The Gaming Den

I did run a short session. I'll try to type it up. I didn't record number of hits rolled in combat or anything.

Trollman wrote:Obfuscation does not affect cameras or other objective traces of a creature's passing, merely prevents observers (even indirect observers) from noticing what is there

So, if you Hide From Notice, you're still recorded by the security cameras, but the guy watching the screen doesn't notice you. Fine. What breaks the causal chain sufficiently that you can be noticed? Will somebody who comes by later and reviews the tapes notice you? Or will it mindwhammy him too? What if he's watching you "live" with a 10-second delay?

It's still a little weird that Verbena start with Chasing the Storm, but are weakened by water. If one were to learn Tumultuous Rain, it would go away as soon as it started...

A dicepool mechanic for extras recognizing monsters would be nice. Just how hard *is* is to spot an unobfuscated Ventrue, Frankenstein, or Deep One?

EDIT: Also, maybe guidelines for the threshold to resist frenzy triggers? You give them for living in society, but it's not clear what the threshold is for actual upsetting in-story events.

EDIT: Also, what are driving passions supposed to be? goals, causes, or emotions?

FrankTrollman wrote:At some point I'd like to get some play-throughs and some feedback on some powers being too strong or too weak. Suggestions of stuff that people want to do in Action Sequences would be good too.

1) I have a group of players who usually play a "kick in the door" style of game. We can run some aWoD combats if you give me a writeup about what some "typical foe" stat blocks would be. Wouldn't be all combat, but they mostly like to fight things.

2) Merits: nWoD merit list http://wodindex.wikispaces.com/Merits

Telepathy doesn't give a resistance dicepool, or guidelines on what kinds of things can be learned.

Does Forgetful Mind let you see into someone's memories? Or do you just say "forget about X" and if they have any relevant memories they go away?

Chimerstry doesn't specify a resistance dicepool or what triggers a save to disbelieve.

Are devotions all handled as Universal Disciplines mechanically? For some, like Blind the Senses, it's kinda weird if it can't be countered. Seems like some devotions should maybe have a "sorcery" tag?

Empty Body should explain how you interact with the vertical. Does this come with free flight? With hovering? A psychological requirement to stand on some surface?

Cleanse the Body is a Devotion substantially less exciting than Blood Bondage, a Basic discipline. you need fortitude to get access to cleanse the body, if you took Revive the Flesh, you get the same healing power from Blood Bondage as from Cleanse the Body, and more. Some PCs get Patience of the Mountains free, of course, but of them only the Deep One starts with Dominate, while the others not only don't get it but are not encouraged to (Golems and Frankensteins don't tend to have the dicepools, while Androids and Fallen have alternative social powers). If you've got Patience of the Mountain and neither Revive the Flesh nor dominate, grabbing Hypnotism and Cleanse Body costs more investment than picking up Revive Flesh and Blood Bonadge.

Speaking of Path of Blood, Blood of Acid causes some weird issues. It's apparently an always-on passive effect. This suggests that learning both Blood of Acid and Blood Bondage would be a BAD idea, which means the only way to get it is to start with Thaumaturgical forensics, something that doesn't make a lot of sense for most PC concepts.

How is Denial of Privacy targeted? Is Dream Vision + Horrid Reality an Autokill?

Is Betrayal of the Tongue covert? If not, what does applying it look like? Otherwise it would seem inferior than just hypnotizing, then questioning.

Some suggested edits in the combat section follow. There's a bunch, and some are trivial, so I'll put those in a spoiler.

@SCORED: This mnemonic could be changed, mostly because it's weird that the third fastest movement is called "Restrained", and also the use of "Scrupulous" is weird when we have much better alternatives. I'd suggest something like "Rapid" and "Slow".

@Taking one for the team: The flavor implies that the character taking one for the team actually gets hit, but is this always the case, or does the attacker still have to beat the defender's threshold as normal?

@Dodging vs. Disengaging: How do these interact if someone tries both in the same round? What is the threshold for the guy they disengaged from to hit them?

If the target is moving quickly, increase the threshold by 1.

How quickly is quickly? Does everyone under the influence of Celerity count as moving quickly?

Once abducted, a victim may attempt to escape on their next round, and may further attempt to escape one other time.

The rules for this escape attempt are written neither in the section about Abducting nor in the following section on Moving, Evading, and Escaping. That's probably a bad thing.

An attacker who is attempting to Rodney King someone suffers a -1 penalty to their attack roll for each additional attack beyond their actual Combat Skill.

It is not entirely clear that the "additional attacks" referenced there are actually attacks by people other than the attacker.

Aiming is the act of taking extra time with a shot n order

Spelling.

If the weapon is sufficiently braced

This implies we should have some item that can do the bracing in the equipment section.

run a hundred meters and the change the magazine on an M-16 (seriously).

Spelling.

FrankTrollman wrote:

Prak_Anima wrote: what about Cubare, one of the root words of Succubus, which means "to lie".

No.

-Username17

Frank,
(")Vampires(")
Nosferatu
Golem
Frakenstein
(The) Androids
Leviathan
Leviathan
troglodyte
Troglodyte
Verbena

Due to the nature of language and the nature of society, a lot of words and terms have unintended baggage or connections.

Lunatic Fringe, Spriggan, as has been pointed out, means "mound" (as does Sidhe, for that matter). Fallen draws to mind those stupid life alert commercials with some bitty saying "I've fallen and I can't get up." Ether is a chemical. Frankenstein means, etymologically, the Stone of the Franks (as in the French), Nosferatu (may) come from the greek Nosophoros, disease-bearing. Reborn means someone was "born again" and can lead to a character being derisively called a "born again".

And I wasn't lazy, I've read about succubi a fair amount, I was just looking for a gender-neutral term for incubi and succubi, and the common term means "to lie" which works very well with "to lie" or "lay with" being an old euphemism for sex.

Orion: Nephilim means "Fallen" and "the nephilim" are commonly thought of as giants. It also brings to mind my ex, but that's a personal reason to dislike it's use...

FrankTrollman wrote:At most a third of the world thinks "Christianity" when they hear the word "demon." I certainly don't. I think of D&D.

And I think of Greek myth. but most people think of demons as christian monsters. or at least that seems to be the common usage, other than as a generic term for evil spirits.

Fixed some typos in the Danger chapter. Added Feinting, Locking On, and Untangling. Changed to Slow Search and Rapid Jog.

Will work on Discipline tweaks.

Prak: hate to break it to you, but your Golem "counter link" is actually a song about the Golem of Prague.

-Username17

Anyway, Merits and Flaws. There are some pretty good lists of nWoD Merits and oWoD Merits and Flaws on-line. But that doesn't change the fact that most of the Merits and Flaws are quite bad for the game and always have been.

Stuff like "Safe Passage" doesn't really seem to make any sense as a Merit at all. It's just a Specialization in Driving in bad weather. And while that's a totally reasonable Specialization, it's sort of meaningless as a merit. A Merit should really be something that is an identifiable schtick that you can do that other people with a similar level of skill cannot. So stuff like "Aptitude" is obviously something that can be thrown right out, because it's just a special effect for having a higher skill rating.

But it still opens up the question of which of these things are actually way too big (or small) to allow in as a Merit or Flaw. The crap like Dark Fate is obviously over the edge into bullshit game destruction territory. Is Iron Will too far in the other direction? I kind of think it is. Now, would you actually be willing to cash in an advancement card to get perfect time or direction sense?

-Username17

Prak: I'd never heard that Nephilim meant "fallen" before, and without a cite, I'm gonna call shenanigans. There's nothing fallen about then in the sources I know, they're just half-angel humans.

They used to be translated a s"giants" but then scholars decided "great ones" was a better translations and that they weren't necessarily all that big, but just heroic. But yes, the baggage remains, and Magic:The Gathering portrayed them as world-shaking monstrosities.

All of which is to say, they're basically the Jewish equivalent to "Asuras," a name Trollman accepted, but more (IMHO) pleasing as a word.

The story background on the Nephilim is that they are the offspring of the hideous and angelic Grigori and the Avvites. They are cannibalistic giants so hideous and wicked that the gods of man filled the lands of the Earth with water to fick the giant reset button that made sure none of that shit was possible any more. Their offspring are the Rephaim, who are also giants, but not so large that they can eat a whole man in one go (at least, not in many stories). Other Giants are the Anakim and the Emim.

Nephilim is a Hebrew word that means "Fallen One." The ranking goes: Emim are Rephaim who are as tall as Anakim. Anakim are so tall that their descendant who is only half as tall is Goliath. Other Rephaim are shorter, though presumably not anything like human height. The Nephilim are taller than any Rephaim, which would make them taller than the Anakim, and therefore something over 14' presumably. The higher end hyperbole has the ground shaking with every step that a Nephilim took, which would put them at Kaiju sized.

-Username17

I don't know about you Frank, but I personally like the Lock On mechanic from HERO better. I don't think it's called Lock On there, but what you do is make an attack roll against the defender like normal; if you hit, you have your gun pointed at their back and, at any point until the Lock On ends, you can just shoot them and they get shot, no questions asked. Have that opposed by feint, and that way we actually care about feinting, rather than just jacking up our defense pool as high as possible. For aWoD you'd have to choose whether to make the original net hits apply or not, but overall I think that describes the situation better. The way you've done it, it's just a completely normal attack that you happen to take later, which really isn't all that exciting except for low initiative characters who are trying to figure out a way to delay even though the rules say they have to go before high initiative characters who have chosen to delay.

FrankTrollman wrote:Prak: hate to break it to you, but your Golem "counter link" is actually a song about the Golem of Prague.

by a band named Golem, if it's not, let me know, and I'll try to find one of the bands again.
That also doesn't invalidate the other nine counters. Now... one of them may be a bit confusing... but I'll answer any questions, since I'm the one that asserted them.

Orion:
Ok, after looking at wikipedia, and then not using just that because so many people reject it, I found this:

Abarim Publications wrote:It is not clear where the name Nephilim comes from. There are a few possibilities, and scholars argue about the likelihood of each of them. First of all, the word nephilim is a plural and the single form, npl (npl), does not occur in the Bible (which by itself is not at all unusual). In another context, however, the word npl (nepel 1392a) means untimely birth or abortion. It comes from the verb npl (napal 1392), fall, lie down, be cast down, fail. The plural word Nephilim means 'fallen ones,' mostly by the sword, and occurs in Josh 8:25, Jud 20:46, 2 Ki 25:11, Psalm 145:14, Jer 39:9, 52:15, Eze 32:22 and 24.

so, according to that, either I was correct before, or it means they're an accident or abortion. And "fallen," I believe, refers to the nature of their parents, I'm sure yhwh wouldn't be particularly fond of his messengers taking some time off to fuck humans.

Gelare wrote:I don't know about you Frank, but I personally like the Lock On mechanic from HERO better. I don't think it's called Lock On there, but what you do is make an attack roll against the defender like normal; if you hit, you have your gun pointed at their back and, at any point until the Lock On ends, you can just shoot them and they get shot, no questions asked. Have that opposed by feint, and that way we actually care about feinting, rather than just jacking up our defense pool as high as possible. For aWoD you'd have to choose whether to make the original net hits apply or not, but overall I think that describes the situation better. The way you've done it, it's just a completely normal attack that you happen to take later, which really isn't all that exciting except for low initiative characters who are trying to figure out a way to delay even though the rules say they have to go before high initiative characters who have chosen to delay.

I am using the mechanic from HERO. You make the attack roll, and then you can have the attack actually go off reactively at any point after that. That's how you use it for Fencing. You just Lock at each other until someone has the option of a death blow, and then that guy gets a point (or possibly the other guy gets one chance to feint and then the aggressor gets a point).

Prak wrote:That also doesn't invalidate the other nine counters.

Your "counters" are completely meaningless. Twilight, while retarded, actually is about Vampires. Basically, these links are just random crap, they aren't actually a refutation of anything at all. So I'm going to stop responding to them altogether. KTHNX.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:I am using the mechanic from HERO. You make the attack roll, and then you can have the attack actually go off reactively at any point after that.

Oh. Well...alright then. Guess the description wasn't clear to me. Carry on then.

Frank the same god damned criticism can be leveled at your links to some modern art piece of shit and a crappy punk band.

FrankTrollman wrote: Now, would you actually be willing to cash in an advancement card to get perfect time or direction sense.

Not if I could just buy a watch and compass.

First set of Merits and Flaws are up. Trying to do it "feat" style where each one is just something you have or don't have.

Prak wrote:Frank the same god damned criticism can be leveled at your links to some modern art piece of shit and a crappy punk band.

The point is, those are the first damn google results. In fact, those are basically the only results. Cubi is a modern art piece or a US military installation in the Philippines. It's not a demon, sexy or otherwise. If we were speaking ancient tongues, it would be a frickin mattress. Cubare is an unbelievably shitty punk band. Again, it's not a demon, sexy or otherwise. If we were speaking in ancient tongues, it would be a throw pillow that you lean on.

That's what those words mean. And they don't even sound like the mean something else, so we couldn't even use the WoD "screw the language, I have a dot in my name!" excuse.

-Username17

Orion wrote:Prak: I'd never heard that Nephilim meant "fallen" before, and without a cite, I'm gonna call shenanigans.

In addition to the cites already linked, I happen to be a Hebrew native speaker and can definitely verify that the word "nephilim" comes from the root NPL, meaning - to fall, to trip, to be aborted.

The confusion stems from a mistranslation in the King James Bible (it is unbelievable how many pieces of myths can be attributed to simple misunderstanding of translation):

Book of Numbers 13:33
"And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight."

In this translation, "nephilim" was translated as "giants" and "Anak" was left as is;
This is obviously a mistake as the word "anak" means "giant" whereas the word "nephilim", as mentioned, means either "fallen" or "aborted".

tl;dr - no shenanigans, nephilim=fallen is etymologically justified.

FrankTrollman wrote:First set of Merits and Flaws are up. Trying to do it "feat" style where each one is just something you have or don't have.

Prak wrote:Frank the same god damned criticism can be leveled at your links to some modern art piece of shit and a crappy punk band.

The point is, those are the first damn google results. In fact, those are basically the only results. Cubi is a modern art piece or a US military installation in the Philippines. It's not a demon, sexy or otherwise. If we were speaking ancient tongues, it would be a frickin mattress. Cubare is an unbelievably shitty punk band. Again, it's not a demon, sexy or otherwise. If we were speaking in ancient tongues, it would be a throw pillow that you lean on.

That's what those words mean. And they don't even sound like the mean something else, so we couldn't even use the WoD "screw the language, I have a dot in my name!" excuse.

-Username17

then I missed your point.

but I guess at this point it really doesn't matter, does it? has there been a god damned decision about the sidhe?

Though honestly, it's some what reasonable to call them succubi, because in, at least some of, the myths, succubi and incubi were the same damn thing and just changed gender at will.

I've read my fair share of modern fantasy, such as Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and the Discworld series (not to mention the nWoD fey), that portrays the fey as obviously not human and quite dangerous; so I personally see nothing wrong with 'sidhe' being their descriptor, because I'm not surprised to see them be pretty demons.

Virgileso,

I have no problem with a "Sidhe" having the powers and habits of the Sidhe creature in aWoD. I have a problem with something called a "sidhe" being explicitly NOT a fey, in a game which has fey.

On renaming the Sidhe, my vote is for calling them Cythron. Those were the glam-rock leather-panted depraved-bisexual seductive alien-demons from the Sláine comics, and (very loosely) celtic-myth based.

I have absolutely no problem leaving them called Sidhe. That name is fine for my purposes. If sufficient people want, a name change could be made. As for a name to change to, it would have to legitimately convey what they are and what they do better than the word Sidhe. That means that anything so obscure that no one has heard of it is not better, but anything that is right out of World of Darkness pages is totally acceptable. Fomori, for example, would be pretty reasonable as a name, save that I don't see any particular advantage to it over Sidhe since it comes from the same mythological set as Sidhe.

Other real possibilities would be Tianwang (Chinese) or Shitenno (Nipponese), who are the Buddhist heavenly kings of Earth Guardianship and also the evil generals from Sailor Moon. Tianwang is unfortunate because it contains the word "wang" and Shitenno is unfortunate because it implies that there are only four (also, there are already a bunch of groups with Nipponese names). Going that way, it would probably be better to use the Hindi name for the Negaverse Generals: Lokapala.

Another real possibility is Asura. Because while that term suggests to me a 5 meter tall dude with red skin and four arms who has giant boar tusks and eats people - the fact is that even as we speak the Koreans and Nipponese are busily using that word to mean pale skinned humans who run around being emo in black armor fighting for the desolate evil darkness team. And once a word has been thoroughly co-opted to this on the first page of a frickin image search, it's fair game to use that meaning in the game.

But again, I don't really care, and and I'm clearly not alone. Several people have expressed an interest in them remaining being named Sidhe. And that's an acceptable result as well. But if there's a real movement to rename them something that a majority of people feel conjures a better image of a beautiful but sad demon who acts as either a succubus or a Sailor Moon villain, then changing the name is no big deal.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote: Tianwang is unfortunate because it contains the word "wang"

Well if you want names guaranteed to cause juvenile giggling, you could go even further by using Ass-wang.

Some sorceries do active things without dicepools. Beast Form, for example.

If a Ventrue turns into a bat and flies away, what happens when you shoot at him with a Salt Shotgun? does even 1 hit negate the Beast Form?