But they fit so well together!
Changeling-P: No, the Supernal Realms are supposed to be unreachable and not actually real, if you give Mages an easy route to Arcadia, whats the actual point of trying to reach them?
Mage-P: Magesplanation!
Changeling-P: Faestyrious!
*argument continues into infinity*

or something like that, I am a fan of both games and personally have no problem with Arcadia being a schrodinger's dimension thing.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

So basically it's going to be the go-to option for every nWoD player that wants to be special snowflake. Oh well, no pain no gain I suppose.



That being...?

Well, one of the Supernal Realms in Mage is "Arcadia", which has Fey/Faeries in it.
The homeland of the True Fey in Changeling is also Arcadia.
Both are separated by some form of barrier from the main world, except one is the Abyss, only able to cross using the Watchtower in your Awakening, the other is the Hedge, which you CAN cross it'll just take your soul and why would you want to cross anyways.

There was a lot of debate over whether Changeling Arcadia was Mage Arcadia, what that meant, which description took precedence, etc.

Mage 2.0 is going to get rid of this by removing the concept of the Supernal Realms as physical places or 'planes of existence' type deals and make them more of a symbolic thing. So Changeling Arcadia is a real place, and Mage Arcadia is going to be the supernal metaphor of Fairyland. Or at least, that's my interpretation of what little information we've got about the Supernal Realms in Mage 2.0.
Brookshaw, you're welcome to correct me again if I've got it wrong, again.

[Almarck]

In the same vein Pandemonium is no longer suspected to be connected to the Underworld or Duat.

In short Mage cosmology no longer overlapsand pfficially canonically unrelated to alot of thw cosmologies of othr gamelines.

[Sith_Happens]

Well, one of the Supernal Realms in Mage is "Arcadia", which has Fey/Faeries in it.
The homeland of the True Fey in Changeling is also Arcadia.
Both are separated by some form of barrier from the main world, except one is the Abyss, only able to cross using the Watchtower in your Awakening, the other is the Hedge, which you CAN cross it'll just take your soul and why would you want to cross anyways.

There was a lot of debate over whether Changeling Arcadia was Mage Arcadia, what that meant, which description took precedence, etc.

Why can't there just be two Arcadias that are superficially similar but completely different metaphysically? That totally sounds like the kind of thing the true fae would pull just to mess with people.

[Blackhawk748]

Why can't there just be two Arcadias that are superficially similar but completely different metaphysically? That totally sounds like the kind of thing the true fae would pull just to mess with people.

Agreed. I mean we are talking about some of the biggest jerks in all of WoD, who dont actually realize they are being jerks, thus making it worse.

Like this, right?

Also yes. So much yes.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

Why can't there just be two Arcadias that are superficially similar but completely different metaphysically? That totally sounds like the kind of thing the true fae would pull just to mess with people.

Well, it's just a larger part of their turning Mage more into symbols than into grand cosmology and pseudo-history; they're also making it more clear that Atlantis is not even really a myth but more a metaphor not even held by many of the Diamond. The Dark Ages Mage settig is at the very point where the Orders are coming together (again going away from the earlier notion that the Orders are descendents of similar orders in Atlantis).

The fact that this gets rid of a source of much argument is also great.
For most of the time, the writers were just doing their whole "we won't speculate on cross-overs" thing.

[Morty]

The exact relationship of the Changeling Arcadia and Mage Arcadia doesn't strike me as something that will have a profound effect on most chronicles in either gameline.

[SiuiS]

That being...?

Mage players trend toward forcing everything into the neat boxes of their cosmology (an amazingly meta thing, too!) while everyone else is tired of mages correcting them on their history and universe.

Mage 2.0 is going to get rid of this by removing the concept of the Supernal Realms as physical places or 'planes of existence' type deals and make them more of a symbolic thing. :

Which is ironically how 1e did it, they just kept giving a biased, in-game perspective and people missed the bias.

Why can't there just be two Arcadias that are superficially similar but completely different metaphysically? That totally sounds like the kind of thing the true fae would pull just to mess with people.

Because mages study the universe and are never wrong, obviously. u.u

The exact relationship of the Changeling Arcadia and Mage Arcadia doesn't strike me as something that will have a profound effect on most chronicles in either gameline.

It actually came up, like, immediately ish in Soul Cages, and seems to be a question that pops up any time someone is familiar with both splats.

[magic9mushroom]

Mage overshadowing other splats' fluff (Arcadia is a big thing to changelings, but only one of five to mages; the Shadow is a big thing to werewolves, but only one of the many things mages can do) and their crunch (Mages can haxxor Disquiet, removing one of the biggest parts of Promethean; mages can haxxor pledges, turning Changeling completely on its head; mages can haxxor spirits and make Werewolf into a joke) is a serious issue, yes.