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[World of Darkness] Red Star shining at WW HQ, heads to roll

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  • ToxTox I kill threads he/himRegistered User regular
    Yeah the new CofD Mage game is pretty good.

    Honestly I would really love a pulpy Technocracy game. Like, full on MiB and shit, just with the old Mage setting

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  • cj iwakuracj iwakura The Rhythm Regent Bears The Name FreedomRegistered User regular
    Could still run that with Awakening, the Seers' Panopticon faction are basically Technocracy.

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  • SolarSolar Registered User regular
    Solar wrote: »
    cj iwakura wrote: »
    Delduwath wrote: »
    If I remember correctly, in OWoD, the second sight ability that imbued Hunters have would show mages as different from normal humans.

    Which is like, you know, means whatever you want it mean. Hunters are racist against mages.

    Witch Finders is an interesting book about evil Mages. It could easily be about just going after the 'bad' Mages like Scelesti and such.

    Although at the same time probably not actual full on Supernal Mages because a Hunter is pretty much never going to be able to get one of them. Just too powerful.

    Not...necessarily. The CofD rules are pretty deadly overall. Mages are quite squishy and vulnerable to surprise attacks. It's the retaliation from other mages investigating the death of the first one that hunters have almost no countermeasures against. And 2nd edition Awakening closed the almost unbelievably powerful ritual magic exploits, so a couple of occult countermeasures or endowments could even up that playing field enough that hunters pose a real threat.

    I really disagree.

    For a start, Hunters that aren't sleepwalkers have no way of knowing that magic actually exists because of the Sleeping Curse

    but even if they do, Mages are so tremendously dangerous and Mortals have almost no defence against them that's it really isn't going to happen

  • Professor PhobosProfessor Phobos Registered User regular
    edited June 2017
    Solar wrote: »
    Solar wrote: »
    cj iwakura wrote: »
    Delduwath wrote: »
    If I remember correctly, in OWoD, the second sight ability that imbued Hunters have would show mages as different from normal humans.

    Which is like, you know, means whatever you want it mean. Hunters are racist against mages.

    Witch Finders is an interesting book about evil Mages. It could easily be about just going after the 'bad' Mages like Scelesti and such.

    Although at the same time probably not actual full on Supernal Mages because a Hunter is pretty much never going to be able to get one of them. Just too powerful.

    Not...necessarily. The CofD rules are pretty deadly overall. Mages are quite squishy and vulnerable to surprise attacks. It's the retaliation from other mages investigating the death of the first one that hunters have almost no countermeasures against. And 2nd edition Awakening closed the almost unbelievably powerful ritual magic exploits, so a couple of occult countermeasures or endowments could even up that playing field enough that hunters pose a real threat.

    I really disagree.

    For a start, Hunters that aren't sleepwalkers have no way of knowing that magic actually exists because of the Sleeping Curse

    but even if they do, Mages are so tremendously dangerous and Mortals have almost no defence against them that's it really isn't going to happen

    There are ways around the Sleeping Curse, and I wouldn't be shocked if Hunters ended up counting as a general exception. Though, I did think the Awakening 2e rules on the Sleeping Curse were far too confining.

    And, look, a mage is deadly, no doubt, but they're very squishy, and the CofD rules are very deadly for everyone. And how deadly an individual mage is going to be will vary by mage, their preparations, etc. Ye Olde Sniper Rifles and Car Bombs are pretty effective.

    Professor Phobos on
  • SolarSolar Registered User regular
    This discussion comes up quite a bit on the Mage forums and the opinion of the developer, when he has commented, has been (paraphrasing) "Hunters vs Mages is not a scenario which is in any way fun for Hunters or challenging for Mages. In Hunter games, don't use Mages because they're just too power and impossible to put the hurt on. In Mage games, Hunters aren't antagonists they're pawns and interesting groups to co-opt and investigate."

    Because the thing is, who do you even know to hit? How are you going to track them down? How do you do that without them noticing when you have no idea what they can do? Like, outside of some incredibly fringe cases where the Hunters are stupendously lucky it's just... not going to happen. Even if they can get past the curse and manage to identify a Mage who they then decide to kill, actually tracking them down and killing them is a whole other game to play, and if the Mage gets a single whiff of them that's it. Game over, basically.

  • Professor PhobosProfessor Phobos Registered User regular
    edited June 2017
    Well, there's a reason I've been increasingly walking away from the CofD. And as much good as DaveB has done for Mage overall, he's had a real shitty attitude about Hunter and its integration with Mage for years.

    Professor Phobos on
  • Grunt's GhostsGrunt's Ghosts Registered User regular
    edited June 2017
    Stewart Wieck, co-founder of White Wolf and one of the guys who is wrote for Vampire the Masquerade and Mage the Ascension passed away.

    Grunt's Ghosts on
  • cj iwakuracj iwakura The Rhythm Regent Bears The Name FreedomRegistered User regular
    Oh wow... he also wrote the Malkavian Clan novel and was one of the editors for the series. :(

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  • SolarSolar Registered User regular
    Well, there's a reason I've been increasingly walking away from the CofD. And as much good as DaveB has done for Mage overall, he's had a real shitty attitude about Hunter and its integration with Mage for years.

    Mage is designed to play Mage, not to provide Hunter antagonists. I'm definitely not interested in modifying Mage to mollify any other line, which is why they are by far the most powerful Supernaturals in CofD with maybe Mummies as an exception.

  • cj iwakuracj iwakura The Rhythm Regent Bears The Name FreedomRegistered User regular
    Solar wrote: »
    Well, there's a reason I've been increasingly walking away from the CofD. And as much good as DaveB has done for Mage overall, he's had a real shitty attitude about Hunter and its integration with Mage for years.

    Mage is designed to play Mage, not to provide Hunter antagonists. I'm definitely not interested in modifying Mage to mollify any other line, which is why they are by far the most powerful Supernaturals in CofD with maybe Mummies as an exception.

    Yeah, that's what Scelesti and Seers are for.

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  • Professor PhobosProfessor Phobos Registered User regular
    Solar wrote: »
    Well, there's a reason I've been increasingly walking away from the CofD. And as much good as DaveB has done for Mage overall, he's had a real shitty attitude about Hunter and its integration with Mage for years.

    Mage is designed to play Mage, not to provide Hunter antagonists. I'm definitely not interested in modifying Mage to mollify any other line, which is why they are by far the most powerful Supernaturals in CofD with maybe Mummies as an exception.

    I'd question if Mage is really designed to play Mage, given how poorly the magic system actually reflects how magic is depicted in the setting, but it's not really my point (and I was more thinking of Hunters as Mage antagonists), but the knock-on effects of this attitude towards Mage has drained a lot of the life out of Mage itself. There's really no "Wake the Tiger" in nMage, which makes it very difficult to fit in with the rest of the CofD, contrast with a mundane backdrop, explain why Mages don't rule the world, confines the range of antagonists, etc.

    Part of this is just the magic system being (as far as I can tell) intentionally designed to be dull and uninteresting.

  • SolarSolar Registered User regular
    I mean, I disagree. I think it's a fun and interesting system, but as far as Mage fitting in with the CofD, I'm not really bothered if it does or doesn't, because I'm playing Mage. If Mage doesn't play nice with Vampire that's not really a problem because I'm not playing Vampire

    I think Mage stands along really well. Clearly you don't like it, but I think it's pretty great and that honestly it's probably even better for just not using any other CofD stuff when playing Mage.

  • Professor PhobosProfessor Phobos Registered User regular
    edited June 2017
    Well, I'm basically in the break-up stage with the CofD generally, not just Mage. I find the system bloated and tedious, the proliferation of useless merits annoying, and the absolute retrograde movement away from the improvements made for VtR 2nd in terms of writing, handling of material, etc, very frustrating. As an example, I picked up A Thousand Years of Night, and here is my official review: It's fine. I really like the approach they used for elders. The mechanical elements are mediocre to bad. The writing is approximately 50% filler. It's fine. Not good, not great, not bad, not terrible. This basically has been the standard for the CofD lately.

    As much as I like aspects of the games, they're either moving away from me or I'm moving away from them. After the garbage fire that was Beast, the all-in attitude on Mage being a power fantasy that completely ditches its alleged genre, and Werewolf 2nd's problems, it's always one step forward, two steps back. No faith anymore.

    But, to clarify, when I say it doesn't fit in with the CofD, I don't mean in some kind of game balance sense in crossover. There's no reason the splats need to be "balanced" with one another. If you want Hunters to represent a real challenge to default power level Mages, they need some special assets - they need to be Sleepwalkers with anti-Magic gear and endowments, that sort of thing. This is fine.

    I mean in terms of tone, theme, genre - there's a grounded horror aesthetic to the overall CofD they've been gradually abandoning and it's sad to see it lose what made it special in the first place, bit by bit. And the "Mage is just a different game!" argument you occasionally see raised just misses this point. It's supposed to be grounded, gritty, dangerous, and the magic system is just 'Press Button, Receive Cat."

    But, yeah, I think I'm just leaving the orbit. People loved the Mummy supplements, for example, and I thought they were both laughably bad.

    Professor Phobos on
  • Grunt's GhostsGrunt's Ghosts Registered User regular
    Honestly, I dislike Mage being in the same world as vampire, werewolves, changlings, ect.. they just don't fit. Like Vampires can deal with werewolves if they need to, changlings are hidding from Fae creatures so they don't interact hardly. But Mages? One smart mage would destroy all of vampire society, make the werewolves their bitch, and could lock the Fae from ever entering our world in the first place. If this was Marvel, the others would be the Defenders level characters while Mage would be things Doctor Strange would be dealing with. (Or for those who read Original Sins, the things
    Nick Fury fought that Doctor Strange didn't even knew existed.
    ) It's also why I wouldn't have Demon: The Descent in the same world, because it doesn't fit with Machine Gods and clockwork angels. For Mages to be able to fit, they would need to have their power scaled down to maybe Dresden Files levels. Which no one would ever want because Mage players want to be demi-god creatures who bend reality with a whim.

  • cj iwakuracj iwakura The Rhythm Regent Bears The Name FreedomRegistered User regular
    In a lot of ways, Doctor Strange felt like a Mage film, right down to having Adamantine Arrows, Mysterium, and Scelesti.

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  • cj iwakuracj iwakura The Rhythm Regent Bears The Name FreedomRegistered User regular
    edited July 2017
    Glancing through the Mage(Ascension) stuff on Drivethru, and I recall hearing that there were some really good stories based on it? Any idea what they were called? They might have just been short stories in the supplemental books, something about a specific character.

    Wait, there's a Penny Dreadful Mage novel? WTF?...
    http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/98228/Penny-Dreadful

    cj iwakura on
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  • ToxTox I kill threads he/himRegistered User regular
    Kickstarter for Dark Eras 2 is live. Looks like each era will feature a pair of supernaturals this time

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  • BrainleechBrainleech 機知に富んだコメントはここにあります Registered User regular
    cj iwakura wrote: »
    Glancing through the Mage(Ascension) stuff on Drivethru, and I recall hearing that there were some really good stories based on it? Any idea what they were called? They might have just been short stories in the supplemental books, something about a specific character.

    Wait, there's a Penny Dreadful Mage novel? WTF?...
    http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/98228/Penny-Dreadful

    To quote the Simpsons
    Wherever Nacho penetration is less than total that is your market

    Still I know I have a lot of the hunter books but playing a mage hunter would be interesting

  • cj iwakuracj iwakura The Rhythm Regent Bears The Name FreedomRegistered User regular
    Brainleech wrote: »
    cj iwakura wrote: »
    Glancing through the Mage(Ascension) stuff on Drivethru, and I recall hearing that there were some really good stories based on it? Any idea what they were called? They might have just been short stories in the supplemental books, something about a specific character.

    Wait, there's a Penny Dreadful Mage novel? WTF?...
    http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/98228/Penny-Dreadful

    To quote the Simpsons
    Wherever Nacho penetration is less than total that is your market

    Still I know I have a lot of the hunter books but playing a mage hunter would be interesting

    I briefly ran a Mage game where they were basically the subject of a witch hunt, could do something along those lines.

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  • ToxTox I kill threads he/himRegistered User regular
    Dark Eras 2 is on kickstarter. Started with 6 eras, 2 more have been added through stretch goals. It's going pretty slow, but it is going. I for one love this sort of stuff so I'm excited and I hope it does raise a good amount.

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  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    Got this in my e-mail, apparently White-Wolf is going into paid mods territory
    The doors of the Storytellers Vault
    are now open!
    It is with great excitement and pride that we announce the Storytellers Vault is now available!

    We know that fans of the World of Darkness have long aspired to bring your own unique World of Darkness creations to the masses, and now you can as part of the Storytellers Vault, White Wolf’s new creator content program.

    Beginning with Vampire: The Masquerade, aspiring writers, artists, and game designers can now publish their non-canonical table top RPG supplements and fiction stories worldwide in a language of your choosing, and make half of the revenue as your royalty.

    To assist content creators making the best possible products, the Storytellers Vault offers a considerable variety of graphical layout tools including pre-made design templates, and art-packs to choose from.

    We look forward to seeing what you create!

    www.storytellersvault.com

  • cj iwakuracj iwakura The Rhythm Regent Bears The Name FreedomRegistered User regular
    That's... unusual.

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  • Grunt's GhostsGrunt's Ghosts Registered User regular
    That was talked about during the Berlin thing when the V5 play testing happened. They are promotion big time on Facebook if you follow them. Already the Bethesda paid mod comparisons are being made.

  • cj iwakuracj iwakura The Rhythm Regent Bears The Name FreedomRegistered User regular
    I mean, I could see this being cool if it was letting people make games based on the WoD universe or something, but I don't really see the appeal to paid campaigns.

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  • ameybesameybes vvvv MERBERNRegistered User regular
    I think that the main news there is being able to sell setting fanfiction.

  • ArdentArdent Down UpsideRegistered User regular
    Eh, this has become pretty popular in the D&D community. I suspect they see the money moving and want a piece.

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  • OptimusZedOptimusZed Registered User regular
    Good adventures are obviously worth money, given that those modules have been a staple of the hobby basically since it's inception.

    This doesn't seem like too bad a deal, even if I would never buy anything like that from them.

    We're reading Rifts. You should too. You know you want to. Now With Ninjas!

    They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
  • cj iwakuracj iwakura The Rhythm Regent Bears The Name FreedomRegistered User regular
    I guess I feel like custom campaigns aren't really their strong point, more of providing a sandbox. I've never been interested in the ones they've provided as examples(namely in Mage's Keys to the Supernal Tarot and Seers of the Throne), more bits and pieces from them. I liked the Votaries of the Throne a lot, for instance.

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  • Grunt's GhostsGrunt's Ghosts Registered User regular
    I never really use modules so I don't care too much. I just don't think it's really worth it but that is just me.

  • AssuranAssuran Is swinging on the Spiral Registered User regular
    edited August 2017
    Yeah, this is basically just the dmsguild.com for Vampire.

    I'm in favor of it.

    Assuran on
  • 3lwap03lwap0 Registered User regular
    oh0oedgwaapk.jpg

    Played an intro game this morning and it felt good man. New and yet familiar.

  • AssuranAssuran Is swinging on the Spiral Registered User regular
    So they already backed off the three stats in the earlier alpha.

  • Edith UpwardsEdith Upwards Registered User regular
    http://theonyxpath.com/deviant-deviant-the-renegades/

    Good to see more sci-fi in the Chronicles of Darkness.

  • Grunt's GhostsGrunt's Ghosts Registered User regular
    Assuran wrote: »
    So they already backed off the three stats in the earlier alpha.

    Yeah, people were really not happy about three stats.

  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    Does anyone else find the content coming from Onyx Parh vastly more interesting than what we'vw heard about White-Wolf's stuff?

  • Professor PhobosProfessor Phobos Registered User regular
    Does anyone else find the content coming from Onyx Parh vastly more interesting than what we'vw heard about White-Wolf's stuff?

    I'm generally dissatisfied with Onyx Path lately, but absolutely. Nothing about nuWW's teasers for VtM 5th have seemed remotely interesting.

  • Grunt's GhostsGrunt's Ghosts Registered User regular
    The idea of a Vampire without the Masquerade seems like a dumb move, imo. But, honestly, I might actually want to run a Vampire game for the first time since I won't want to use the core setting.

  • cj iwakuracj iwakura The Rhythm Regent Bears The Name FreedomRegistered User regular
    http://theonyxpath.com/deviant-deviant-the-renegades/

    Good to see more sci-fi in the Chronicles of Darkness.

    It kind of gives me a Promethean vibe.

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  • MoosehatIVMoosehatIV Saw a blimp once Registered User regular
    Just played with the new fifth edition stuff at GenCon. It seemed really good so far. It was clear that some rules are still getting tweaked, but the basics are there.

    The hunger mechanics are amazing. Plus they added failing upward, do that if you ever miss your target successes by one die, you can take a success at a narrative cost to succeed.

    So, for example, if you are scouting to see if anyone is in the building you are in, maybe you find them by running face first into them around a corner. Fun stuff like that.

    Also, there are rules for why your group of blood hungry assholes even hang out together and you get bonuses for that group dynamic.

  • MegamaniacoMegamaniaco Madrid, Spain (again!)Registered User regular
    I'd love to play some WoD again, particularly the more out-there stuff like Demon or Wraith. Alas, 'tis but a dream.

    Steam ID: Megamaniaco // LoL summoner: Corcorigan (NA), Megamaniaco (EUW) // Hearthstone: Megamaniaco.2120

    Please don't go. The drones need you. They look up to you.
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