General World of Darkness Discussion Thread QQ Edition

[magic9mushroom]

There's a reason why 2e buffs them, right? So it's not just you,

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Well, I haven't read 2e, so I didn't know that.

(I know there's stunting, and XP for stunting. That was all I needed to hear to know I would never be playing it, because my sense of "cool" is different to most people's and as such XP for stunting = I will eventually strangle the GM.)

 

[Vague Wanderer]

(I know there's stunting, and XP for stunting. That was all I needed to hear to know I would never be playing it, because my sense of "cool" is different to most people's and as such XP for stunting = I will eventually strangle the GM.)

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That's not really how XP works in Forsaken 2e. These are the criteria for getting beats/XP

Take a Beat when your character hits one of these criteria.
• If your character fulfills an Aspiration, take a Beat.
Replace the Aspiration at the end of the session.
• When you resolve a Condition, per the description of
the Condition, take a Beat.
• Persistent Conditions provide Beats for actions other
than resolution.
• Once per scene, when you fail a roll, you may opt to
make it a dramatic failure and take a Beat.
• If your character takes lethal damage in one of her
rightmost Health boxes, take a Beat.
• At the end of each session, take a Beat.

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A beat is basically 1/5th of an XP. The only thing that might be sort of akin to stunting there is conditions, which sometimes are pretty clearly designed to bribe players into doing dumb stuff, i.e. if your character is "Spooked" they resolve the condition and gain a beat if they wander off to investigate that noise in a haunted house. Some people might not like that sort of thing, and I could imagine it could cause drama at some game tables, but it's not quite the same thing as stunting.

 

[magic9mushroom]

That's not really how XP works in Forsaken 2e. These are the criteria for getting beats/XP



A beat is basically 1/5th of an XP. The only thing that might be sort of akin to stunting there is conditions, which sometimes are pretty clearly designed to bribe players into doing dumb stuff, i.e. if your character is "Spooked" they resolve the condition and gain a beat if they wander off to investigate that noise in a haunted house. Some people might not like that sort of thing, and I could imagine it could cause drama at some game tables, but it's not quite the same thing as stunting.

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Hrm.

Okay, so I suspect what happened here is that somebody on GiantITP saw this:

The Storyteller can choose to award a Beat for any
exceptional example of roleplaying, tactics or character
development. If this involves more than one character,
all of them should receive the Beat.

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...read "coolness" into it when it wasn't actually there, and then mentioned it in the nWoD thread there. Since I'd already explicitly seen White Wolf pull this shit with Scion (three-die stunt = 1 XP), I didn't bother checking.

I still have issues with a great many parts of the revision (the linearised XP, the tower-of-infinite-dots Specialty problem, and the various points where they explicitly came out and said "having this in our game encourages people to think in problematic ways, so we nuked it from orbit"), but it's no longer in my pile of "hahaha, no, this pokes me in the berserk button and I don't want to get arrested for assault" the way Scion is.

 

[LeftWaiting]

Is it just me, or is 1e Werewolf: the Forsaken a bit underpowered compared to the other splats in the lategame?

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For a long time the generally accepted opinion was that Forsaken were the weakest main splat in NWoD, yes.

 

[Rakdos92]

Got into Fallen London again, and seeing this thread pop up made wonder; how far would one OWoD vampire get in the setting, assuming they are replacing the player character? Let's assume they are either a Neonate (about a decade old*), a Ancilae (somewhere between 100 and 500 years old*), or an Eldar (500 to 1000 years old*).

I imagine they won't stand out too much considering how strange the city is.

*counting from the night they were turned into a vampire

 

[shadowdice]

I remember there being a merit which made it so blood bonds and the joke about a tremere that has that merit but also the full blood bond to the clan but can't find the book that it came from

Got into Fallen London again, and seeing this thread pop up made wonder; how far would one OWoD vampire get in the setting, assuming they are replacing the player character? Let's assume they are either a Neonate (about a decade old*), a Ancilae (somewhere between 100 and 500 years old*), or an Eldar (500 to 1000 years old*).

I imagine they won't stand out too much considering how strange the city is.

*counting from the night they were turned into a vampire

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that sort of depends on what goals the vampire goes for as some of the endings are less...lethal.

A tzimisce would be right at home and plying their trade there. Pretty much anyone with presence can potentially get a power base fairly quickly but could be called out for using magic.

 

[Gereh]

Got into Fallen London again, and seeing this thread pop up made wonder; how far would one OWoD vampire get in the setting, assuming they are replacing the player character? Let's assume they are either a Neonate (about a decade old*), a Ancilae (somewhere between 100 and 500 years old*), or an Eldar (500 to 1000 years old*).

I imagine they won't stand out too much considering how strange the city is.

*counting from the night they were turned into a vampire

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My knowledge of Fallen London is quite limited I only played sunless seas but never the browser game, but a Lasombra or any character with access to Abyss Mysticism would probably be OP.

 

[heralding_bubble]

I remember there being a merit which made it so blood bonds and the joke about a tremere that has that merit but also the full blood bond to the clan but can't find the book that it came from

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So blood bonds do what?
I'll guess Sympathetic Bond, which is revised Clanbook Malkavian p. 66

 

[shadowdice]

So blood bonds do what?
I'll guess Sympathetic Bond, which is revised Clanbook Malkavian p. 66

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that is the one. A fair amount of the traits in those books feel less like they should be clan specific

Looking at combinations I am looking at Nosferatu combat builds. Long Fingers+Huge Size (extra health level, possible bonus to grapple or at least not being taken down depending on the GM) along with stuff like Hard as Nails or Tough Hide (one gives lowered difficulty for soak, another gives an extra dice) make for just comically strong Nosferatu.

I'd suspect Berserk's -3 difficulty for combat rolls is for attacks not soak, though you get to ignore wound penalties.

 

[heralding_bubble]

Burgerkrieg released another WoD video, this time on vampire history, contains 5e lore.

00:00 Caine
13:47 First City
29:11 Deluge
44:41 Second City
59:57 Harm's Place
1:00:54 Carthage, Rome, Constantinople
1:18:04 Usurpers
1:35:01 Anarch Revolt
2:05:37 New Shores
02:17:27 1999
2:30:31 Gehenna
2:39:18 Inquisition 2
3:09:07 Fukuyama Time

Playlist of all his WoD lore videos, also contain 5e lore.

His other WoD related videos (homebrew vampire bloodlines and x is actually in WoD)

Spoiler

 

[heralding_bubble]

also, some games clearly taking place in oWoD

 

[Skitzyfrenic]

There's an elder Gangrel who is fucking seething right now.

 

[LeftWaiting]

There's an elder Gangrel who is fucking seething right now.

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I mean, the only thing odd about it being an Ajaba plot is the sheer range and control exhibited.
But if they had the resources, especially the endless hordes of animals to drown a problem in, this is exactly the bullshit they would get up to.

 

[shadowdice]

There's an elder Gangrel who is fucking seething right now.

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Because their plot was torn apart or because someone else is having fun

Having reread the old Chicago by Night I am there with an awkward feeling as about the kind of dialogue Kevin Jackson would have in the 90s

Also Sheriff

In might do a react read of it and some of the silly stuff/recognition of how it became a template for later lore

And I hate the Menele-Helena plot for being Trojan revisionism

Fucking Paris as an edgy emo superhuman bodyguard with supernatural skill in swordsmanship when he was such a shitheel even his brother complained about him

I really do need to do an Urban Vampire's retelling of Noddist lore

"And then Daddy Cain looked at his grandkids restraining his urge to slap them down and gave them all rules they would ignore such as Don't needlessly abuse the brother's kids, they can set your haven on fire in your sleep. Don't abuse your ghouls, for the same fucking reason and you gave them your blood. Don't embrace or blood bond for love. It ends terribly and I should know because I tried it. Don't think it'll work out better for you."

 

[shadowdice]

my group decided to do short vampire game in the Anarch states which had me look at their builds (South American Smuggler and Ex Pentex HR manager turned vampire PMC CEO) and told them they might as well just be The Cartel because they invested most of their freebie and drawback points in backgrounds related to crime

They quickly decided to just plain be the Escobar Cartel with the smuggler being his nephew who helped pack the plane that got Pablo arrested but was WAY too young to be prosecuted at the time

The evil HR manager is a Ventrue whose weakness is the need to feed on recovering drug addicts

They sell drugs and fund rehab so she always has people to feed from. Because there are only two I have a Maeghar NPC focused on knowledges to fill out the niche. And he uses necromancy to give people depression and nightmares that make them susceptible to the drug offers

Ventrue: "yeah I don't think we are even pretending to be good."

Additionally, I had been looking at odd disciplines for Caitiff and got interested in Bardo and how it's focus on Denial is suppossed to be somehow oppossed to Golconda which reminded me of how what that is changes radically with each edition

What are people here's opinions on Golconda? I personally disliked the eastern mysticism angle and Saulot being Totally good not evil especially since there was a lot of overlap between him and Cappadocius who turned out to be crazy as fuck

 

[gale]

Additionally, I had been looking at odd disciplines for Caitiff and got interested in Bardo and how it's focus on Denial is suppossed to be somehow oppossed to Golconda which reminded me of how what that is changes radically with each edition

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Bardo gets really funny as it allows you to eat health boxes and that means animals/bigger creatures are well worth to keep around as pets to eat from.

 

[vighzs]

What are people here's opinions on Golconda? I personally disliked the eastern mysticism angle and Saulot being Totally good not evil especially since there was a lot of overlap between him and Cappadocius who turned out to be crazy as fuck

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From what I've gathered from the mish-mash of books I've read (I'd like to thank everyone here who recommended me things by the way) it feels like Golconda should not be tied to mysticism as a must, but self reflection tied to a moral framework that can origanate from religion should there be a need.

You acknowledge your Beasts, you acknowledge the inhuman aspects of your current existence and you strive to be more than the "A Beast I am, lest a Beast I become." riddle. Religions and certain avenues of mysticism just simply streamline/ease that process as a lot of them possess a "strive to be a better person" angle in some shape or form.

 

[Skitzyfrenic]

I personally like to look at Golcanda as Vampiric Enlightenment. But I don't like to make it so 'Really Good Person' is the only path.

It's about mastery of self. About acknowledgement and the manner in which you master the beast.

And the paths and roads are great. They create a moral framework, a doctrine, in which you shape yourself, master yourself, acknowledge the beast, master the beast in whatever manner is apropos, and reach enlightenment.

Mechanically, you still gotta be like 9-10 on the road/path, and actively seeking enlightenment. And staying in the 9-10 range for any road/path is pretty hard, except for maybe the 'let the beast lead' style roads where you're little more than an animal. But then you're enlightenment is that of the beast, submitting to it, and most people/kindred find that unpalatable.

This technically means that you can be a massively evil vampire, and still reach Golcanda with all of it's benefits.

It honestly gives reasons for the roads and paths that aren't humanity if you can reach a dark enlightenment. It also makes the Sabbat... more, and can narrow down their scope so they're less problematic (by being nine different things at once).

That's how I like to think about Golcanda.

 

[Cimbri]

It feels a bit like Golconda can be played many ways but I do like to play it as "staying human" which doesn't mean perfect sainthood but does mean committing to a road forward.
If that means using the Sermon on the Mount or some Aurelian philosophy matters little as long as it is something that the GM can refer to when checking progress and obstacles.
Makes sense? Or did we homebrew too far?

 

[heralding_bubble]

this was probably posted earlier here, idk