World of Darkness (New & Old) - General Discussion Thread

You can probably blame spirits for all that. Smog spirits are probably rife in WOD Beijing, and they'd want to stamp out any attempts at cleaning the place up.

You want true hilarity? Check the Perils of Da Waaagh! chart from Rogue Trader.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

That doesn't solve the issue at all. People will just complain more and start rioting because their own air, water and food is trying to kill them. Their children are being born with their spines exposed. Unscrupulous individuals paint rocks and then sell it as rice. The only thing those smog spirits will accomplish is encouraging people to start rioting and tearing down the factories that produce the smog.

I was thinking more along the lines of mass urging of apathy toward the situation. That's something old wod spirits could do, right?

It's a bit hard to be apathetic when your children have flippers instead of hands and feet and this causes you daily suffering. People are only apathetic as long as they have bread and circuses. When their own children are hideously deformed, they take notice.

This isn't an isolated thing. The Chinese don't have the luxury, like Americans and Europeans, to be apathetic. A large percentage of Chinese babies are born with deformities, and that number increases all the time. Even the people living in Detroit (worst city to live in the USA) don't have to worry about the things the average middle-class Chinese city dweller deals with on a regular basis, like the toxic atmosphere.

Furthermore, there's only so far you can make the World of Darkness darker than the real world before you lose suspension of disbelief. Chinese people being apathetic about their obvious impending doom that they constantly highlight in real life is not something I can take seriously.

Here's a youtube vid explaining the crisis in one minute: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8c5YVzSrEgg

EDIT: If the spirits are making people apathetic to the point that they don't care about being able to raise children that could function normally in society or that they have to wear gas masks just to go outside and not die, then I doubt those people could muster the effort to do anything except lay down and wait to die.

edited 13th Nov '13 9:54:33 AM by Zenoseiya

On the topic of things about the oWoD that bug us, can someone confirm this for me?

I never played Werewolf the Apocalypse, but a friend told me there's a faction that recruits by getting humans before their fist change to go frenzy in front of their whole family to kill them. Then they swoop in and pick up the pieces. At the time I was just insulted, why would anyone willingly join the people who made them kill their human loved ones? Even if they didn't figure it out until later, I would like to think that as soon as you find out that everyone joined the same way, some would start to put the pieces together and discover what the leadership is up to.

Like the fuck we are. Man is responsible for greatest mass extinction since the second ice age and I don't think we'll allow ourself to into the good night when it's 'nature time'. If there was some natural order of things we disrupted it.

because they were holding back the 'real you'

edited 13th Nov '13 3:53:19 PM by joeyjojo

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Appeal to nature fallacy. The idea of a "natural order" is nothing more than hippie lies. Every species is designed to reproduce, and all their adaptations are designed to help them reproduce. They don't care if they overpopulate and destroy their food source because of a minor environmental change.

The difference between humans and animals is that we, unique in all of creation, have the wherewithal to moderate our impact on the environment. No other species could do that.

Humans causing mass extinctions isn't surprising at all. If humans hadn't done it, another species would have. The changes we cause now, in geological terms, are quite small, and life on Earth is already adapting to it. For example, elephants are evolving to lose their tusks, because their chance of survival without tusks is much greater than the sacrifice of being able to more easily forage.

If every human died tomorrow, it would only take a couple of centuries for all trace of our civilizations to be rendered into dust and archeological evidence.

It doesn't really matter what humans do. While there isn't any natural order where animals work in harmony to maintain their environment, all systems seek homeostasis. Interruptions to systems, like human activity, forces the environment to work around it to find a new homeostasis. Like, for example, elephants evolving to lose their tusks and fungus in Chernobyl becoming radiotrophic.

It's simply adapt or die. The biosphere will simply adapt to human activity. Yes, there will be a great loss of diversity, but that simply means those species weren't up to snuff, and better adapted species will take their place.

We humans will undoubtedly destroy ourselves, which is all well and good because it means we weren't as superior as we thought. The biosphere is better off without weaklings. Survival of the fittest. No mercy.

No single species is responsible for that level of ecological destruction is mankind has done.

Don't get me wrong I think the new age types and hippies are as deluded as much as you do. But I think we should own that. Survival the fitness is no moral absolvment for it any more then it was during European colonisation.

Regardless we are dragging real world philosophy and politics into the thread. World of darkness seems disconnected from our reality and anthropocentric because it explicitly is so. You or I might not see mankind as some great cosmic threat to the planet but werewolf the apocalypse does so.

edited 14th Nov '13 4:07:00 AM by joeyjojo

hashtagsarestupid

You know, what I learned recently is that human civilization may be also a boon to wild species. Population of mooses skyrocketed because open roads discourage grizzly bears from approaching them, and clearing forests for roads make food easier accessible for moose.

Boars seem to thrive in parks of big cities here. Hell, they learned how to safely cross the streets and how to beg for food, and to ignore what is certainly not a threat to their off-spring.

The example of Tschernobyl makes me want to create werewolf villain(s) who want to repeat the tragedy elsewhere just to recreate effects it had on wild nature, and other more moderate werewolves have to stop them.

I will probably retcon Wyrm bullshit out of existence since you don't need supernatural threat behind nature damaging villains. Pentex is a villain straight out of Captain Planet.

I already retcon out some things I don't like in Warhammer Fantasy/40K (authors seem to explicitly put contradicting sources for you to pick), so why not in Wo D?

edited 13th Nov '13 11:10:27 PM by CaptainKatsura

My President is Funny Valentine.

Heh. I remember, for a computer class, we had to do a flyer for a fictitious business; I featured, in the fine print, the phrase "A Subsidiary of Pentex", to the teacher's mild bewilderment.

Fuck Pentex. If I ever run Werewolf, I'll figure real life corporate villains, like Tzimisce Steve Jobs who creates human Centi I Pads.

That reminded how often Vampire:tM-Bloodlines mocks Republicans and Bush administration in side quests.

edited 13th Nov '13 11:15:24 PM by CaptainKatsura

My President is Funny Valentine.

I assume it took a great deal of effort to find ways of humiliating the Bush family that members of the Bush family haven't already tried.

Doo Eeeet.

edited 14th Nov '13 4:08:54 AM by joeyjojo

hashtagsarestupid

Also maybe Putin vs werebear and wereseal ecoterrorist who attack his Arctic oil platforms. Obviously he is not a vampire because he is seen in daylight frequently. Let's make it so he hunted werewolves and vampires for KGB and USSR. Vampire 20th Anniversary Edition has NSA vs vampires, so why not KGB?

My President is Funny Valentine.

NSA vs vampires?

edited 14th Nov '13 9:25:18 AM by Rosvo1

NSA discovered existence of vampires, but think they're not vampires but people possessed by extradimensional beings and something like that.

My President is Funny Valentine.

That is incredibly stupid.

NSA does codebreaking.

Still better than Werewolf's Captain Planet esque villains.

I can totally rip-off Call of Cthulhu and switch them with Delta Green. Agency that was established after raid on Innsmouth inhabitants.

My President is Funny Valentine.

Ah yes, the organisation that Kenneth Hite ripped off for Trail of Cthulhu.

A during all that code breaking they discovered the existence of vampires...

hashtagsarestupid

In our campaign half a year ago we took on the BBC and came out on top. Turned out it was ran by vampires headed by Oscar Wilde.

Ahhh good times.

I figured out Poland must have above average number of werewolves since we have Białowieża Forest, the largest primeval forest in Europe. Also, recently lupine population increased to the point some clever individuals wonder if exporting them to other countries would be more profitable than keeping their numbers in check through selective hunting.

So I guess Eastern Poland would be a traditional stronghold of several Garou clans, with Shadowlords and Silver Fangs most prominent. Glass Walkers and Bone Gnawers in cities, of course.

Now I should decide about what Vampire clans have largest sway in Poland. I refuse to buy into bullshit that Poland is Sabbat stronghold and have usually high number of inbred revenant ghoul hillbillies, as some passages of 20th anniversary edition imply. Polish culture has strong ties with Western civilization so I guess the civilized Camarilla would have strong presence in my country. Crime rate is not high enough to justify Sabbat presence.

edited 15th Nov '13 5:11:02 AM by CaptainKatsura

My President is Funny Valentine.

I'm so gonna make Poland into this Sabbat hellhole just to piss you off.

You know the iron curtain was a things, so don't take poland too personally.

hashtagsarestupid