The Gaming Den

You've got a contradiction between the non-playable types entry near the top and the stat blocks farther down with zombies. I assume that you've changed it such that only luminary zombfies can spawn, but the earlier text doesn't reflect that.

Danger Update. First pass on thrown weapons, driving, Athletic Speed.

-Username17

Are we ever getting fixes for the discipline issues I flagged?

Orion wrote:Are we ever getting fixes for the discipline issues I flagged?

Which ones? In the last pass on the disciplines I addressed a lot of discipline issues people had brought up like Cleanse The Body being inferior to Blood Bondage or counterspelling being unclear. I probably need to tweak a lot more things, but I'm genuinely not sure what you're talking about here.

-Username17

Okay, I just hadn't looked in a while and you didn't mention doing so.

I'll go reread them now.

Does beast form give any sort of animal senses or other abilities beyond +2 to strength or agility? Do animals like wolves and rats need actual write ups? And does Cleanse the Body for sure not work on the character using the ability?

Minor word-usage error: In the "Caught" section of "Long Chases," you say "effect" when you should say "affect."
Typing error: In the section on Leviathan Spawn, the second last sentence begins " Hey become Leviathan spawn..."

Also, does anyone have good examples of books that really manage to get the "atmosphere" of WoD across in a more specific way than this document has the time and space to? I am finding that I am totally drawn to this game, but I have absolutely zero experience with WoD, except some articles about the Vampire PC game that came out a couple of years ago.

I would like to recommend a number of World of Darkness books, but frankly only if you are getting access to them for free. Because those books have a very bad material to dollars ratio. But reading the opening story in like Tales of Precinct 13 or the What is the WoD? section of the main WoD book is not a bad plan. I mean, it's not a bad plan if you can pick the book up for free and read that section and put it down again.

In general, I suggest watching TV shows like Supernatural or the last season of Angel, because that is free. But you can go far reading things like Hellboy and the Dresden Files.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote: But you can go far reading things like Hellboy and the Dresden Files.

-Username17

YES.

Reading through the Dresden Files struck me as WoD with the EVIL knob turned down a bit. Sure, there are a lot of monsters that prey on humans (Dresden finds out that the number of people who flat-out-disappear from the United States population is close to the same ratio as loss of herd animals to predators in Africa) and bad shit happens, but it's more cheerful and optimistic.

Also, I'm sure, it's funnier or at least more self-aware. I mean, a pair of people wearing black robes and cloaks and hoods show up and Dresden starts making jokes about Nazgul to see if they get it.

I'm a little concerned by the combination of Call of the Lamprey and a lunar power schedule (most likely used by reborn). Having both automagic lunar power recovery and what is essentially a feeding option might be a bit much. I'd love to play a character with that kind of versatility.

If your material chosen for Flesh of Marble is silver, iron, or wood, does hitting supernatural creatures of the appropriate types with your fists etc. deal aggravated damage? Also, can you toss salt at a hurricane created by Victory of Typhon and weaken it?

Quantumboost wrote:If your material chosen for Flesh of Marble is silver, iron, or wood, does hitting supernatural creatures of the appropriate types with your fists etc. deal aggravated damage? Also, can you toss salt at a hurricane created by Victory of Typhon and weaken it?

I'm pretty sure that weather created by Chasing the Storm is completely nonmagical. You use magic to create the weather pattern, but then it just does its thing.

CatharzGodfoot wrote:I'm a little concerned by the combination of Call of the Lamprey and a lunar power schedule (most likely used by reborn). Having both automagic lunar power recovery and what is essentially a feeding option might be a bit much. I'd love to play a character with that kind of versatility.

I would love to see how that worked out in play. It's not something that I can run numbers on, because Call of the Lamprey doesn't do very good damage. I know that it is unlikely to push individual battles into breaking in any meaningful way, but the extra diversity on the resource management side is pretty keen. Even just getting it on a Troglodyte, who can then feast on the long dead or draw power by leaving wounds but no marks on the living is a pretty neat increase in potential recharge options.

But it's something that I can't wargame.

-Username17

Another interesting effect of Call the Lamprey (and to an even greater extent, Theft of Vitae) is that it makes it plausible that a Revenant could actually avoid straining the Masquerade - since they don't *need* to actually eat brains to get power, they don't have the "distinctive kill method" or "requires death of the victim" that seems to be the major driving force behind them being unplayable types.

I'm planning on running aWoD soon, and one of my players had asked about the Path of Conjuring, which can be found here: http://www.patman.org/wod/disciplines/wwpaths.asp . Any comments on if it would be a bad idea to adapt this, and if not, how to do so? It seems pretty damn open to me, which is one of the things I'm worried about, but then, a lot of the later sorceries are kinda crazy.

The first few powers on that list are.... pretty much Object of Envy. To "adapt" that, the player can simply take Trail of Tears up to Advanced (anyone can do it even at character creation, and Water Prison allows them to make simple objects outright, albeit out of existing water). Then one of their goals is to gain that power, which would provide plenty of plot hooks involving Demons (since Ifrit have that ability) and The Hollow Ones (since Trail of Tears is their specialty). In a Power Fantasy game, they could possibly even just have it outright.

"Reverse Conjuration" just sounds like the ability to dispel Astral magic, which anybody can do in aWoD. I... don't actually know if Objects of Envy can be dispelled like that, but it looks like they can, so that's trivial to have.

The last power is "has a minion" and there's all kinds of those powers, just not ones that make them come from *nowhere* (although summoning Ghost or Demon lackeys is vaguely like that).

@ the guy with the link

Talking about the disciplines as they are:

I seriously cannot fathom a "simple" and "featureless" object "with no moving parts" so useful that having it around for less than half a minute is worthwhile - but that cannot simply be placed ahead of time into one's pocket (in some form). Perhaps one exists, but I can't think of it off the top of my head and that means that I'm going to buy some other discipline with more obvious uses.

Level 2 gives you infinite money, which may or may not matter in your game.

Level 3 has no meaningful guidelines - seriously, name for me the threshold for a gun off the top of your head. How about an iMac?

Level four is requires you to spend 2(willpower) + (action) to negate an expenditure by your opponent of (willpower) + (action). There are tactical uses for this power, but not enough (and not common enough) to justify learning a fourth-level sorcery.

Level five also has no guidelines. "A creature" is summoned. What sort of creature? A carp? An elder Khaibit necromancer? The Fringe is confused...

Let's compare it to an existing AWOD discipline: Obtenebration. This may seem like an odd comparison, but it is a choice that a player might really face.

1) Eyes of the night lets you spy on people unnoticed. Shadow play lets you case diversions or escape from crowded places. Yes and Yes.

2) Call the Lamprey kills people (without soaking!) and refreshes your mojo. Solid Darkness can be used to do ranged legerdemain or strangle people who have their backs to a wall. Awesome.

3) PiT gives you teleportation (stand on a skyscraper so that you can see the shadows for miles around). Shadow Body gives you super hiding and walking through walls. These are good things to have. Moreover, they have actual rules.

And that's the problem with the Path of Conjuring stuff. With the exception of level 2, which is either going to be irrelevant or houseruled to death, there is simply no reason to take it over Obtenebration. Or any other discipline in AWoD

If you were to adapt it, you would need to remember a couple of things:

First: any power that gives you an object must be better than sticking the object in your fanny pack when you leave the house. Better enough to justify learning the discipline and then spending something to activate it.

Second, objects are worth stuff to people. If you make the discipline to good, you will be handing your players the "infinite cash" code.

I'm not an experienced game writer by any means, and have never written WoD stuff before, but here goes (without numbers):

Alchemy
it means "the Chemistry" in Arabic! Girls flip for guys who know stuff like that!

Basic Disciplines
Analyze - you learn the chemical makeup of a substance by looking at it. This can be quite complex - especially if you're looking at a biological organism.
I have a Wrench - You have a Wrench! Normally, objects like lighters and Swiss army knives can just be sort of assumed to be around in someone's pocket. Things like socket wrenches, maps of the Vatican, and Lithuanian phrasebooks cannot (unless it fits the character, but I digress). With this passive power, you always have whatever minor object you need. Even if you just went through metal/magic detection. This doesn't work for anything large or complex. All such objects are worn - dog-eared and scratched - and none will sell for more than a quarter or so if a buyer can be found at all.

Advanced Disciplines
Plastic World - One medium sized object (like a door or something) becomes softer by some amount. You can mold it like clay.
Sort of Like Lassie - You create a homunculus - a small, mindless, waxen, roughly human being that can (and must when ordered by you) do basic tasks. They are prone to melting and are mushy enough that fighting is a losing proposition for them. Also, they cease animation with the sunrise. Still, they can fetch things, run for help, and spy. They move oddly quickly and have really horrendous stealth and disguise (as a statue, at least to the unaware) bonuses.

Elder Disciplines
Transitive Relation of Everything - You can make a complex object out of random parts. A small glider out of old computers, for example. It falls apart in a little while.
You Arr a Pirate - By being in the close vicinity of an object that contains information and making a suitable expenditure of power, even if it is closed or otherwise unavailable, you can store that information for later access. The next time that you open a repository of the same variety (book, flash storage device, computer with hard drive), the information appears and you may read/access it (overriding any passwords and such - though encrypted data stays that way).

Right, I'm fairly certain that was terrible, and as previously noted: there are no numbers, but ah well. Criticism would be quite welcome.

The Path of Conjuring is totally broken for the same reason that Mage magick is. At early levels the restrictions keep you from doing anything you want, but don't stop you from calling forth 70 kilograms of plutonium or solid nitrogen and then watching the entire building explode. At higher levels, there are no meaningful guidelines at all.

If you wanted to be a "Conjurer" you'd probably want to be able to do some the following:

• Get followed around by your pet Mirror Goblins like Mr. Gone.
• Banish people to Hell.
• Snap your fingers and pull useful items out.
• Create sumptuous feasts and stuff.
• Teleport

There are disciplines that let you do stuff like that.. For example, you could invest heavily in Mirror Pocket and carry a wide variety of potentially useful tools. I mean, you can get a tire iron or a crowbar into a pair of glasses or a cigarette lighter. Or you could grab PiT like TLF suggested and teleport around.

-Username17

The Lunatic Fringe wrote:I seriously cannot fathom a "simple" and "featureless" object "with no moving parts" so useful that having it around for less than half a minute is worthwhile - but that cannot simply be placed ahead of time into one's pocket (in some form). Perhaps one exists, but I can't think of it off the top of my head and that means that I'm going to buy some other discipline with more obvious uses.

10 foot cube of featureless concrete, located in mid air, directly above that guy's head, right now. Alternatively, a 15 pound chuck of some dangerous element, like polonium or pure sodium.

Now, while I wouldn't do it because the fact that certain powers "go together" is part of the flavor and part of the grounding that the players have to allow them to make sense of actions that happen in the world - I don't think there's any specific game balance problem with making a new sorcerous path that's essentially a "best of" as relates to some other schtick you wanted.

• Basic Disciplines:
• Conjure Images (compare to Distant Reflection or Eyes of Night)
• Conjure Something Dangerous (compare to Pain Drops or Grass Rope)
  Advanced Disciplines:
• Conjure thralls (compare to Reanimate or Nightcry)
• Conjure useful items (compare to Mirror Pocket)
  Elder Disciplines
• Teleport (compare to Parambulum in Tenebris)
• Planar Gateway (compare to Shadowgate or Scorch the Gateway)

Something like that could be balanced. Although every time you introduce stuff like that, you make the world more confusing for players because you weaken the connections that events have to one another.

-Username17

I hadn't considered Mirror Pocket - thanks. I have a feeling that's going to do pretty much what the player wants, anyway. I've still got to get a good hold on which disciplines can do what. I had a good feeling that the idea would be problematic, but I could see some use in it.

How could one imprison a Wraith? Keep its Fetters locked up obviously, but what's to keep it from wandering out at night and causing trouble?

FrankTrollman wrote: I would love to see how that worked out in play. It's not something that I can run numbers on, because Call of the Lamprey doesn't do very good damage. I know that it is unlikely to push individual battles into breaking in any meaningful way, but the extra diversity on the resource management side is pretty keen. Even just getting it on a Troglodyte, who can then feast on the long dead or draw power by leaving wounds but no marks on the living is a pretty neat increase in potential recharge options.

But it's something that I can't wargame.

Fair enough. It jumped out to me more as a way around built in restrictions than something overpowered.

Here's a more aesthetic issue: I don't like that a mi go's bugs can't come out in sunlight. Alcohol (the swarm goes into a drunken stupor) or especially water (wasps hate water!) seem like more appropriate weaknesses. I realize that this would probably kill the 'one type, one weakness' paradigm (you can't just make all leviathans vulnerable to water), but I feel pretty strongly about this.

Then again, if I run it it's my game, and it's a pretty minor change. I don't have to allow three kinds of prometheans either.

Orion wrote:How could one imprison a Wraith? Keep its Fetters locked up obviously, but what's to keep it from wandering out at night and causing trouble?

Wooden cage. Coffins work pretty well.

Catharz wrote:Here's a more aesthetic issue: I don't like that a mi go's bugs can't come out in sunlight. Alcohol (the swarm goes into a drunken stupor) or especially water (wasps hate water!) seem like more appropriate weaknesses. I realize that this would probably kill the 'one type, one weakness' paradigm (you can't just make all leviathans vulnerable to water), but I feel pretty strongly about this.

Well, as you've noted - Deep Ones can't be vulnerable to water. It would cause a paradox wave to swallow the sun. About the best I could do as far as that goes is to swap Lycanthropes and Leviathan Alcohol for Sunlight. Do you strongly feel that's a better assignment?

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:Well, as you've noted - Deep Ones can't be vulnerable to water. It would cause a paradox wave to swallow the sun. About the best I could do as far as that goes is to swap Lycanthropes and Leviathan Alcohol for Sunlight. Do you strongly feel that's a better assignment?

-Username17

No, I don't. Ever since Bigby Wolf drowned his sorrows with booze in a small cabin in the woods, I can't help but think that alcohol is the perfect weakness for lycanthropes, and refuge for those who don't want to transform. Soaking in a tub when the full moon rises just doesn't have the same appeal.

Sunlight is probably the best compromise. I was thinking that you could do some kind of shuffle where prometheans become water vulnerable, but nothing really makes as much sense for sunlight vulnerability as vampires and leviathans.

As another aesthetic mi go issue, have you considered putting them on a feeding schedule? Or is that (especially when combined with the sunlight weakness) too vampiric?


Oh, and Tongue of the Serpent needs associated attributes & skills. Maybe a brief description of how poisons work could be useful in Tongue of the Serpent.