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

Deamons novels?

Just finished hosting a well received murder mystery. A character from a previous one off session decides he's going to use his deal with his secret demon contact to make his rock band famous; three other characters from the one off notice this and decide to crash his Record Label signing event in the Carvern Club, Liverpool. Doors all get locked and the lights go out as three angels start killing things and they begin to realise that they're after the data the up and coming rock star provided his demon contact.

Great fun.

sorry, i meant demons:the torment novels,there is a trilogy, who are pretty good(a least in my opinion)

So, I'm thinking of doing this Alan Wake ripoff in NWOD.

It's gonna be this Call of Cthulhu style thing with not a huge amount of combat.

Now, should I do this in Hunter or Mortals?

Hunters kind of are mortals. With the "kind of" being some of the Conspiracies.

I'm more thinking about what gameline would make sense for this.

I've decided to use the mortals gameline for this.

I've also decided to set it in a nuclear power plant and the player characters will be military personnel.

Is there anything I should keep in mind when it comes to both of these things?

Military characters make for an interesting combat-lite game. Also makes the "Oh shit it DOES eat lead!" more effective when the spray and pray fails.

Know your ranks. For authenticity if nothing else. When the reactor starts overheating, as it eventually must in a dramatic game, remember that goal one is to reduce the temperature, usually with some sort of carbon-something rods, but dumping boatloads of water on the it has also been shown to work.

You want anything that absorbs neutrons. The typical materials are graphite rods (which are generally dipped in and out to regulate the reaction rate) heavy water (which is water where the hydrogen atoms are all/mostly deuterium) and light water, which is the regular stuff. Heavy water is used because it's more efficient due to the higher probability of a neutron striking the nucleus of the deuterium atoms.

The original idea that I had involved the Dounreay nuclear plant, which is currently being decommissioned.

So, whether I'll have a meltdown depends on whether the plant's still operational.

Hey, what are the candidates for where these shadow creatures are coming from?

Also, how should I create them?

Well, you've got Spirits, Ghosts, Demons (Abyss), Demons (Lower Depths), Hedge Beasts, Angels, Obfuscated Vampires, the odd Qashmallim, the Strix...

I'd go with either Lower Depths Demons or Angels.

edited 4th Aug '14 3:28:39 AM by Frishman

Hmm.

What's the lowdown on Angels and Lower Depths Demons?

Those are the ones from Inferno, right?

They're sort of a weird vice-virus that can infect ghosts and spirits and people but if they get powerful enough they become something called a dominion that can possess people and give them hell powers.

edited 4th Aug '14 1:25:56 PM by Elfive

Basically, yeah.

I've been re-reading the GMC for a lowdown on Angels, and I'm gonna take flak for saying it but I'll say it anyway: I like the God-Machine. It all feels so very Lovecraftian, with a little bit of Shin Megami Tensei mixed in. An inscrutable, alien entity with mind-numbing power that might wish to eradicate free will so that it can continue to exist? One who grows in power as humanity does and uses our own hubris against us?

And more importantly, an entity that the Seers and the Exarchs are unaware of. That's goddamn terrifying. Fallen World Chronicle may shed some light on them having a connection, but until then the masters of the Supernal and their servants are completely unaware of the thing that lurks so far beneath the shadows that it can disguise itself in beings of pure light.

Anywho, Angels are more or less powerful Spirits with some nifty, Angel-only Numina (such as being one of the few things that can resurrect someone from the dead) and Angel-only traits. A large conglomeration of them active in the real world would indicate something major going down, though, as it takes a long time for one to be born into the world.

I freaking love the God Machine too. So much.

In other news, the magic system for The Fallen World chronicle is so brilliant. Mages have to decide how much damage they want to do before they roll, it's inspired.

I've been reading up on that, too. Getting kinda excited, actually. Mage is starting to look like something not horribly broken to play. (not that I didn't love to play it even though it was; sometimes I just wish there weren't so many ways to hit the "win" button)

I've been hearing a lot of complaints re:nWoD 1.5, but so far I've enjoyed it.

I even like the Strix, crazy bastards that they are. I find it fun to read Protean's level 5 ability in BS and realize that it looks just like a Strix.

Also, I love the acronyms. XD

edited 5th Aug '14 1:23:24 PM by Frishman

I'm a lot more familiar with Ascension (oh, the glorious kitchen sink of it) than Awakening, but a semi-reboot seems like a good time to get involved. Awakening mages are themed after detectives or some such, aren't they?

That is all I've ever wanted from a Mage game! Need to buy that book now. And give it to all my friends so that they have no excuse not to use it.

Why don't people like the God-Machine? It seems vague enough to use as a serious threat or laughably incompetent Friend Computer according to need.

@rikalous: The closest analogy I can honestly come up with is that the Diamond Council (which consists of the oldest four "Traditions" which trace back to Atlantis) is...the Catholic Church.

• The Adamantine Arrow are the Jesuits/Knights Templar
• The Guardians of the Veil are the Inquisition
• The Mysterium are the individual clergy/religious philosophers
• The Silver Ladder is the Vatican

The last remaining "Tradition" is the Free Council, which is a lot like a combination of the Void Engineers and the Virtual Adepts from Ascension.

The goal of Awakening is to reunite the Supernal and the Fallen Worlds, and a lot of research and mystery is involved in determining whether or not that's even possible.

@STH: We said "looks like," we're not sure yet. More information as it is revealed. I think they're waiting for Gencon to be over before they release any new info.

Apologies for the double-post, but I just finished reading "Voice of the Angels," from the God-Machine Chronicle anthology, and I noticed something that I probably noticed the first time I read it but forgot about: the creation story presented sounds an awful lot like Atlantis as presented in Awakening.

Vastly powerful beings who made a city to reach heaven.

Downfall of a mighty civilization due to hubris.

The city of the First Children even specifically crashes into the ocean.

There are even four "surviving" First Children who've laid their curses on mankind; which is the same number of Exarch Archigenitors.

While it's probably mostly a coincidence owing to a simple repetition of such creation stories in folklore, it's still interesting that two of them are in nWoD.

You'd think that there would be editors who'd pick up on this stuff.

I'll be the first to say it, I love Vampire The Masquerade First Edition. Especially the Early-Installment Weirdness contained within. The other splats hadn't been defined yet and vampires weren't Obviously Evil, instead it was more Black-and-Gray Morality and I find a lot of the material from 1e very interesting. Especially the 1e Corebook, Hunters Hunted I, and Chicago By Night 1st Edition. The Sabbat had yet to be fully fleshed out and Golconda was actually defined in the Players Handbook, if I recall correctly. We had Ghosts and Faeries instead of Wraiths and Changelings, while Werewolves and Mages were vastly different (for one thing, Lupines were extremely wild maniacs who formed packs and dwelled in the backwoods, while the Order of Hermes was a Camarilla-like organization for Mages and they had their own type of Masquerade), and a lot of influences from early Ars Magica were present.

I've considered one day running a retro-throwback game of Vampire in the style and setting of 1e but using the Revised or V20 rules, where only the seven main Camarilla clans are playable, the main conflict is between the Camarilla and Anarchs, the Sabbat are mysterious Chaotic Evil boogeymen, while the Children of Osiris and Inconnu are actually setting-relevant and both groups may offer salvation to an eager neonate seeking redemption. Instead of Garou, Awakened, Wraiths, and Changelings, you have Lupines, Magi, Ghosts, and Faeries. There would be no metaplot whatsoever and the setting is a lot more mysterious.

I think it would be awesome.

So, I'm thinking of doing this game where these special forces operators explore a derelict cargo ship.

But I'm unsure as to the reason for why it's drifting at sea with all crew missing and/or dead.

edited 22nd Aug '14 3:14:30 AM by Rosvo1

Old Wo D or New Wo D?

And which gamelines do you have access to the books for?

New WOD and I've got most of the books on my computer.

I think it cuts off at October of 2012.