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

Now that is good, it have being a time since I read the novels.

In case someone it was curious I have read the angel trilogy, which so far is S tier of white wolf novels, hightly recomendable.

I read the trilogy of ascension war which was.....highly questionable, feel less grimdark urban fantasy series and just a regular ass fantasy, having the protagonist meeting, falling in love with a japanise warrior and marrige her in a week was a choice, talk about stranded by the red string. Also way to many cameos.

I saw the mummy trilogy it was pretty damn nice, I love the villian really and I really want him to suceed, what I can said.

I read the prince book and it was....off, like plenty of moments are show off screen, also have the romance chararter kill for angst because of course, also it give another girlfriend which run in the topic of "can vampire have sex?" it clear the writer went for a more convetional story really

Yeah, the quality of the old World of Darkness novels went from fantastic to crappy with no way of knowing which you'd get.

Sometimes in the same series (see the Clan Novels)

Anyway, the first of the reprints is out: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CV7GSYXN

You know, I wonder if weaver can take a page of Pentex and having a tech company full of weaver cultist, a way to crack a dig against tech bro company

I feel like any update of the Technocracy needs to include techbros.

And just say, "Yes, it turns out constantly touting TECH WILL FIX IT" doesn't help in looter capitalism.

I can get why tecnocracy get a mostly they get mostly a regimed, is kinda hard not to see tecnocracy as shade of great when is true world of darkness is....well a word of darkness.

I will said Mage is probably the close you get to grey and grey morality.

I think it depends on whether you want the Technocracy to represent a dream of Star Trek or a dream of Warhammer 40K. For me, I used to believe they would be the first, now I think of them as the latter.

Weirdly, I used to think it was silly to imagine the 1st Edition Union was so one dimensionally evil but the people in power now make me think Pentex is just accurate.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Feb 8th 2024 at 12:29:32 PM

Tecnocracy start as former and become the later, like it no a lie capitalism, industrialization and other stuff really better people like and yet it wasnt wrong ether to said they open a pandora box to all kind of evils, including giving humanity the oporutnity to scale all bad stuff to level unseen.

The problem is, the traditions dosent offer more than return to the past, to thing nobody cant give a shit and in some factile like the chorister and order, are more bitter they are one licking the boot that the one wearing it.

I think whether you believe the Traditions are the good guys versus the Technocracy is distilled to one question that even fans can't agree on.

Do you believe the Traditions have actually learned to have their paradigms live in harmony and want to build a new utopian world where everyone can use whatever magic they want.

OR

Do you believe it's an alliance of convenience and as soon as the Union is done, it's every Tradition for themselves.

The answer is not clear even in the books.

It also another question

Does the tecnocracy lost his way and can have it again or they were born rotten from the start? one can said they let the pogrom grow into their heads?.

Not surprising 5ed decide to pretty much finish the asension war by having both side being so down they cant wage war anymore and instead focusing in the shit it always matter: helping the comon man.

To be fair, that was Revised.

I thought Mage the Ascension currently stopped at 20th Anniversary Ed?

And regarding the Technocracy being portrayed a lot grayer than before, that's more on the 20th Anniversary Ed writers portraying them a lot more positively while bolstering the Disparate Alliance to the point where it's a 3rd faction alongside the Traditions and Technocracy in a 3-way Cold War (w/c I kind of headcanon as happening post-Voormas). That edition also portrayed the dangers of misinformation and fake news in such a setting by Nephandi taking advantage of social media and the internet and both Technocracy, Tradition and Alliance being caught flatfooted. I even created a Nephandi NPC/Boss character themed after Julian Assange from the materials.

They even did the same thing in Changeling the Dreaming 20th Anniversary Ed by slightly lowering the banality generated by high technology. Generally Onyx Path heavily reduced the Science is Bad trope that old White Wolf was fond of using, probably due to all the anti-intellectual misinformation and conspiracy theories that have spread due to social media.

Edited by KRider on Feb 10th 2024 at 1:33:39 AM

I'm one of those guys who think one of the few mistakes that OPP made was their attempt to humanize and make the Technocracy progressive when it was originally conceived as the force of Right Wing Western capitalist imperialism.

Mostly because the fans love their toys.

You can tell when around White Wolf's tenure the Technocracy was portrayed like the Machines in the Matrix but by the time of Onyx Path's tenure they're like a gray combination of MIB and BPRD. Meanwhile the Disparate Alliance grew partly bec they grew tired of the Traditions' own BS (chiefly felt by Hollow Ones, Solificati and Ahl-i-Batin) and what they perceive as the Traditions trying to force the Alliance members' traditions into their Paradigms a la White Saviorism (especially the more ethnic-focused groups), a paradigm that is being seen more and more in recent history among Western leftists.

Yeah, which kind of make me think that the Fanon of the Traditions versus the Union is the biggest problem.

Because the idea of a bunch of people being forced into one single White Savior Pattern that has no room for different ethnicities and incompatible beliefs is what the Traditions are supposed to be AGAINST.

Their whole thing was "I'm okay, you're okay."

Except fans never really gelled with it for some reason, perhaps because of too much association with RL conspiracy theories.

It probably was also easier for the Technocracy to have a gray "Heel-Face Turn" (for lack of better term) compared to their equivalents in other game lines like the Sabbat and Tal'mahe'Ra, Wyrm/Pentex and Weaver, Wayward Hunters, Spectres and Oblivion, Yama Kings and Earthbound is bec all these other evil-er factions are too evil there's no possible way to play a not-so evil member of these factions.

Plus with the rise of the internet you have people who sound a lot like the Traditions peddling dangerous pseudoscience and other BS on a global scale now.

Which... like how does that even work in Mage-world? Some offshoot of the technocracy trying to discredit the traditions? Actually that could work.

That's what they should do. Technocrats splinter, we get good superscience guys vs a new evil faction based on Google.

Edited by Elfive on Feb 10th 2024 at 11:30:50 AM

That's actually the Technephandi, a new group of Nephandi who focus on evil superscience and even In-Universe both the Technocracy and Traditions suspect the Nephandi to be behind all the conspiracy theory and "alternative facts" nonsense. Though not as blatant as in Werewolf the Apocalypse where the book pretty much shouts that the alt right is all but swimming in Wyrm taint. One of the prominent Nephandi groups in the 20th Anniversary book is literally a rightwing Christian militia disguised as a PMC.

Edited by KRider on Feb 10th 2024 at 4:09:43 AM

A very good 5th Edition plot would be a Traditions cabal investigating a faith healer in a small town that turns out to be a particularly nasty (but successful) fraud. It's just that he's attracted something much-much worse.

In fact, part of the Technocracy's face-turn In-Universe in the 20th Anniversary Ed is the realization that even if you teach controlled and scheduled superscience to normal humans and hope they become enlightened, you can never get rid of human evils borne out of ignorance, fanaticism and bigotry so you need to tackle those as well. It's also telling that the new Technocracy splatbook in 20th Anniversary Ed goes out of its way to promote the Technocracy as being open to religions (so long as you practice them in private) and especially not being prejudiced towards LGBT people. Meanwhile the Nephandi, like their evil fellows in other gamelines, double down on the bigotry and LGBTphobia.

Sadly w/ how badly Paradox messed up WtA 5E and VtM 5E, there's not much confidence in them making MtA 5E or any WOD 5E.

Edited by KRider on Feb 10th 2024 at 4:13:08 AM

Probably because Tecnocracy idea they protect people from the horror can have some kind of merit given how horrible elderich abomination ridden the whole setting is, even if you take as standlong setting without any other word of darkness(which is complicated since mage used to a degree the cosmonology establish in werewolf to a degree9) creature it isnt better with things like nephandi, deep umbra and what else. When ravnos show up, they manage to get him down with a kill sat, that is impresive.

And more important, they won in part because they could make their stuff enought that sleepers could use and actually work as a team rather than the loose confederation of incompatible ideas the traditions are.

I admit for me the idea of order of reason being sympathetic and then turing into tyrants because they just got way to powerfull fit very well with the idea of Hubris mages promote and in a way the reason the traditions are good is in part because they were cast down and learn humilty doing so.

Yeah, they bent over backywards to make the Technocracy a progressive rather than oppression faction. But it reminded me of them trying to make the Galactic Empire good guys in Legends.

Is that really the best use for them?

I like to imagine the Technocracy as a more or less darker version of the SCP Foundation. Then again, I never played MtA (no matter how much I love the setting), so they are more likely to appear as a random threat to my WtA players.

One thing I didn't quite like is how 5E put an end to Onyx Path continuing to create 20A editions for the rest of the gamelines such as Hunter the Reckoning, Mummy the Resurrection, Demon the Fallen and possibly Kindred of the East. It'd be interesting to see how they update these remaining lines to the modern era. Although at least Onyx Path was able to release the core rulebook for Deviant the Renegade.

All I can say about Werewolf 5th Edition is that it is a crock of shit and bad in every way. But to be honest, the same can be said about V5 as well. But W5 is somehow even worse.

I'm about to get very heated and spicy with this take, but fuck it, here goes...

• I detest the name changes. Wendigo is NOT a slur and you know what? If non-Algonquian people can't use or reference the Wendigo in fiction, then non-Irish people cannot use the Banshee, non-Greeks cannot use the Pegasus or the Cyclops, non-Japanese people cannot use the Kappa or the Oni, and non-Jews cannot use the Golem or the Angel. It's a mythological creature at the end of the day. This is just a secular form of Puritanism, plain and simple.
  • And I say this as someone who is Shawnee. As in an actual enrolled member of the nation. Shawnee are one of the Algonquian peoples, so the Wendigo and the Manitou are part of OUR culture and most of us are actually fine with other people "appropriating" it. Your average person on the Rez has a lot more serious shit to worry about than whether or not some white guy they've never even met uses a creature from their people's folklore in a work of art or fiction. Far too many of the people I see who complain the hardest and loudest about "You can't say Wendigo! Cultural Appropriation!" are often privileged college-educated white folks on the internet anyway. Fuck them.
    • In my humble opinion, it's better that they show interest in our culture and incorporate it into their creative works (even if it's not an entirely accurate version of our culture) than for it to be declared taboo and fully off-limits to anyone who's not Algonquian and therefore be eventually become forgotten and die out.

• What they did to the Get of Fenris is pure racism and bigotry, pure and simple and Kareem Muammar can go fuck himself.

Edited by NinjaGoth on Feb 13th 2024 at 6:57:59 AM

I cant said much about the wendigo since I can get why writer would avoid that topic, my issue is the big werewolf in the room: The Wendigo were pretty much resenfull native american supremacist with a violent streak that were one step or two to said "You know, maybe #allwhitemen.

Like in many way they are not that diferent from red talons, get of fenrirs or others but it was kinda hard to said because their native american tribe status.