General WoD Discussion #2: Its time to Celebrate!

[The Glyphstone]

Originally Posted by Fouredged Sword

If you want to have a supernatural creature in a nWoD game, feel free just to make something up. Give it a few strange powers and let it ride. It keeps your players on their toes. Had my players fight a chupacabra once. Great fun was had when it caught them unprepared in the woods during daylight because they thought they where hunting a vampire.

This is good. I'd personally start with a ghost-related plot to emphasize the investigative/stealth/horror aspect of the game to your group - rules for ghosts are included in the main book - but the book also has an Antagonists section with various enemies to use, and the very modular system (no levels or classes, just stats and XP) means you can squash together an enemy stat block very easily.

[comicshorse]

Quick Changeling question: Can the Contract of Artifice be used to enhance Tokens ?

[ToySoldierCPlus]

Provided that the Token is a thing which can be enhanced, I don't see why not. A knife that is also a Token, for instance, should be able to be enhanced with the Contract of Artifice.

[Morty]

Blood Sorcery is now out. I'm internally debating as to whether or not I want to buy it.

[ToySoldierCPlus]

Do we have any more info about when Mummy's coming out? Everything I can find just says September, and it's the one thing I'm really excited for.

[SiderealDreams]

Originally Posted by ToySoldierCPlus

Do we have any more info about when Mummy's coming out? Everything I can find just says September, and it's the one thing I'm really excited for.

Still some time in September. Assuming this week is the final week of layout and we get very lucky on proofs. MAYYYYYBE last week of September but I wouldn't be surprised if it was 1st week of October. Nothing is set mind you so I'm not trying to make a panic. Only concrete info is that at the latest monday meeting blog post it was in layout and Colin was looking to maybe give out another spoiler goodie or two before the release.

[Sith_Happens]

So I just noticed that the thread subtitle is missing an apostrophe. Figured I'd point it out.

[18th Avenger]

This is an nWoD question; but has anyone else rolled up a Mage who didn't belong to an Order?

[Xallace]

Originally Posted by 18th Avenger

This is an nWoD question; but has anyone else rolled up a Mage who didn't belong to an Order?

There were three in the last one I was in, myself included.

[masterjoda99]

Speaking of mage, I was hoping to perhaps solicit input on the third arcanum for an acanthus character I was working on. See, he's something of a planner and strategist, who likes to use his fate and time mojo to figure out what's likely to come and plan accordingly, and also to nudge things in his favor. He also has a goal to find and collect as many grimoires and owner-less soulstones as he can, eventually being able to make a mage's library for the grimoires.

I was thinking either Prime or Mind for his third arcanum, with the former leading to some Prime focused legacy, and the latter leading to that chessmaster like one with mind.

Which one would be a better pick for his third arcanum?

[ToySoldierCPlus]

From what I understand, Mind tends to be the most powerful arcanum at all levels, though thematically I prefer Prime. Mind also fits your concept better overall, especially with that chessmaster legacy you're eying.

[18th Avenger]

Originally Posted by Xallace

There were three in the last one I was in, myself included.

What was that like? What did you run?

[Xallace]

Originally Posted by 18th Avenger

What was that like? What did you run?

I didn't feel like being an apostate detracted from the game any. None of the three of us were inherently on anyone's nerves by virtue of Order politics (like how our Arrows and Guardians tolerated each other, at best), but it didn't give us any sort of leg up in social interactions either. We also needed driving personal motivations to go on adventures, since there weren't any higher-ups telling us what to do or organizational goals to take advantage of.

I had a Mind-focused Mastigos / Bearer of the Eternal Voice, an ex-soldier having a crisis of faith while trying to escape his past yada yada. He was there at personal request of the cabal's patron, but ended up sticking around because of a burgeoning relationship with the party Time mage. There was a Fate-focused Acanthus, a Texan gambler who was loudly opinionated (to the point of party conflict), but probably one of the more compassionate mages we had. I felt like she was driven mostly by care for the cabal. The last was a Spirit-focused Thyrsus who actually acted something like a Guardian, but was mostly an uncomfortable stereotype, so I don't think I can really go into him.

[ocel]

Yeah, sorry about the typo.

[Morty]

The Strix Chronicles book is shaping up to be quite the game-changer for Vampire. There were extensive playtests of the new Physical Disciplines, we got an idea for the new four-dot Majesty power and now the White Wolf development blog contains the preliminary version for the new rules for innate vampiric sense and new Auspex powers.

[ToySoldierCPlus]

So, I'm reading through various bits of Changeling, and a question has occurred to me. When a group of changelings are sharing a Hollow, how do they pay for the merit? If each wants to contribute 2 dots, does it cost each of them 6 XP for the two dots, or does it cost more depending on how they split the dots up? Also, if one of them wants to add a third dot to the shared merit, do they pay an additional 6 XP, or would it cost them 14 XP, as that would be the 7th dot? And if I missed where it clarified this in the core book, please tell me. I looked over the merit, but all I could find was the explanation of cost for a single changeling, where the total dots between aspects are added for determining the cost of another dot.

[masterjoda99]

Also on the subject of changeling, how would one best describe the seemings to people unfamiliar with them in a concise, summarized manner?

[ToySoldierCPlus]

Seemings? Easy:

Beasts: People who were taken and changed into beasts of various kinds.

Darklings: People who were taken and infused with aspects of darkness and the night. Things like forbidden knowledge, dealing with the dead, surviving in tight, dark, claustrophobic tunnels, draining people of their life force, and impersonating others.

Elementals: People who were taken and infused with various elements. Where the beasts spent time as some kind of animal, these ones spent time as ice sculptures, snow drifts, river currents, breezes, living flames, living rocks, and the occasional tree.

Fairest: Of Them All. That's really all they are. Humans infused with aspects of some form of beauty, be it art, physical perfection, the majesty of mythical creatures like dragons, dancing or similar things.

Ogres: They'll grind your bones to make their bread. Or just smash you into pulp. They're big, they're ugly, they're occasionally cannibalistic.

Wizened: Think tinkering gnomes and dwarves. Twisted little things that were forced to craft, tinker, experiment, and heal.

[Selrahc]

Originally Posted by masterjoda99

Also on the subject of changeling, how would one best describe the seemings to people unfamiliar with them in a concise, summarized manner?

A seeming is the role you were forced to play in Faerie. Playing the role warped you. They fall into 6 basic categories. Those used for brutish physical work, the "ogres". Those used for menial or complicated work, the "wizened". Those who worked with or were turned into animals and hybrids known as "beasts". Those turned into natural phenomena or the servants of those phenomena, the "elementals". Those who were treated as a treasure or bauble, known as "fairest". Those who were used in labours where light was a stranger, the "darklings".

[SiderealDreams]

Mummy has been pushed back to October.

[Kesnit]

Originally Posted by ToySoldierCPlus

So, I'm reading through various bits of Changeling, and a question has occurred to me. When a group of changelings are sharing a Hollow, how do they pay for the merit? If each wants to contribute 2 dots, does it cost each of them 6 XP for the two dots, or does it cost more depending on how they split the dots up?

You pay for the dots you bought. So if 4 people put in 1 dot, it is 2 XP each and the Hollow is a 4-dot Merit. If one decides to later put in a second, that player will pay another 4 XP (since this is their second dot in that Merit). However, everyone would have access to a 5-dot Hollow.

[ToySoldierCPlus]

Originally Posted by Kesnit

You pay for the dots you bought. So if 4 people put in 1 dot, it is 2 XP each and the Hollow is a 4-dot Merit. If one decides to later put in a second, that player will pay another 4 XP (since this is their second dot in that Merit). However, everyone would have access to a 5-dot Hollow.

Cool, that's what I figured. Otherwise it wouldn't be worthwhile.

And Mummy's been delayed til October? Man, I've been looking for to that since it was announced.

[Lord_Gareth]

So...I am once again looking for help deciding on one of several character concepts. The ST in question is running a Changeling: the Lost game and says she wants to explore the things that separate the Lost from the humans they protect. I was aiming to focus on the madness and compulsions so exemplary of fae of all varieties, and had several ideas:

Silent Sally spent sixty years guarding the library of a rakshasa-like Keeper that she knew only as The Tiger, fed only on the scraps of life and living that she could steal from intruders. She remembers decades that stretched through the endless, dusty silence until that silence became a part of her, though she still doesn't know how it is that she emerged from those years of neglect and death younger than when she left. She still hungers for shards of life; when she hasn't fed, her lithe frame is pale and her hair and eyes are dark, but when she's full up on stolen life she becomes tanned, vibrant, and alive. Addiction beckons.

The Corpsegrinder known as Marcus Vain doesn't think there's anything wrong with him. Okay, so he has more than one escape tunnel out of his basement apartment. And alright, one of those tunnels (more than one, actually, if you can puzzle out the maze of digging and traps and dead-ends) ends in the local graveyard and he keeps a hatchet around so he can get some Original Recipe whenever he wants it, but he's an okay guy. It's not like he's some Gristlegrinder, right? The only thing he can't figure out is why it is that he keeps waking up in lonely places with a mouth full of ash, covered in blood - or who these pale-faced bastards are that keep following him at night.

Amelia Express doesn't know what she is. No, really - she has no idea. Her memories of Arcadia aren't fragments, they're a gigantic blank spot (except, of course, when she dreams - dreams she cannot remember but dreads with soul-shredding terror). She appears as a woman made all of dots, like some pointillist painting - except when she's line art, or a mass of text, or watercolor, or any of a dozen other printed or painted or drawn forms. Sometimes she thinks she's Fairest - and there's no arguing that she is pretty as a picture, poetic as a song, as enrapturing as a maestro performance when she wants to be - but sometimes she thinks she's an Elemental, or a Wizened. She spends her time literally talking to books (no one, even Amelia, is sure how she learned that Communion contract) and trying to piece together the muddled-up shards of a life she isn't entirely certain is her own. Not all of her memories match, you see.

[masterjoda99]

Another question about changeling, specifically hedgespinning: when hedgespinning weapons, do they start with the stats of the mundane equivalent of that weapon, with the hedgespinning adding on to that, or does it just start with a +1 equipment bonus and nothing else before spending dots?

[SiderealDreams]

Originally Posted by ToySoldierCPlus

Cool, that's what I figured. Otherwise it wouldn't be worthwhile.

And Mummy's been delayed til October? Man, I've been looking for to that since it was announced.

Hopefully not too long as Colin was cool and dropped this on the blog recently.

...And apologies for the relative dip in communication of late, but hey, at least it means we’re all plugging away, still trying to make our schedule projections, still trying to make sure quality never suffers. I’m not an official source for such things, but I think the Kickstarter is closing in on a finished form, and the Mummy core set isn’t far behind. We’ll miss September for full release on these things, but not by much, it looks like.

[ocel]

The Forum's back online so there's no need to hesitate in posting more.

[TheCountAlucard]

(hesitates)

About how synched-up are nMage and nWerewolf's rules for Spirits?

[Fouredged Sword]

In theory completely, but I have not read all of the mages books. You run into some book creep, but the nWoD books made a much greater effort to be consistent than the old system. Not a good idea to mix werewolves and mages in the same party though, as a spirit/life mage makes a better werewolf than a werewolf, and can generate enough essence to make the real werewolves salivate.

[The Glyphstone]

They're compatible enough that you could take spirits from one and drop them in the other without issue. You really need Book of Spirits to flesh them out for either venue, though.

[Selrahc]

Originally Posted by The Glyphstone

They're compatible enough that you could take spirits from one and drop them in the other without issue. You really need Book of Spirits to flesh them out for either venue, though.

They're pretty fleshed out for Werewolf, getting probably a good fifth of the core book with lots of time in most of the Werewolf supplements. In Mage, you get 2 or so pages about the spirits in core, which necessarily leaves a pretty basic picture and basically need to look elsewhere to really understand them.

Systemically they're identical, although the Mage core just lays out the barebones of their mechanical capabilities.