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

The problem would be getting everyone pointed in the same direction. Werewolves are concerned with spirit stuff, Sin-Eaters with ghosty stuff, Changelings with fae stuff, Prometheans with their Pilgrimage, Mages with their various agendas, Vampires mainly with maintaining their own lifestyle, and Hunters with killing the inhuman & heretic & so forth. The ones most willing to work together would be the occultist/scholar types from each splat (Ordo Dracul vamp, Autumn Court Changeling, Mystagogue or Free Council Mage, etc) but even then it would be difficult to find a common interest or goal.

You can run something where the players are playing against each other though. I played in an oWoD game like that once. It was awesome (despite the fact that my Tremere failed and the Technocracy Mage pretending to be a vampire won).

Currently, I'm running a Changeling, Vampire, Werewolf, Hunter Crossover, With one mage PC (Who's, at our agreement, focused on being a medic). It's actually working pretty well, since the trick is to vary the encounters so everyone can play a part.

By "medic" I'd assume a Life Mage, right?

Yup. Originally, I wasn't going to allow Mages, and they came up with a good concept, and I trusted them as a player not to turn it CAPTAIN MAGICPANTS!...andhisfriends.

The current, basic story is that there's a group trying to manipulate the various monster mashes of splats to fight, and then absorb the massive influx of supernatural souls. The party all knew each at least one other person in the coterie pre-transformation, and now have a vested interest to try to calm the war down, and uncover the people manipulating it.

EDIT: Hardest part is remembering all the different rules so I don't have to dig through a rulebook every time something happens. Luckily, I've got a good core of vetren players who help immensely. And NWOD rules are simple enough that I can usually figure out the two or three attributes.

edited 21st Aug '12 5:50:16 PM by DrTentacles

Well, you wouldn't want to dig into rule too much anyway. After all, this is ST system when improvising is literally part of the system.

Besides, the info on other supernaturals in the Hunter corebook is... not quite compatible with other core books anyway.

Oh, hell yeah. Not even going to touch that, though the bit about Demons is pretty good. And Tactics...*Sigh* Can anyone say "XP Sink?"

Oddly, Mummy: The Curse isn't about Egyptian mummies. It's about mummies from the Nameless Empire of Irem. Egyptian, Chinese, and American mummies are handled by the Purified in the Immortals sourcebook.

I hope the new Demon isn't just a rehash of fallen angels. The God-Machine story of demons being proto-humans is more original, and parallels the Islamic story of the Djinn. Perhaps this is what the developers meant when they said it uses Judeo-Christian mythology in a different way than Demon: The Fallen did?

So I am currently trying to obtain ALL the N Wo D rulebooks.

Got Hunter, Changeling and Mage so far. Vampire is the next on my list, followed by Werewolf.

Hunter is definitely my favorite, but I do have a soft spot for Mage.

I just can't wait to play my Moros crimelord who wishes to attain immortality through the use of Golems.

Near as I can tell you'd need mastery of Matter, Death, and Life. Matter to make the homunculus body, Life to animate it, and Death for the Death 5/Life 3 "Steal Body" spell. And it doesn't end up turning you into a monster like being a Tremere Lich does.

Oh, life, you're right. Overlooked that Arcana, but mostly because I envisioned the Golem as a metal construct that is possessed by the mage's soul. (oh, also, if anyone has read Promethean: can mages actually create them?)

The process in itself will probably not make him a monster, but as I see that character, by the time he's able to do it, his wisdom sure as hell ain't intact.

99% of the time, mages cannot create a Promethean. What calls down the Divine Fire to a demiurge is not Awakened sorcery, nor werewolf spiritualism or vampire blood rites. The Divine Fire is drawn to the heights of human obsession - and at the final moment of absolute desperation, supernaturals tend to reach for their favoured brand of power, even if they've made a personal pledge not to do so. (Indeed, if you're stable enough to heed a vow not to do so, you probably don't have the aching need that allows a demiurge to break the rules for that single precious and accursed second that awakens a new Lineage.)

This isn't to say it can't happen, and indeed Saturnine Night (I think) has rules for it, but it's incredibly rare even by the standards of the already scarce Promethean demiurges, and it leaves the mage out of sync with their power for quite some time afterwards.

What does Changeling's Clarity stat represent?

Ability to cope with the huge traumatic experience known as Show Me, On The Doll, Where The Vorlons Touched You, I believe. I've never read Changeling, though.

It's basically their grip on reality, or how immersed in the "real" world they are.

Things like routine, stability (like no stress, not losing your job, interacting with other people) helps keep it up, and things that are either traumatic, or pull you closer to Changeling world drag it down.

When it starts getting low, changelings get all crazy, and start acting like life is just a big story, and stuff like that.

At what level are you allowed to break the 4th wall?

I had a rather wacky idea for a crossover campaign. It would be Hunter, only every member of the cell would be some variety of supernatural in a Mutual Masquerade. The players would have to hide their natures from each other and other cells, hide their Hunter activities from their respective supernatural societies, and juggle Hunting with their respective duties to said societies. In short, Paranoia in a somewhat less absurdist setting.

If only I had a group to play with.

So, I might be getting involved in a game of Changeling The Lost soon. It's my first time actually playing N Wo D, and all I've read thusfar is the TV Tropes entry because I'm a cheapskate and I plan to bum books off someone later. XP However, I think I'd like a character I play to be based around the general concept of a Little Sister. Do you think the general archetype (not specific stuff, of course) would translate better into a Fairest Playmate, a Darkling Moonborn, or something else?

edited 3rd Nov '12 11:49:04 AM by Clevomon

Alright, I give. What the heck is 'The Vigil' is supposed to be? What's the unifying backstory element(s)/aspect(s) between the various Hunter groups and individuals? How the heck do they become aware of the supernatural? At least Hunter The Reckoning made it clear that for all the variability in the circumstances of the Unmasquing, it always involves some sort of mysterious message (not necessarily written) that comes right before the Masquerade's veil is shattered without warning while the prospective Hunter is in the presence of at least one supernatural entity.

edited 10th Nov '12 10:28:20 AM by MarqFJA

In order:

1. The Vigil is not some mystical force (the Awakening) or cultural grouping (the Forsaken). It's simply the most badass term they had for the hunt. When a man is on the Vigil, he is quite simply keeping watch for monsters, and preparing himself to go out and take the fight to them if they rear their ugly heads. (Many groups don't use the term. Hell, most tier-one cells, which basically boil down to a half-dozen stockbrokers and janitors with shotguns, are totally ignorant that there is a larger Hunter pseudoculture and simply think it's them vs. the things that go bump in the night.) This is the sole trait that unifies NWOD Hunters: they are people who know what is going on, and they intend to kick it in the face, for whatever reasons make sense to them. No secret messages. No voices in your head. Just you, the darkness of the world, and as many guns as you can get your hands on. (Also the occasional set of low-grade superpowers for tier 3 cells, but the default Hunter experience tends to hew closer to tier 1, maybe 2, and even a giant tesla rifle or magic hand that shoots Pandoran bees isn't that much use when a pack of werewolves is tearing your face off.) They're not really a distinct magical group like oHunters; they're ordinary people (plus a few people with demon blood but they're not really the focus) trying to kill things most people don't know exist.
2. There really aren't any unifying factors, beyond the basic structure of "welcome to a living hell of paranoia, lies and sleep deprivation, here's your shotgun". The Lucifuge recruit from bloodlines: they find people whose demonic blood is beginning to awaken, and offer them a choice between learning to use their powers for good and a 9mm aspirin. Task Force: VALKYRIE recruits from lateral transfers within the US military, with some being soldiers who stumble on the truth on normal ops, the rest being hardass veterans or skilled specialists moved in to cover weaknesses and skill shortages. Loyalists of Thule tend to join when the greater Loyalist organisation finds them, and are chosen mainly from two groups: people whose parents or grandparents were heavily involved in the whole Nazi thing, and people who fuck up while messing with the supernatural at a more recent date. Most tier-1 cells, and their closest tier-2 equivalent, the Union, are just ordinary guys and girls who find out the supernatural is there, and that it is not friendly, and then join the NRA when they finish hiding in the closet soiling themselves.
3. With the exception of mages, and to a degree werewolves, NWOD supernaturals do not have magical bullshit that wipes away all evidence they were ever there. Prometheans naturally appear human unless they're using electricity to heal, but if they grab or are knocked into a power cable, they will immediately be revealed as inhuman and short of killing all the witnesses there is nothing they can do to make them forget this. Vampires have to clean up after themselves, there's no secret sorcery that cleans up the blood. It's possible for a strong-willed person to see a werewolf for what it is or a sleep-deprived obsessive or drug-addled hippie to glimpse the truth under a changeling's Mask. Some even stumble on rituals for summoning demons or whatnot that work, and some of those survive when it inevitably goes south. The net result is that NWOD Hunters don't need a text message from God to know there's something out there: they watched their son transform into a lupine killing machine and eat their husband, or they played around with a big thick grimoire and ended up losing friends to the ensuing disaster, or they found a pale guy with fangs sucking the life from their tennis partner's throat.

tl;dr version: if oHunter had certain loose similarities to Buffy The Vampire Slayer ("you are chosen to fight the darkness in this world, and will probably die in the process"), nHunter is more like The X Files and Warehouse 13 (he says having never watched the former and only seen a few episodes of the latter).

Actually Warehouse 13 has surprising recruitment similarities to Task Force: VALKYRIE.

edited 10th Nov '12 12:31:18 PM by CountDorku

Okay, that makes things make sense; but as you seem to imply, the mages seem to still possess some manner of memory-wiping method to uphold The Masquerade. If so, then how do the witch-hunting Compacts and most importantly Conspiracies like the Promethean Brotherhood and the Malleus Maleficarum find out about them, then? Isolated cells I can understand, but large networks becoming aware of them?

And I really wonder how the heck VALKYRIE came about. Their founders trying to explain to their superiors the reasons for founding the organization must've been very interesting.

edited 10th Nov '12 12:50:01 PM by MarqFJA

Mages have access to mind magic, but that's not the same thing as saying all mages have mind magic. The real shield mages have from detection is the Quiescence and its attendant Paradox, which disrupts the functioning of spells (sometimes horrifically - big spells in public places tend to result in Eldritch Abominations) and causes Muggles Sleepers to forget they ever saw them, but with enough exposure or just a strong will and a moment of good/bad luck, normal humans can become Sleepwalkers, who can witness magic without causing it to go haywire...but sadly, this also means they don't get any kind of defence from the fireball that pissed-off Obrimos just hurled at their face.

Plus, in the nWoD, there isn't just one form of magic. Awakened magic relies upon calling down the Supernal - accessing divine or at least transcendent power from a higher realm - and because there's a massive hell-dimension between the two, there's a dissonance between Supernal power and the weave of the mundane world. More down-to-earth forms of ritual magic and psychic power don't rely on the Supernal and thus don't induce Paradox. As a result, it's quite possible for a Long Night cell to hunt a hundred witches and never find a single Awakened willworker.

I haven't read the Hunter corebook in a while, but I believe VALKYRIE operates on a black budget and secret funding from vampires. A handful of high-ups are in on the secret, but to anyone outside it, TF:V is just another set of rapid response specialists. Which is technically true, if inaccurate.

... Really now. What do these vampires gain from supporting VALKYRIE, given that it technically targets them as well?

edited 10th Nov '12 1:29:50 PM by MarqFJA

Not all of them are in exactly good terms to each others.

I guess they have a say into which creatures exactly Tf V targets.

Well, the thing about fabulously wealthy sources of funding is, they tend to have a lot of say in what happens. When your annual expenses include things like lightning guns, that only gets worse.

As a result, TF:V are frequently given orders to ignore a specific bloodsucker, usually guided by orders such as "observe and don't draw attention" or "report to [area on other side of state] to eliminate a different, high priority target".