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Username17
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Post by Username17 » Fri Nov 06, 2009 6:04 am

> Orion wrote:Also, if Major arcana are worth 4 minor arcana, mixing thems eems like a questionable choice. The players who don't get a major in a given session are unlikely to get anything close to as good. There are only twice as many minors as majors, after all.

It's the same logic as Josh putting +1 Speed (10 points) and +3 Strength (3 points) in the same deck. With the bidding system, +1 Intuition is better than +1 Perception and can thus be expected to go for more tokens. If players are pulling the base two tokens per session, then Player A will grab +1 Intuition for 2 tokens and Player B will get +1 Perception for just 1. Then the players next week will find that Player B has 3 tokens and Player A has only 2, so Player B can meet or beat any bid Player A could make. So if there's a +1 Logic and a +1 Research up for grabs next session, Player B will get the Logic bonus.
But yeah, for shorter games I would deal out only cards from the same type of Arcana for players to bid on.
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Manxome
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Post by Manxome » Fri Nov 06, 2009 8:50 am

Having a major division between strong cards and weak cards seems like it could do seriously weird things to bidding strategy, though. If there's nothing but minor arcana this session, and then if I spend more chips than the other players, I'm probably guaranteeing that I won't get a major arcana if one shows up next session. Seems like you could end up with a lot of cards going for minimum bid, which means it's suddenly very important who gets to make the first bid.
The possibility of people passing on cards is also a bit weird; assuming the party as a whole has more chips than there are cards, then passing on any cards means that the party is permanently worse off (unless the Storyteller decides to give them a compensatory bonus next time). I guess the party's advancement rate is partly random anyway, so it's not like that will throw off the level curve or something, but it's potentially a prisoner's dilemma situation--we're both better off if we each buy a card for one chip, but if one of us buys and the other doesn't, then the one who buys will lose out on the next major arcana and be personally worse off, so neither of us buy.
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Post by Josh_Kablack » Fri Nov 06, 2009 8:18 pm

Why is the Ace of Cups missing from the chart?
Do you care about the extra major arcana in the New Orleans Tarot? If that's vampire central, might be worth making a note on it
What happens if the player to the left of the winning bidder is down to zero tokens and cannot bid on any cards?
If you are to the left of the winning bidder, but do not want any of the remaining advancement cards, are you forced to bid at least one token on one, (which takes some control of advancement away from the players) or can you pass (which might result in Manx's prisoner's dilemma situation) ?
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Username17
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Post by Username17 » Fri Nov 06, 2009 8:53 pm

> Josh_Kablack wrote:Why is the Ace of Cups missing from the chart?

Because it erroneously lists the King of Cups twice. D'oh. But thanks.

> Do you care about the extra major arcana in the New Orleans Tarot? If that's vampire central, might be worth making a note on it

I honestly don't. While nWoD span New Orleans as one of their 4 core cities, I'm not using it. Cities that are getting a paragraph or more are:

- Europe:
- Paris
- Rome
- Prague
  North America:
- San Francisco
- New York
- Mexico City
- Houston
- Chicago
  Elsewhere
- Kuala Lumpur
- Lagos
- Seoul
- Tehran

> What happens if the player to the left of the winning bidder is down to zero tokens and cannot bid on any cards?

Then they "choose" to pass to the left.

> If you are to the left of the winning bidder, but do not want any of the remaining advancement cards, are you forced to bid at least one token on one, (which takes some control of advancement away from the players) or can you pass (which might result in Manx's prisoner's dilemma situation) ?

You can pass, which indeed could lead to Manxome's Prisoner's Dilemma. Honestly, I'm fine with players choosing either option.
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The Lunatic Fringe
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Post by The Lunatic Fringe » Fri Nov 06, 2009 10:58 pm

Could you post an example city write-up? I'd like to do a couple that aren't on that list (and one that is, but oh well).
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Post by Prak » Sat Nov 07, 2009 12:45 am

I might do a city write up as well, I've got a few in mind I'd like to see:
Portland*, London and Cairo.
*just because I like Portland, honestly.
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Post by Lokathor » Sat Nov 07, 2009 1:24 am

Frank, that Karmic Advancement is so cool that I'm gonna write a version for Mage The Awakening and use it in my game.
Keeping the Karmic Token count small seems to be an arbitrary decision. Could the list of ways to get a token be expanded without some strange impact that I'm unaware of?
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Post by CatharzGodfoot » Sat Nov 07, 2009 1:45 am

I'd really like to see Australia make an appearance. PhoneLobster's made a very good case for it being a perfect site for supernatural activity.
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Post by Gelare » Sat Nov 07, 2009 3:04 am

> Lokathor wrote:Keeping the Karmic Token count small seems to be an arbitrary decision. Could the list of ways to get a token be expanded without some strange impact that I'm unaware of?

Among probably other things, you increase the chance that the all-stars in your game will get tons of tokens and advance more rapidly than the other players, making those other players feel slighted. Whereas if you start with two and you can get up to three, even if you don't get that last token, you're still in pretty much the same place.
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Post by Ice9 » Sat Nov 07, 2009 5:13 am

Increasing the starting number of tokens might be a good idea though. When you have to bid at least one token and only have 2-3 tokens, there's not a lot of room there.
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Quantumboost
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Post by Quantumboost » Sat Nov 07, 2009 6:59 am

A couple more Technical skill writeups:
Artisan
The Artisan skill is used when you want to produce a physical object of some level of workmanship – whether you’re going for aesthetic quality or simple utility.
There are a few more specializations in Artisan than in most Technical skills, in no small part because there are many materials that involve wildly different skills. It is recommended that these specializations are taken as applying to Artisan uses that are “close enough” – so a calligrapher might use the Painting specialization since in both cases they’re applying pigments to surfaces.

- Specializations: By Medium (Painting, Sculpture, Metalwork, Carpentry, etc.)

Research
Knowing things is important, but the fact is that your brain probably can't hold all the information you might possibly want to have available – and doesn't always keep the things you do know readily accessible. When you need information that you don't actually have in your head, you can use the Research skill to go look it up.
Researching things overall is fairly uniform, but there are particular methods of looking things up that might not be obvious to people who don't use that system in particular. Specialization in Archives indicates an ability to look up information in data logs, newspaper histories, and other chronological information stores. The Library specialization involves looking up information in stores classified by content, and Datamining covers sifting through internet searches, wikis, and highly disorganized information for something useful.

- Specializations: Archives, Library, Datamining

Sabotage
Sabotage is the pyrotechnical ability to reduce things to rubble and ash and cause explosions and flame. While this is fundamentally a destructive skill, it’s not necessarily wanton destruction – a highly skilled saboteur can, for instance, destroy a building without harming the ones adjacent.
Grenade specialization covers both actual grenades and other thrown explosives; specialization in Demolitions handles collapsing and wrecking large structures; and Chemical covers destruction by corrosive or pyrochemical means, usually of small objects.

- Specializations: Grenades, Demolitions, Chemical

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Post by Koumei » Sat Nov 07, 2009 8:02 am

> CatharzGodfoot wrote:I'd really like to see Australia make an appearance.

The Sabbat should basically own Adelaide: churches + serial killers.
Incidentally, I still get a strange mental image every time WoD mentions the nWo.

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Manxome
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Post by Manxome » Sat Nov 07, 2009 9:02 am

> Gelare wrote:

> > Lokathor wrote:Keeping the Karmic Token count small seems to be an arbitrary decision. Could the list of ways to get a token be expanded without some strange impact that I'm unaware of?

> Among probably other things, you increase the chance that the all-stars in your game will get tons of tokens and advance more rapidly than the other players, making those other players feel slighted. Whereas if you start with two and you can get up to three, even if you don't get that last token, you're still in pretty much the same place.

Only if you increase the number of "bonus" tokens relative to the number of automatic tokens. That doesn't happen if you just multiply everything by the same amount (for example, start with 4, and give out 2 for good behavior). But changing the proportion of tokens given out through any particular mechanism will increase or decrease the importance of that mechanism, of course.
Giving out more tokens in general means more granularity, which means that minimum bids are smaller. It will probably tend to benefit the guy who buys a lot of cheap cards over the guy that drops a bunch of chips on a single big card, because rounding costs up hurts more when you make more purchases. It also probably means that the auction will take longer, because you have to go through more iterations before people run out of chips to bid.
Giving out tokens in more ways, or giving out more at players' discretion, increases logistical overhead because players have to keep track of more stuff. If you've got to give out 10 chips a session for awesome stuff the other players do, then you've got to qualify a lot more stuff as "awesome," which could be distracting.
None of these effects seem likely to be terribly large, though.
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Post by Username17 » Sat Nov 07, 2009 9:56 am

> Could you post an example city write-up? I'd like to do a couple that aren't on that list (and one that is, but oh well).

My original intent was to delay writing up any of the "by night" segments until I was finished with the editing and rule section, but in hindsight that was stupid. What I should do is write a single city up and let other people use that as a template while I cobble together the rest of the rules into a legible format.
What city would people like?
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Post by virgil » Sat Nov 07, 2009 10:03 am

Salt Lake City, Sydney, or Moscow. If we relegate to your previous list, Prague or Kuala Lumpur
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Post by Hicks » Sat Nov 07, 2009 2:02 pm

San Francisco pleez!
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Username17
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Post by Username17 » Sat Nov 07, 2009 4:07 pm

So because virgileso asked for Prague before Hicks asked for SF, I finished this one first. I am now going back to making the combat system hold together. But here's roughly how I see a city write-up looking:

Prague by Night
Countries come and go. Institutions last forever.
Prague is a small but historically important city located smack-dab in the middle of Central Europe on the banks of the Vltava River. It seems incomprehensible that you could attempt to conquer Europe without taking Prague along the way, and so it is that the city has changed hands six times in the twentieth century alone. Tonight it's part of NATO and the EU, but it is a good bet that the moment another power struggle breaks out in Europe that Prague will change hands a few more times. And yet throughout the political turmoil the Bohemian people have pretty much gone about their business. They have a bureaucratic system that works for them, and they see no reason to change how they do things just because there are foreign soldiers marching through their city again. And while the parks are crowded with monuments to the might of the Germans, the Russians, the Italians, and even the United States – from the perspective of the Bohemian on the street the bare fact of the matter is that their bridges, university, and theater system predate Columbus' expedition to the New World.
City Statistics
There are about 1.9 million human people living in the greater Prague area. Prague is divided into a series of sub-cities that all have names, but while under Communist occupation they were also numbered for postal considerations. So rather than worry overmuch about whether you're in Motol or St&#345;ešovice, a visitor can simply get by being in Prague 5 or Prague 6. Prague 1 is in the middle, and the numbers go out to 20 in a rough spiral, but people hardly even think of the areas outside the core 8 as being in Prague. The city is small enough that you could walk across it if you wanted to. And between the twisty medieval streets and the gleeful disregard of stop lights, traffic is bad enough that if it weren't for the comprehensive mass transit system you seriously might want to do that.
There are about 400 supernatural creatures living permanently in Prague, and most of them are members of the Sabbat. It is of historical note that the “modern” methods of making every single kind of Promethean were developed in Prague, and so it is perhaps unsurprising that the Promethean population of Prague is disproportionately large, with nearly a hundred of them walking around. The largest secondary covenant is the Carthian Movement, with about fifty members in town (most from Russia or France), with a quite small and relatively recent immigrant community of World Crime League members (mostly from Vietnam) and Camarilla members (mostly from Turkey or Bulgaria).
City History
The city was the capitol of the Holy Roman Empire in the 14th century, and there was a serious attempt to get the Sabbat papacy moved to Prague at that time. In anticipation of this, Cardinal &#268;áslav of Prague created a number of bureaucratic institutions intent on making running things easier. It is from this point that the Faculty of Sorcery was created, which is a monastic order dedicated to magical research. The Sabbat hierarchy in Prague has changed remarkably little since then, weathering Bohemia's absorption into the Hussite Territories, Austria, Poland, Moravia, Lusatia, Silesia, Hungary, Germany and Russia. The Cardinal of Prague has always adopted a “wait and see” approach to politics and an ambivalent attitude to religion in general, attitudes that have in recent nights been brought into mainstream Sabbat culture. And yet in times of crusade (such as the infamous Black Crusade of the 1930s and 40s), Prague's lack of action to advance the faith has been seen as a mark of betrayal. In 1941, Cardinal &#268;áslav had to go into hiding for several years when the Antipope sent in a more fervent replacement in th form of Cardinal von Moltke. But even in those days, the Prague Sabbat went on pretty much as before, with priests loyal to &#268;áslav simply carrying on in secret. When Soviet vampire hunters took out von Moltke in 1945, the old regime came back with barely a hiccup. The religious leaders of the city weren't especially concerned even when von Moltke's black clad inquisitors were actively hunting them because &#268;áslav had been “deposed” seven times previously.
While the oldest Golem in Camarilla records was an idol brought to life in Libya that was ultimately destroyed in a war with the Maltese Troll Kingdom, the modern clay + power runes system was developed in Prague by a Rabbi. The first recorded Frankensteins were mummies made in Egypt with mystic oils, but the modern system of corpses and lightning bolts was invented by Viktor Frankenstein while he was studying at the Faculty of Sorcery in Prague. The first Android on record was a Greek hollow marble statue filled with blood, but the modern robot (and indeed the word “Robot”) again comes from Prague. The city's supernatural community is justifiably proud of their life creation work, but they have several times been decried as heretics and blasphemers for doing it (most recently in 1938 and before that in 1848).
After the surrounding country became Communist, a fair number of Carthians moved to Prague and attempted to get the domain to revolt against the Sabbat altogether. But while external Sabbat elements had done some pretty atrocious things to the city inhabitants, this was not enough to shake the traditional trust in &#268;áslav. The Cardinal famously reported that the Inquisition and the harm it had done were “von Moltke's problem.” The Carthians haven't really stopped trying to take the place over, but the local Sabbat's take on the matter seems to mostly be “meh.” It's their response to most policy disagreements.
In the 1970s, Czechoslovakia opened its borders to enemies of the West. And as a result a noticeable number of Vietnamese and Bulgarian people came into the city. And with them came representatives of the World Crime League and the Camarilla. The Cardinal's statement to the newcomers has simply been “What you do and what you believe are your problem. Do not spill my beer.” And as such, diplomatic relations have been fairly positive. During this period people (and to a much lesser degree supernaturals) from all over the Soviet sphere of influence also appeared in town, and as a result the city boasts a Mongolian Criminal Syndicate. If that has any supernatural underpinnings, it hasn't come clean about them to the rest of supernatural society.
In modern nights, the Czech Republic is a member of the European Union. And while it hasn't really changed the way its internal institutions work in a manner that the EU finds satisfactory, it has opened its borders with the West. Now you can get on a train and travel from Paris or Rome to Prague without ever showing an ID or a passport. It means that the number of supernatural creatures wandering in and out of town at any given time is pretty large. With access to world famous beer, theater, and nightclubs, many members of the Sabbat (and other Covenants) make it a point to visit Prague.
Power
There are no Military Ordinals or even any Orders Militant operating in Prague. There is simply the main religious branch and the Faculty of Sorcery. As such, almost everyone comes under the purview of Cardinal &#268;áslav, who has been mostly in control of the situation for over six hundred years. He's a Nosferatu of renowned apathy and cowardice. He doesn't collect tithes, but he does take bribes. Not secretly either, there is seriously a “bribe bowl” right on his desk. The Faculty of Sorcery is run by Prelate Korvin, a Khabit who achieved immortality some time in the late 19th century. He was appointed Prelate in 1919 by &#268;áslav, a move that apparently quite angered the Antipope. The city pays only the loosest possible attention to antipapal bulls, and the city has 4 Glossators on hand that are treated pretty much exactly like they held the rank of Palatine – much to the annoyance of actual Palatines.
The headquarters of the Sabbat are in a chapel built under the Church of Jan Hus in the middle of Old Town Prague. The building has been closed for decades, and the Sabbat floats various fake plans to convert the historic building into something or other (such as a shoe store or a museum of Michael Jackson memorabilia), but these plans always collapse, lost somewhere in Czech bureaucracy and financial ruin. As such, the building has been a construction zone for decades and none of the locals seem to think this is at all weird. There is an elevator behind a pile of drywall too large to easily steal and it goes down to a posh church and office suite carved out of the catacombs beneath the city. Most of the Cardinal's employees are actually humans whose loyalties have been guaranteed by &#268;áslav's considerable mental powers. There are currently 45 Priests that work for the Cardinal, but they mostly don't keep a terribly close eye on their flock.
The police in Prague are incredibly corrupt. Rather serious offenses ca be wiped away with the expenditure of a few thousand crowns (maybe a hundred Euros). It's really just a matter of knowing who to bribe. And the Sabbat offices know exactly who to bribe. And for a mere 100% markup, they'll make those payments on your behalf. As such, Sabbat members in Prague can get away with murder. As long as they get the chump change flowing and don't spill the beer.
The Faculty of Sorcery is a research and teaching body that serves as kind of a Hogwarts for Central Europe. It employs 17 professors who hold the rank of Monk. Their primary work area is actually just a couple blocks away from Prague Castle, meaning that you could seriously stick you head out of the window and look at the country's presidential building. But let's face it: the President of Czech Republic is a laughingstock, and Prelate Korvin is not. They have a Shadow Gate, and have constructed a small fortress in Mictlan to keep hauntings to a manageable level in the city.
The Carthians have a considerably larger main office, which is basically the contents of a gray Stalinist apartment block (called a Panelak in the local vernacular) off in Prague 4 (this is the South East of the city, well away from the Vltava). The Carthians use it as an actual place of business.
Places to Go
The primary draw of Prague is the beer. You can get that literally anywhere. Cheaper than soda, and better than any other beer on the planet, it's a substantial draw. Also of importance is classical culture. The stately buildings of symphonies and opera houses stand in glorious testament to the Bohemian's proud history of standing at the forefront of European Culture for nearly a thousand years. One can see a world-class presentation of a Mozart opera literally any day of the week simply by deciding to go. And the immortals of society seem to like it that way. Anyone who wishes to swan around in a tuxedo performing James Bondish style hijinks can do so in Prague on a moment's notice.
The twisting medieval streets of Old Town are crowded with glorious architecture, expensive boutiques, and shoulder to shoulder crowds. This area does not look like Disneyland, because Disneyland actually looks like Old Town Prague (Walt himself was so taken by the place that he designed the castle and Mainstreet Disneyland to be reminiscent of Old Town Prague). Crime is completely out of control here. Gangs of thieves steal forty passports a day. Random killings are not well tolerated by the city establishment, but an extra fight here and there or a few thefts are going to be so lost in the statistics that the church might not even notice, let alone care. Old Town Square itself has a set of dark crosses in the pattern of the cobbles. This marks the place where a couple dozen knights were burned at the stake for heresy, and now represents a weakness in the universe where gates from Limbo are periodically opened.
If you cross over the Vltava to the North you get into Holešovice, a region of Prague 8 that is surrounded on three sides by a bend in the river. This area is a bizarre mix of Art Nouveau and Cyberpunk sensibilities. The club from Blade is a real place, it's in Prague 8, and it's called Mecca. It's generally open from 23:00 until 5 in the morning. The film somewhat exaggerates, as even when the place is closed down to the public for vampire parties there are usually no more than about a dozen vampires present, and even then most of them are from out of town. A few blocks away there's the train station, and next to that is The Cross, which is an Art Commune that runs a bar and dance club that is filled with drugs, goths, and sexual deviants. The main creator is a Nezumi that collects junk from old Soviet factories and scrapyards and then welds them into shapes. He made the beer garden and the bar entirely out of industrial equipment and bus seats. You can get drugs as well as booze, and relax in atmospheric heavy metal or drum-n-bass while shady goings-on go on. The upstairs is a much better lit art gallery, featuring the kinds of tortured paintings you'd think a couple of Fallen would come up with.
If you cross the Vltava to the Southwest you get to And&#283;l, which is a soul-crushing capitalist dreamland. Shiny shopping malls have sexy young women strutting around with trays of cigarettes for sale like they were in a 1930s movie, and just a few blocks away you have Big Sister – the legendary free brothel. Yes, really. It's like a normal brothel, only you have the option of signing away your rights to the film they make of you sleeping with prostitutes (note: they will make a film of you anyway). Then they will sell the DVD of your exploits to whoever wants to buy a copy, and they make money on that instead of from fees from individual Johns. Unsurprisingly, there are a number of other pornography studios in this area.
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Post by Starmaker » Sun Nov 08, 2009 9:19 am

On Karmic advancement: can't the players make an agreement, grab everything that's available for 1 token per card and save the rest for later? This is no prisoner's dilemma, just a win-win right there if the players manage to follow through on such an agreement.
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Post by Ice9 » Sun Nov 08, 2009 10:47 am

Since the chips are used purely for bidding on cards, such an arrangement is only useful to the extent that all cards get purchased. Beyond that, saving up extra chips doesn't help you, because the other players are also saving them. With only 2-3 chips each, it could become a factor when lots of cards are up for bidding, but with more chips or less cards, there's no reason not to bid.
That said, it could be beneficial for subgroups to reach such agreements. If two players have substantially more chips than the rest, and both want a particular card, it would often make sense for them agree that whoever has more chips can bid at just enough to get it, and that way they both have more chips left for other bids.
Last edited by Ice9 on Sun Nov 08, 2009 10:50 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Username17 » Sun Nov 08, 2009 10:53 am

> Starmaker wrote:On Karmic advancement: can't the players make an agreement, grab everything that's available for 1 token per card and save the rest for later? This is no prisoner's dilemma, just a win-win right there if the players manage to follow through on such an agreement.

Of course they can, which is why it is a prisoner's dilemma. The most beneficial situation is for everyone to purchase each card for 1 token and have everyone keep the balance of tokens in their pocket. There are pretty much always going to b more tokens than cards, so all cards get distributed and the cheese stands alone.
The dilemma comes in with the fact that while getting every card is the optimal situation for the coterie, getting the first card may well be the optimal situation for you. As such, in the situation where two players have 2 tokens left and there is one remaining card that they are both lukewarm about, they may indeed both decide to pass on it. Because next session the player who passed on it will have 4 tokens and can win the bid for the first card no matter what the bid order is if the other player didn't pass (and thus only has 3 tokens).
Now of course, a team of good communists would simply make a decision on who would benefit the team the most from each particular gain ("we could solve that murder next session if Jenny got Spirit's Touch..."), and then hand them out for 1 token a piece. And if there were ever any card windfalls the team would hoover them all up. But that is always the way with Prisoner's Dilemmas. Reciprocal Altruism for the win.
Where it gets more complicated is in cases of "Living Paris" games. At that point, the party isn't the collective wave of the future, because you will literally have a different Coterie in your next adventure. At that point reciprocal altruism has a harder time justifying itself, because someone else getting Forgetful Mind doesn't help you at all.
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Post by Koumei » Sun Nov 08, 2009 11:21 am

> FrankTrollman wrote: Now of course, a team of good communists would simply make a decision on who would benefit the team the most from each particular gain ("we could solve that murder next session if Jenny got Spirit's Touch..."), and then hand them out for 1 token a piece. And if there were ever any card windfalls the team would hoover them all up. But that is always the way with Prisoner's Dilemmas. Reciprocal Altruism for the win.

You made that system just to support Communism, didn't you?

> Count Arioch the 28th wrote:There is NOTHING better than lesbians. Lesbians make everything better.

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Username17
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Post by Username17 » Mon Nov 09, 2009 8:24 pm

Closing in on a finished Combat and Action Chapter:

Weaponry and Hazards
Holy crap, that looks dangerous.
Ranged Weapons
Most ranged weapons do an amount of damage that is fixed regardless of how strong the user is. The strength listing on the ranged weaponry table indicates the strength required to use the weapon without penalty in two hands. If the character's actual Strength exceeds that, they may use it without difficulty in one hand, unless it is Large in which case their strength must exceed that by 2 in order to use it successfully in one hand.

Ranged Weaponry Table
Weapon | Damage | Range | Strength | size
Pistol, Lt. | 2 | (N)S | 1 | S
Pistol, Hvy. | 3 | (N)W | 2 | S
Rifle | 4 | (W)E | 3 | L
Machine Pistol | 2&#735; | (N)S | 2 | S
Assault Rifle | 3&#735; | (S)E | 3 | L
Submachine Gun | 2&#735; | (S)W | 2 | M
Shotgun | 4 | (N)S | 3 | M
Crossbow | 2 | (S)W | 2 | L
Auto-Shotgun | 4&#735; | (N)S | 4 | L
Machinegun | 6&#735; | (W)R | 5 | L
Sniper Rifle | 6 | (E)R | 5 | L
Flame Thrower | 3F&#735; | W&#736; | 5 | L
Flare Gun | 1F | (N)W | 2 | S
Cannon | 7 | (W)R | 8 | H

- &#735;: Weapon fires in automatic mode.
  F: Weapon does fire damage.
  N: Weapon does Normal Damage.
  &#736;: Weapon ignores cover.
  Size: Small weapons can be concealed in a pocket; Medium weapons can be concealed under a coat; Large weapons can be concealed in a car; Huge weapons do not really fit into cars.

Automatic Weapons: A weapon firing on automatic throws out many bullets in a short period of time. This allows it to be used for suppressive fire, to be fired at multiple enemies who are close together, and makes it more likely to hit something. A weapon fired on automatic gains 3 dice on the attack roll, but the spread of bullets makes fine aiming more difficult – the increase in threshold for firing at enemies with cover is doubled (basic cover increases threshold by 2, heavy cover increases threshold by 4). Also the character can't take the Aim action with an automatic weapon, but they can take the Spray-n-Pray action.
Bullets: The amount of bullets fired off in genuine firefights is extremely varied and often frighteningly large. During a 12 second combat round, an assault rifle could easily fire 100 rounds or more (if it even had that many bullets in its magazine or belt-feed). Actually resolving where all of those bullets end up would be far too time consuming to consider doing in most battles. As such, the game doesn't really distinguish between characters squeezing off large numbers of bullets and characters taking hard seconds to line up their targets and fire devastating double-taps into a target's vitals. As such, the game also doesn't bother writing up exactly how many bullets weapons contain. During survival horror segments, ammunition conservation can (and should) be a major concern, but in regular street combat it shouldn't really come up.
It is also important to note that while the game only models those bullets that have a significant chance of hitting their target, every bullet fired eventually hits something. Stray bullets do not individually hit people we care about often enough to have such events generated by any combination of numbers on the dice, relegating that very real possibility to the realm of plot devices. However, in cases where the target is very close to other targets that these other targets are very likely to catch a bullet one way or another. If the target is getting cover from a creature and the target is missed by just the difference caused by the cover, then you can assume that the living cover is hit. Similarly, if the target is in or in front of a dense crowd of people, someone is getting hit. Deciding who is left as a narrative exercise. In such situations, Extras catch stray bullets much more than Luminaries.
Special Ammunition: Characters in the World of Darkness will often want to fire bullets that are specifically made of iron, wood, or silver. While these bullets have different characteristics than ones made of copper or lead, that's a level of detail that combat in aWoD does not actually go to. Special ammunition exists that is generally more effective. Whether it's made out of depleted uranium or is special explosive ammunition or whatever, such special equipment increases the damage of the gun by 1, costs quite a bit, and puts a real strain on the character's claim to not be a military-grade super villain.
Smooth bore weaponry such as shotguns can be loaded with grains of pretty much anything. Of special interest to characters in the World of Darkness is that they can fill the shells with salt, sand, or live grain in order to suppress Astral, Infernal, or Orphic sorcery respectively. This is quite effective, and the character's Agility + Combat test can suppress magic out to the range of the weapon.
Silencer: Weaponry enthusiasts will get mad at you for calling them “silencers” because they don't actually reduce the noise of firing a weapon to nothing or even the point of inaudibility. Nevertheless, the “sound suppressor” is called a “silencer” in ordinary conversation, so it is reasonable that characters in the game will refer to it (incorrectly) like that as well. Silencers reduce the sound of using the weapon substantially, to the point that its use will probably not be noticed on the other side of a wall, but this comes at a price. The weapon loses a lot of power, which reduces the Damage by 1 and reduces the accurate range by one category (for example: if you silence a light pistol it has a base damage of 1 and loses accuracy if fired at ranges beyond Adjacent). A silencer also falls apart with use. After more than five shots, a silencer is basically garbage.
Melee Weapons
Melee weaponry differs from ranged weaponry primarily in that it simply goes as far as it will reach and therefore doesn't have a “range” value on the table. Many melee weapons inherently do Normal rather than Lethal damage, and their damage values are followed by an “N.” Unlike Ranged Weaponry, which is mostly designed for the purpose, a majority of things that people beat on each other with in hand to hand conflicts are actually improvised weapons – tools and household items that happen to be at hand when a fight breaks out. The rules for using melee weapons in one hand are the same as for ranged weapons: the character needs to have more Strength than the listed to use it in one hand, and must exceed it by 2 if the weapon is Large.

Melee Weaponry Table
Weapon | Damage | Strength | size
Fist | 0N | 0 | X
Bottle | 1N | 1 | S
Chair | 1N | 3 | L
Baseball Bat | 2N | 2 | M
Knife | 1 | 1 | S
Crowbar | 2 | 2 | M
Sword | 3 | 2 | M
Chainsaw | 3 | 4 | L
Axe | 3 | 3 | L
Hammer | 2 | 1 | S
Great Weapon | 4 | 4 | L
Sign Post | 4N | 5 | L
Fire Hydrant | 4 | 6 | L
Car | 6N | 10 | H
Lamp Post | 6N | 9 | H

Explosions
Can we make an explosion explode?
Sometimes things blow up, and in the movies things blow up even more. Even when we step outside the action genre, it is a recognized fact that objects in general in any media – including cooperative horror storytelling – are substantially more explosive than they are in real life. Explosions physically expand in roughly spherical paths (barring the use of shaped charges), and thus in a general sort of way an explosion can be expected to become weaker as per the square of the distance from the point of origin. Except of course it's actually much more complicated than that, because there's gravity and air resistance, and shrapnel pieces that fly a lot more like bullets, and so on. More massive shrapnel flies farther as it loses less power to air resistance, and compression waves pass through denser media better than air. And so on. Game mechanically this is abstracted out into an explosion's Damage (which is how much damage targets in the first area have to soak), and the same explosion's Radius (which is how far that area extends). An explosion does damage to targets that are outside its Radius, but substantially less. A target that is farther away from the explosion than the Radius takes 2 less damage if they are within the Radius of the Radius. And this continues until the Damage reaches zero. In effect, the explosion is modeled in the game as an onion where each band has a thickness of the Radius and does 2 less damage than the band before it. In a nod to the truly epic destruction caused by explosives that are actually adjacent to the target, an explosion will inflict 2 extra damage if the explosive is actually touching the target when it goes off.
An Explosion isn't normally affected by net hits on an attack roll, and inflict precisely the same damage if they are thrown perfectly as if they are detonated when simply dropped and forgotten. An exception to that is if an explosion is specifically placed to cause maximum damage. A character's Logic + Sabotage check can increase the damage bonus for a point blank explosion. Explosions are affected strongly by cover, and their damage ratings are reduced by the coverage and its toughness. Explosions do not necessarily inflict fire damage, even though they do act by burning. Unless otherwise noted, the primary damage is flying shrapnel and concussive force. Explosives can be wrapped in silver, wood chips, or steel in order to make that shrapnel into something that is especially effective against certain supernatural creatures.

Explosives Table
Weapon | Damage | Radius | size
Hand Grenade | 6 | 6m | S
Concussion Grenade | 6N | 2m | S
Plastic Explosive Charge | 8 | 50 cm | S
Car Gas Tank | 6F | 2m | L
Land Mine | 3 | 1m | M
Molotov Cocktail | 2F | 1m | M
Flashbang | 1 | 1m | S

Other Hazards
Don't touch that. Or that either.
Falling: Characters will fall from time to time. And falling substantial distances actually can take quite an amount of time. However, in a 12 second combat round a character could fall over 600 meters – so for practical purposes it's usually best to simply have characters hit the ground after having just one Simple Action to try to do something about their situation. It is also true that “The bigger they are, the harder they fall.” That's not just a trite saying that He Man gives before tripping giant robots, it's physical reality. Larger creatures have more mass proportional to their surface area and accelerate at the same speed, truly mice and ants can survive being dropped from any height and elephants can't even jump without breaking their bones on the way down. Game mechanically this truth is handled by preventing characters from using Strength or Armor to soak falling damage, and by having larger creatures take additional damage from falls. Characters can soak damage from falls by performing Agility + Athletics stunts with a threshold of 1 (net hits soak damage, but the first hit does not). Magical benefits for soaking damage do apply (as they make the character tougher relative to their mass rather than adding additional mass), so a character gains the benefits of Fortitude.
If the character falls onto a hard or sharp surface, increase damage by 1 or more. If the falling creature is large, increase the damage by 1 or more. If the falling creature is small, reduce the damage by 1 or more.

Distance | Damage
Petty (0-2m) | 1N
Ordinary (3-4m | 2N
Serious (5-6m) | 3
Incapacitating (7-10m) | 4
Terminal (11+ m) | 5

Electrocution: Electricity damage is something of a paradox. Electricity flows through the path of least resistance, and it inflicts damage based on the resistance of the path it flows through. Thus, you can defend yourself from electricity by covering yourself in high resistance insulation (because it will redirect electricity away from your body to another path) or by covering yourself with low resistance conductive mesh (because it will create a preferred path through the mesh and away from your organs). From the standpoint of the game, a character who is protected by especially conductive or non-conductive material is immune to electrical shocks. Electricity is inherently unpredictable, whenever someone is electrocuted, roll a die – if it comes up a hit, increase the Damage by 1. Net hits on attacks with electrical outputs are not added to the damage of an electric shock.

Shock | Damage
Ordinary (Wall Socket) | 2N
Serious (Electric Fence) | 3N
Incapacitating (High Powered Taser) | 4N
Terminal (Lightning Strike) | 5

Poison: Poison has a progressive effect that affects the target more as time goes on. Functionally this means that poison is much slower than bullets or chainsaws. The way this is handled is that a character soaks the poison as if it were a normal damaging attack, and then rather than suffering the damage, they merely become destined to take that amount of damage. The actual damage is portioned out over time, divided evenly among an amount of time equal to the poison's Speed. Characters with Patience of the Mountains or Tongue of the Serpent is immune to poisons. When a victim is exposed to additional doses before the first has run its course, the character's initial soak value is used and the damage is increased by 1. If a character is given anti-venom or some similar treatment, the character gains additional soak dice that affect the original roll. When the total value changes in this manner, the damage over time changes to accommodate the new total damage that will be received.

Poison | Damage | Speed | Notes
Tear Gas | 1N | 5 rounds | Provides a “dose” for each round of exposure.
Pepper Spray | 3N | 2 rounds |
Tranq Dart | 4N | 3 rounds | Fatigue
Rat Poison | 5 | 1 hour | Ingested.
Uranium | 1 | 3 months | Provides a “dose” for each five minutes of exposure.
“Euphoric” | 2º | 1 round | Amnesia and Overstimulation
“Hallucinogenic” | 2º | 1 round | Amnesia and Delusion
“Paralytic” | 2º | 1 round | Paralysis
“Soporific” | 2º | 1 round | Sleep
“Toxic” | 5 | 2 rounds | Agony

- Poisons in Quotes are the magical poisons available with Tongue of the Serpent. The damage level may at the character's option be increased by the character's Potency.
  When a Poison has a secondary effect, that effect generally lasts for 10 minutes to an hour.
  º: This Poison doesn't actually do any damage, the damage level is just there so that secondary effects occur. At the Storyteller's option, overdoses may still be fatal if the damage level rises to Terminal.

Temporary Conditions
Just as water has no constant shape, so there are no constant conditions.
The following is a sample set of conditions that might transiently affect a character in aWoD games. These conditions are generic cases, it is entirely possible for a character to be “more Delusional” or whatever, in which case the raw numerics of the effect should be increased.
Agony: The victim is in incredible wracking pain. Their Wound penalties are calculated s if they had two more boxes filled in than they do with basic Nonlethal mark, up to a maximum of all boxes filled.
Amnesia: Drinking to the point of blacking out will cause a man to lose an evening, and in game terms when a character is no going to remember things they are operating under Amnesia. In the real world there are many ways to get to this state, most of which involve chemicals. When a character is operating under Amnesia they suffer a -2 dicepool penalty to actions and the threshold to resist acting impulsively (including succumbing to Frenzy) is increased by 1. Also remember that the character won't remember anything, so it can sometimes be a good narrative tool to skip ahead in the story and then go back and roleplay those events later as a flashback.
Delusion: When a character is afflicted by Delusion they respond to things in an irrational fashion. Sometimes this can be well articulated as in the case where a character hallucinates tiny shapes moving in their peripheral vision they'll jump at shadows and, as they acclimatize themselves to their situation, ignore actual moving objects. And that just looks disconcerting to other people. Sometimes a character's delusions will be harder to articulate, but they will be no less disconcerting to those around them. A character suffering from Delusions is opposed on all Social tests by 3 dice. And yes, they can end up with negative hits.
Fatigue: A character who is fatigued has a great deal of difficulty exerting themselves. They cannot perform an Exhausting Run or Draining Sprint. Also their Strength is reduced by 1. And yes, that means that their Soak is reduced. When the body's reserves are exhausted, they are more vulnerable.
Overstimulation: When a character's sensory input is greater than their ability to handle that sensory input, it can be disorienting and paralyzing. Usually this comes from being exposed to really bright lights or loud noises, such as those produced by a flashbang grenade. But it can also come from within by having a character's senses sensitized (such as from atropine, ecstasy, or the bit of a Ventrue). In any case, when a character is Overstimulated their Initiative is reduced by 2 and their physical actions suffer a -2 dicepool penalty. The character also needs to make an Intuition + Perception test with a threshold of 2 to even target specific things in the overstimulated sense.
Paralysis: A fully paralyzed character cannot move. They may or may not be able to move their eyes or blink, depending upon which is more horrible, but they cannot move their arms or even turn their head. The victim's Agility is zero. Paralysis often goes away gradually, with a victim regaining their Agility one point at a time.

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cthulhu
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Post by cthulhu » Mon Nov 09, 2009 11:13 pm

I've always wondered how vampires actually travel from city to city. Unless you have a private airliner, it seems extremely dangerous. I guess the back of a truck would work, but who drives if you don't have ghouls or dominate?
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Avoraciopoctules
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Post by Avoraciopoctules » Tue Nov 10, 2009 12:09 am

> cthulhu wrote:I've always wondered how vampires actually travel from city to city. Unless you have a private airliner, it seems extremely dangerous. I guess the back of a truck would work, but who drives if you don't have ghouls or dominate?

I'm thinking that the parallel worlds provide some possibilities for risky long-range travel. But in a world dominated by horror-movie monsters, underground tunnel networks with trains, dedicated underworld transportation businesses, and personal vehicles that block sunlight from getting in would all exist and be reasonably accessible to a protagonist.
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TavishArtair
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Post by TavishArtair » Tue Nov 10, 2009 12:09 am

You drive on roads by night.
If you can Earth Meld that makes it a lot easier.
You could potentially use gates through spirit worlds but that's kind of a hilarious decision. It does get you out of the sun, sure, but now you have to fight demons to get where you're going.
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