The Gaming Den

CatharzGodfoot wrote: I was thinking of Mi Go in terms of Hungry Sally:

WTF is that from?

Fable, I think, second guess would be Sandman, but it's not usually that crisp.

norms29 wrote:

CatharzGodfoot wrote: I was thinking of Mi Go in terms of Hungry Sally:

WTF is that from?

That's from the House of Mystery miniseries, a spinoff of The Dreaming, which was itself a spinoff of Sandman.

Here's a download link:
http://www.dccomics.com/media/excerpts/10788_1.pdf

Warning: Sally has romantic sex with a giant fly and has maggots burrow out of her body. It is a very touching story though and I recommend it if you can get over giant bugs chewing through flesh.

-Username17

Hehehe, that story was not what I had expected when I first read it.

I wasn't completely shocked, I mean, I read The Watchman, and Judge Dredd and some of The ABC Warriors.

It was a bit gross to watch her being burrowed out of though.

Quantumboost wrote: To be roughly playable, the rest of the non-interest skills, powers for the Fallen, finalizing the Devotions and powers for the Disciplines, and actual rules for what the powers do. I think we have Fortitude, Celerity, and Walk of Flame (from a while ago), and a couple Devotions defined, and otherwise mostly flavor. Also an updated assignment of what weaknesses apply to each type.

We may want some idea of how non-Supernatural Luminaries (mad scientists and cultists) accomplish rituals like reanimating the dead or opening a door to the Dark Reflection.

Other than that, expanded flavor text, further description of the gameworld, and organizing the information into a complete document. We may also want sample characters/NPCs or an example scenario.

Am I missing anything?

Ok, so, how are we doing powers? The same (or close) as the already existing WW powers?

Because Frogheart seems like an interesting idea for a Transhuman character.

Also, Fey are all monsters right? They can't play as PCs? I know people who had a hard-on for playing Changeling. >_>

Also, I got some really good ways to adjucate how the campaign 'ends'.

The "more" that the PCs have succeeded on each mission, the more powerful the last boss will be. The less that they succeeded, the less powerful he will be. Since they aren't able to provide their Patron with the supplies that they needed to complete their special change ritual.

Personally I am against Changeling on the grounds that Changeling roleplay has got to be some of the worst stuff I have ever seen. People talking baby talk and "pranking." It's... painful. Changeling is half Wraethru and half fish malks and disturbingly child oriented during the whole deal. Putting changelings into a WoD game is basically adding a completely disrupting character and a good way to get accused of pedophilia at the same time. Similarly, Demon and Wraith were done so poorly in previous WoD material that making them playable is basically asking for trouble. When WoD players come in looking for WoD demons, what they are looking for is something that will ruin the game.

Have you seen Geist: the Sin Eating? You cut yourself o make your powers go off and your group is called a "Krewe." They aren't even trying to make that not shitty beyond understanding.

To make changelings not be terrible, great massive blows woud have to be done to not only make the presentation acceptable, but also overcome the conditioning that changeling players have to talk in baby voices and spam dadaist image macros during serious roleplay. Probably the best solution would be to have them be Fallen. That is, have "Changelings" be humans who got abducted by mirror goblins as children and are now soulless adults who are used to the dark reflection.

-Username17

Wraethru...... the worst part is that I know what that means.

I like the idea of "Changelings" being the humans that were kidnapped and replaced.

Sooo. Changeling: the Lost.

In Lost, they pretty much come out and say "being a Changeling is what happens after you remember what humanity is in spite of having your soul fall off after you were taken to the Bad Place." For what it's worth I've doing some Lost roleplay and haven't seen a single one of the Dreaming... quirks that you describe (which I do know existed, although they were slightly more rare than All The Time. Slightly).

Also.... I don't think that I could ever do... "baby talk" with anyone that wasn't an actual infant. I'm only so childish.

So one thing that occurred to me is that since we're talking about some kind of supernatural society that is while maybe not "unified" per se at least shares a culture of being able to talk to each other. Accordingly there might be some kind of sub-accounting concerning some kind of "status" where you could kind of eyeball whether someone has heard about you and what they have heard about you, and the decision of what this means to that person will probably be up to them. Or maybe that's a horrendously bad idea, I don't know.

The other thought I had was partially inspired by Changeling, and that it would be amusing if people have a Discipline that lets them create various kinds of oaths which have mechanical effects for breaking. Sample powers I was ruminating over were Hospitality, which you activate in order to invite a guest into your home with the promise that you won't stab each other in the back and have that actually be a difficult thing to go against, and the Faustian Pact, where Mephistophiles can grant you wisdom and longevity (possibly by extending Discipline uses and similar to you) for the low low price of...

I've historically been quite unhappy with the way pact magic has worked out in any edition. From the Invictus' "give people actual discipline levels for no damn reason" pacts to the Assamite "get a bullshit pile of money in exchange for actual goods and services" thing, I don't think it has ever done anything I want done.

But in any case, I've been thinking a lot about sorcery and how it gets learned and detected. The best detection methods I think are the thing where it freaks out animals and the thing where it darkens clear water. Those are directional and can be monitored by people "in the know" about how magic works. There does need to be a third method, and I think the front runners are wilting plants or discoloring white salt.

In any case, with 15 sorcery paths it seems easy enough if there is a basic Cult that has each sorcery path there can be a quite manageable number of basic cults. Interestingly, with 15 cults, that coincidentally means that if each one has two favored resource/background/influence/whatever types that there can be exactly no overlap if there are 6 resource types to have. So that seems pretty tight.

So that would make for 5 Death Cults, 5 Cthulhu Cults, and 5 Satanic Cults. That seems pretty workable. Just provisionally, I would split it up:

• Cthulhu Cults
• Black Spiral Dancers
• False Face
• The Hollow Ones
• Storm Lords
• White Lotus

• Death Cults
• Black Hand
• Circle of the Crone
• Hashshashin
• House Giovanni
• Kalidasi

• Demonic Cults
• Church of Set
• The Glass Walkers
• Madness Network
• Stellar Oracles
• The Tremere

Any of those that seem insufficiently awesome? I don't really think there are enough Asian, African, or Native American cults - but that's what you get when you template yourself off of World of Darkness material like at all.

-Username17

I'm not super well versed in the WoD setting. Could you give a brief description of each cult (or at least the ones that aren't described by their names) so that I and others like myself can judge the list?

Narcissus wrote:I'm not super well versed in the WoD setting. Could you give a brief description of each cult (or at least the ones that aren't described by their names) so that I and others like myself can judge the list?

Sure.

The Black Spiral Dancers

They are frankly, an awesome fucking name. In oWoD they were the group of werewolves who said "Fuck this" to the garou way of life and went on to be hired muscle in exchange for crazy sex and drug orgies with the Church of Set. They could use what passed for the light side and the dark side of the Force in Werewolf interchangbly and were totally fucking hard core. In nWoD they are something else. I don't even remember. All the organizations in nWoD are boring.

Needless to say, they would be a cult dedicated to rocking out in the moonlight. And also to telling people to fuck their rules, man.

The False Face

The False Face is an actual native american secret society of sorcerers who all wear masks and used to connive and manipulate various First Nations. Also they have an awesome name. For aWoD, they would be a fallen covenant that is reduced to scheming as a cult.

The Hollow Ones

The Hollow Ones was the inexplicable name given to Mages in oWoD who didn't join one of the crazy hat paradigms you were supposed to join, but in the way that nothing in oWoD Mage made any god damned sense they constituted an organization anyway and were trying to overthrow reality. So really they could do anything in aWoD, mostly they are contributing a name.

Storm Lords

Storm Lords were an incestuous and bestiality ridden tribe of werewolves. They were brought out in nWoD as a compilation of the Silver Fangs, the Shadow Lords, and the Red Talons from oWoD. These guys will absolutely be saddled with Chasing the Storm, and as such should probably end up like every other storm cult ever and be based on The Tempest and Circe.

White Lotus

Th White Lotus is a cult of Chinese sorcerer assassins from Feng Shui.

The Black Hand

The Black Hand is the name of several historical assassin cults that have cropped up from time to time in many places. Many people credit them with starting world war I. In oWoD, they were also given as an alternate name of the Sabbat, and the special doctrinal enforcers of the Sabbat, and the soldiers of the Sabbat, and a secret masonic order of Sabbat members that manipulated stuff, and an even more secret order dedicated to fighting the Sabbat while apparently also controlling the Sabbat even more secretly. Seriously.

In aWoD I think we're going for more of an Assamites feel. It's an assassin cult. They murder people to effect political change.

Circle of the Crone
In nWoD, the Circle is a group of pagans who do a bunch of blood magic. That seems totally workable.

Hashshashin
Again, a historical organization of assassins. In fact, the word "assassin" comes from these guys, because they were so good at it. They had a mountain fortress where they drugged the crap out of acolytes and used drugs and sex and torture to turn them into willing murder machines and then sicked them on targets that they had been paid to eliminate.

House Giovanni
House Giovanni is a Venetian mob family who are necromancers. This is what they are in oWoD, nWoD, and aWoD. Really the only difference is that aWoD allows them to have non-vampire members and has them structured as a crime family as opposed to a literal family, so you don't have to make bizarre convoluted family trees about how vampires got smuggled in with Marco Polo so that they could interbreed with Chinese necromancers so that players could be asians and still members of "The Family."

Kalidasi
The servants of Kali. A somewhat more general term than "Thugee" - these guys are the villains from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Also a historical murder cult.

Church of Set
In oWoD they were one of the most fleshed out factions in Vampire, being a church of corruption to the evil ruby eyed snake god from Conan. Totally awesome.

The Glass Walkers
In oWoD, these guys were cockroach worshiping werewolves who used computer magic. That's dumb, but their name is good. So these guys are coming in as the demonologists from Hellraiser.

The Stellar Oracles
Actually many different cults have had this name over the years. In this case I am using them as the monster hunting astrologers from Sailor Moon.

The Tremere
A hierarchical order of fire magicians that has appeared in White Wolf stuff since before the World of Darkness even came out. These guys are from Ars Magica even! They are basically a lot like Slytherin. And they make things explode. With fire. Magic fire.

-Username17

Set is also an Egyptian God, Worshipers of Set being evil Egyptians, or Egyptophiles (not many now, but there used to be back in the day... way back in the day), is also possible.

Their symbols being Snakes, and Pyramids, and the a corruption on the all-seeing eye of Horus makes the American Greenback take a suddenly more sinister turn. Since it has a pyramid, and an all-seeing eye on it.

If we are to have a world resembling reality, but with real magic powers, the first thing to do is to explain why it is not Stross's Atrocity Archives - with magic controlled by secret government departments.

Magic in aWoD is powerful enough that it cannot be really ignored, but not so powerful that it can ignore the mundane world. If there is no factor stopping it, mages will either be the secret rulers or the secret servants of all governments - of course, there is really no difference between those options.

Masquerade is good enough to explain why you cannot read about vampires in your newspaper, but not why no one in none of governments has a clue. In fact, it is ridiculous on the face of it: the Masquerade is apparently the reaction to witch-hunts. Witch hunts happened mostly in XVI and XV centuries. A lot of governments existed back there, not to mention the Church.

If there was anything in magic they could use, they would use it. Mages were routinely sponsored by kings - the only problem was the remarkable lack of results, except for china. If magic worked, it would be used. Even if there was a need for some human sacrifices - what is the problem? There were enough people condemned to death back then, or incurably sick and clearly needing an euthanasia now.

The only explanation is that magic exists and is powerful, but it can neither be used by governments, nor take over governments. And the only thing which would stop government from using it is lack of reliability. Big organizations need to be foreseeable; you press button A, city B blows up.

I suppose Frank is going to blow up, also, at this point. If the magic is not reliable; and the world is simply a bunch of things happening for no reason at all, it would be impossible to have any reasonable game in it.

So, the magic must be foreseeable for the players - it must follow the various rules about mirrors etc.But on wider scale it must be so unpredictable as to be useless for government work. If you try to organize a secret cell of vampire assassins to kill Castro for CIA, they can all kill each other, or run away and hide in the Gloom, or divide into two factions and begin to plotting against each other, with one faction selling out to the Russians, and the second becoming double agents of Mossad and Khomeini. And when a powerful old vampire tries to take over government, guess what happens? Exactly the same thing. He simply cannot trust his subordinates.

After a few such experiences, most governments would make a similar decision to Stalin. When a biologist offered to bred half-ape subhuman soldiers for him, he tried it - and when no soldiers were forthcoming send the biologist to Gulag and a few millions of Russian peasants to front. That does not mean that governments would know now that magic works. A typical bureaucrat who suspected the magic was real would very quickly learn two things:
- there is no magic.
- any bureaucrat from the XV century onward who interested himself in it broke his career, and disastrously so.

The various magical organisations exists, because they are small and essentially do nothing except keeping leadership rich enough to live in villas filled with Berlusconi style girls. The fact that there are about as many of super-secret vampire organizations as vampires is not a bug, but a feature: vampires simply do think that way.

There's also a possible other explanation why the governments don't overtly use or necessarily control magic: most people in the government aren't Luminaries. When they come into contact with the supernatural and undergo what would transform Luminaries into superbeings, they're consumed by it rather than being transformed. Luminaries turned into Supernaturals lose their humanity and become monsters, but non-Luminaries get turned into mindless spawn, get eaten by Horrors From Beyond (TM) or just die. And that scares the non-Luminary officials.

There would be some Supernaturals in the governments, just like the CEO of some technology company might be a Child of Ether or Android or whatever else, but the government as a whole wouldn't be aware of magic and the like. There'd be some "special investigations" departments in the vein of X-Files or the SCP Foundation, which investigate supernatural events and keep them secret from the public (including parts of the government not in-the-know) to keep some semblance of normalcy. They probably employ some supernaturals themselves, especially the ones that were previously human and don't feed on or randomly maul people (mostly Transhumans and Witches). The field agents would be either Luminaries or approved Supernaturals.

The Supernaturals in turn don't control the governments overtly because they're still heavily outnumbered, the same reason they don't try to shatter the Masquerade (except the ones who do, who are just crazy). They probably have influence over policy, but then so does every other special-interest group worth talking about politically; the only difference is that this special-interest group has mind control without using tricks of rhetoric and psychology (which they probably still use anyway) and a higher limit on their diplomancy.

It's a reasonable objection. After all, if real history had been different in any way, it would have turned out differently. So any change to the past is unrealistic by definition if the present day is still fairly recognizable. But beyond that, World of Darkness is asking us to accept extra power centers without altering invasion dates or changes of monarchial power or national flags or anything. And yeah, that's a fairly large piece of disbelief suspension that is being asked of you the reader.

Although I think it's resolvable, honestly. Partly it's because a lot of people don't know very much history and so the fact that the facts that they don't know might have been different doesn't really come up much. I mean, historical solipsism is such that almost no one is aware that the "Polish Language" is 91 years old and was declared as a political consideration at the close of World War I to reduce the power of the German, Austo-Hungarian, and Russian Empires. So really if the stuff that happened right up until before "you" were born was wildly different and crazy that wouldn't phase people very much. Most people live their entire lives as if that was true anyway. It's why people all over the world think of the US as a "young country" despite the fact that it's the scond oldest nation on the planet - its own national story begins by declaring itself to be a young nation and it has simply continued saying that generation after generation as empires around it rise and fall.

But on to the main question of how to justify human institutions and history looking vaguely recognizable when there are people with fucking magic on their hands... yeah that's hard. My first inclination is to rely on the fact that there are multiple magic factions on hand and they are not supposed to fuck with each other. So to an extent, it's OK for the "no diablerie clause" to extend to maintaining plausible deniability as regards sending armies of humans into other areas owned by other covenants. The crusaders weren't directed or particularly backed up by Sabbat magic, because the Sabbat needed to maintain a distance to crusader activities when they went into Camarilla territory.

It's easy enough today when people have things that they are reasonably afraid of in the human world such that the supernaturals restricting themselves to shadowy criminal organizations makes a fair amount of sense. And frankly, in the 1100s if some of the sorcerous god kings were actually sorcerous god kings, because it doesn't really make a whole lot of difference. I admit, that it's a big problem during the rise of nationalism of 1600-1920. I mean, the Black Hand killed Archduke Ferdinand, though I could see an argument that magic could have been involved in that. A big burden is taken off our hands by the fact that non-luminaries can't become witches. That keeps magic from establishing lasting magocracies.

nWoD tried to get people who became mages to drop out of society and go off to have secret magic stuff going on in their life instead. That was a laudable goal, but Mage handled that really poorly. I mean, this is the actual segment about true names from the Question and Answer session that stands in for actually having an errata:

Q: Are we going to get a clarification on what exactly one's True Name is?

A: Well, there are no "true names." Instead, your real name -- that is, the name you were given at birth or by which you were called during your formative years -- has a significant sympathetic tie to you, and so it can be exploited easily. Shadow names and other adopted names don't have the same tie.

I assume that you could conceivably raise a child using many different names, not sticking to one long enough to give it a strong sympathetic tie. Besides doing funny things to a kid's psyche, though, there'd still be the name he was first given; that would probably still act as a real name even if he doesn't answer to it (unless another name was used with more frequency during his formative years, in which case that becomes the real name).

C: For this reason, most mages tend to withdraw from everyone they knew, beginning new lives. Those that don't risk other mages uses easily gained knowledge about them against them.

The benefit for knowing a real name isn't that great, though -- sure, it's easier to cast sympathetic magic, but that doesn't make sympathetic magic easy. There are still penalties based on the connection, the Mana cost, and other concerns (like the fact that the target can cast spells back through the conduit). Having someone know your real name isn't the end of your magely career; it just makes it more difficult.

Still, a quick review of Identity Theft will give you altogether too many ideas about the perfectly mundane annoyances that can be visited upon a mage by an enemy who knows the name on all of the mage's ID cards. There's no need for that enemy to challenge the mage to the Duel Arcane when a simple bankruptcy will do...

Seriously? If you don't go underground, rival mages will TP your house and buy jewelry and pizza deliveries in your name? Are you fucking kidding me? I think we can do better than that.

How about, to start off with, supernatural characters are barred from holding important positions in magic society if they have any in-person jobs that are publicly visible? Idea being that if you're an Archon or a Prelate you may be required to "disappear" on short or no notice or long periods of time and if that would create a masquerade problem you are required to retire your public persona ahead of time. And then we get a bunch of humans in various governments and corps who are mind thralls of various monsters, but few monsters in non-criminal power positions directly.

-Username17

I think I read this on RPGnet. Seems like useful fluff.

"Vampires kill people. They have to, every so often, dispose of human remains. They also have to maintain a strict code of silence about themselves and their activities, lest they be beseiged by cross and stake weilding maniacs.

Furthermore, while they were alive they'd gotten used to certain basic amenities: things like clothing and a place to stay. So why not, you know, steal from the people they were killing for food? I mean, it's not like they'll have any need for their wallet and watch at the bottom of a river somewhere. Plus, you've got to pay for those crushed velvet suits (or whatever) somehow, right?

Pretty soon it got to be a regular thing, among some vampires. Then it caught on amongst the rest. Pretty soon the crime thing extended beyond the simple opportunistic looting of bodies and extended to the funding of luxuries. Thinks like pinky rings and houses in Sicily.

Of course, managing to do something like this is much easier with a structure and a heirarchy. Pretty soon, regular people wanted to join and the vampires had to figure out how to keep "Our thing" (as they called it) strictly private while at the same time exploiting these humans who were coming up to them and practically demanding to be employed as disposable mooks.

The trick was to keep the upper echelons exclusively in vampiric hands while, as need arose, being able to pick and choose among the mooks worthy candidates for vampirehood.

What do you think a "made man" has been made into, anyway?"

Brilliant. Next D&D game I run, I'm putting in a vampire-run crime syndicate.

That's... okay.

but the history of the mafia isn't all that obscure. It's traditionally been about monopolies that a group or individual control, and are paid for in order for other people who want to access said monopoly.

This can range from "who is allowed to serenade my hot girlfriend in the middle of the night, and have her listen to you from her balcony, and give your singing an objective review" to "who can sell moonshine on the south side without getting their head blown away."

Also, "made men" have been shot in the head and killed before.

FrankTrollman wrote: How about, to start off with, supernatural characters are barred from holding important positions in magic society if they have any in-person jobs that are publicly visible? Idea being that if you're an Archon or a Prelate you may be required to "disappear" on short or no notice or long periods of time and if that would create a masquerade problem you are required to retire your public persona ahead of time. And then we get a bunch of humans in various governments and corps who are mind thralls of various monsters, but few monsters in non-criminal power positions directly.
-Username17

This isn't a very strong restriction. Nearly nobody would wish to be a President if they can be a power behind the throne instead, with ten (or hundred) times as much money and no limitations.

Politicians are very near puppets anyway. That way they all would be mind-controlled puppets.

Therefore, I would add one point: mind controlled people look mind controlled or mentally disturbed. If you want a Manchurian Candidate, you must do it the old-fashioned way, because nobody will vote for a visible disturbed mind-puppet.

baduin wrote:nobody will vote for a visibly disturbed mind-puppet.

CatharzGodfoot wrote:

baduin wrote:nobody will vote for a visibly disturbed mind-puppet.

yes, I believe Baduin is forgetting the ever present "visibly disturbed mind-puppet" demographic. Also known as fundamentalist christians.