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White Wolf's World of Darkness

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Hydroplatypus said:
If you're really that worried about someone pepper spraying you, put on a pair of goggles and be done with it. Can't reach your eyes, so it makes you effectively immune to it. If you're in the northern parts of the world you should be able to get ski goggles for like $20 for a cheap pair.
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it shows that you have never been paper gassed, Googles might protect your eyes somewhat but it still gets watery and you can't really breath if it gets to your nose or mouth. And cloth is not good enough to ward that off. I learned that during a protest BTW.

You need full face gas mask same as cops.
 
Dragging this over to a more appropriate thread.

Imrix said:
Isn't WoD outright intended to not be a unified setting? It's explicitly a toolbox, isn't it?
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nWoD is explicitly a toolbox. oWoD has a sort of will-they-won't-they relationship with splat crossovers imx.
vicky_molokh said:
It's an argument for why WoD is animist. Because among the multiple mutually contradictory yet objectively true things, animism is one of them and it's as true as the others. It happens. Even if you're a mage.
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If that was what you wanted to argue, you probably should've done so, rather than cherry-picking WtA and MtAsc then arguing for WtA alone. It's misleading, since it carries the implicit statement that you think MtAsc is animist-and-not-non-animist on its own merits, like Exalted or Werewolf actually are (rather than the being-but-not-being of the Consensus).

Also, what Fenrir and Imrix said. WoD isn't a unified setting any more than Mage and Exalted are. You can interface them fairly easily as things go (read; you can kludge it if need be, and there are helpful bits in various Storyteller's guides) due to the commonalities of Storyteller System, but by default each splatline has its own metaphysics that are presumed to be "how things really work". Animism being Categorically Objectively True falls squarely into Werewolf alone.
 
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Oh, might as well share something. It should be viewed in the context of A) Me trying to create a cool custom merit for a high-level character that I thought would work, at least somewhat well, but might need work and B) In the game/Quest I'm using this in, I've unharnassed Seeming from Kith, so you can now be an Elemental Chimera, Fairest Hunterheart, etc, etc right out of the gate, basically using the best parts of 2e that I like. :p

[?]Neither Fish Nor Fowl
Prerequisites: Wyrd 3, Chimera Kith

Effect: Seeming is an abstraction, and one that you can step beyond, or rather change. Just as a chimera is a beast of many parts, the Changeling with this Merit is a being of many parts. A number of times per day equal to half their Wyrd, rounded down, by concentrating for fifteen minutes--they may go about normal routines, but can't be fighting, doing heavy-duty magic, or anything that would seriously distract them: eating breakfast is okay, writing a symphony isn't--they can change their Seeming. This comes with all relevant Blessings and Curses, but does not provide any advantage towards the purchase of affinity Contracts, being implicitly temporary. The Changeling's appearance changes along with the Seeming, in relatively subtle but definitely noticeable ways.

A/N: Not sure on the restrictions or so on, I just didn't want it to be an automatic thing, but I ALSO didn't want it to be some sort of weird magical ritual, so I was imagining it more as concentrating on changing...and then you do. I'm also quite okay making it so that your Seeming snaps back at the end of the day, or the like. Wasn't sure about that part either.
 
Tasoli said:
it shows that you have never been paper gassed, Googles might protect your eyes somewhat but it still gets watery and you can't really breath if it gets to your nose or mouth. And cloth is not good enough to ward that off. I learned that during a protest BTW.

You need full face gas mask same as cops.
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Mechanically IIRC tazers are just as badass for taking down supers
 
Quantumboost said:
Dragging this over to a more appropriate thread.


nWoD is explicitly a toolbox. oWoD has a sort of will-they-won't-they relationship with splat crossovers imx.

If that was what you wanted to argue, you probably should've done so, rather than cherry-picking WtA and MtAsc then arguing for WtA alone. It's misleading, since it carries the implicit statement that you think MtAsc is animist-and-not-non-animist on its own merits, like Exalted or Werewolf actually are (rather than the being-but-not-being of the Consensus).

Also, what Fenrir and Imrix said. WoD isn't a unified setting any more than Mage and Exalted are. You can interface them fairly easily as things go (read; you can kludge it if need be, and there are helpful bits in various Storyteller's guides) due to the commonalities of Storyteller System, but by default each splatline has its own metaphysics that are presumed to be "how things really work". Animism being Categorically Objectively True falls squarely into Werewolf alone.
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When one of the splats says that all those contradictions are actually true, and part of the way the world works, and and the actions based on their theories work, I think they do have a certain insight into the way the setting is.

To paraphrase:
"Are they true?"
"Yes, all of them."
"What about the lies?"
"Especially the lies."
 
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Yeah, but see, "the world runs on Consensus" is a falsifiable statement that doesn't need to be true, and isn't true by default in most of the other splats.
 
linkhyrule5 said:
Yeah, but see, "the world runs on Consensus" is a falsifiable statement that doesn't need to be true, and isn't true by default in most of the other splats.
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I'm not sure 'falsifiable' is a word that is safe to apply from outside the world to the inside of the world, for a world where contradictions can be true.
 
vicky_molokh said:
When one of the splats says that all those contradictions are actually true, and part of the way the world works, and and the actions based on their theories work, I think they do have a certain insight into the way the setting is.
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"This one splat's metaphysics take priority over the others, even when that makes the other splats petty, stupid, pointless, or all three," is perhaps not the best way to look at a setting.
 
notthepenguins said:
"This one splat's metaphysics take priority over the others, even when that makes the other splats petty, stupid, pointless, or all three," is perhaps not the best way to look at a setting.
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I don't see it as it taking priority. More like the mages' schtick being that they managed to figure out that this is a setting where 'everything is true', even if they in their overconfidence occasionally discard the idea that this means they aren't exclusively in the right either.
 
vicky_molokh said:
I don't see it as it taking priority. More like the mages' schtick being that they managed to figure out that this is a setting where 'everything is true', even if they in their overconfidence occasionally discard the idea that this means they aren't exclusively in the right either.
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Yeah, no, that's just not true.

Vampire is a setting where a broadly Christian cosomology is objectively, factually correct. Adam was the first man, Lilith was the first woman but she rebelled, Eve was the second woman, Adam and Eve begat Cain and Abel, Cain slew Abel and became the first vampire. In the default assumption

Mage is a setting where that's almost certainly not what happened in the original timeline (insofar as such a term even applies to a world which only became a single world when the West spread a global Consensus over the place).

If you declare Mage to be right, Vampire is wrong.
 
EarthScorpion said:
If you declare Mage to be right, Vampire is wrong.
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Not . . . quite.
Unless you declare that the WoD acronym is decoded as WorldS of Darkness (and I don't mean the WoD/CoD dichotomy!), one has answer who is right.
And Mage comes closest to answering "everyone is right, even those who contradict each other . . . especially those who contradict each other". They still occasionally don't quite reach the goal, because mages are overconfident and self-important, and think they already learned the whole truth. Simply put, even mages turned out to be not open-minded enough for the kitchen sink that is WoD.
 
vicky_molokh said:
Not . . . quite.
Unless you declare that the WoD acronym is decoded as WorldS of Darkness (and I don't mean the WoD/CoD dichotomy!), one has answer who is right.
And Mage comes closest to answering "everyone is right, even those who contradict each other . . . especially those who contradict each other". They still occasionally don't quite reach the goal, because mages are overconfident and self-important, and think they already learned the whole truth. Simply put, even mages turned out to be not open-minded enough for the kitchen sink that is WoD.
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Yeah but then for example a Mage transforming a vampire into a human should be as easy as as making a dead person alive again right? Wrong it is one of these pesky Higher power/cosmological constant things that simply require 10 or so sucess on a target number of 9.
Add Vampires know that Cain and Lilith exist, you can meet people that meet them, and depending on how the world ends you are meeting them also. And in Mage history is that what people Believe in, but Cain ignores that and is quite happy to drive you around in a cab.
 
vicky_molokh said:
Not . . . quite.
Unless you declare that the WoD acronym is decoded as WorldS of Darkness (and I don't mean the WoD/CoD dichotomy!), one has answer who is right.
And Mage comes closest to answering "everyone is right, even those who contradict each other . . . especially those who contradict each other". They still occasionally don't quite reach the goal, because mages are overconfident and self-important, and think they already learned the whole truth. Simply put, even mages turned out to be not open-minded enough for the kitchen sink that is WoD.
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You're still not getting it.

oMage is still rampaging in clad in armour of postmodernism, wielding the blade of Derrida and the shield of Foucault, and furiously smiting oVampire's Christian apocrypha setting and oWerewolf's eco-animism. It is telling oVampire and oWerewolf that they are explicitly wrong, and no amount of sophistry and limp-wristed "everyone's right really" will cover that up, because "everyone is right, really" is still a Mageism.

Vampire, for example, says objectively that no, the Paths are wrong and they're how monsters self-justify acting inhumanly without letting the Beast win. If you are on anything other than Humanity, you're a terrible person (effectively Humanity 3 at best). The Tzimisce are sociopathic monsters who pretend to high minded ideals - for all their prattling about transcendence, they're delusional pawns of an ancient god-monster who isn't as dead as they think it is. Cain is real, and the earth was made in around 6000 BC. Vampires can lie and cheat and steal and murder and come up with all their pretty justifications, but in the end it'll all come down to their souls - and their judgement will likely not be kind for any of the monsters of the Jyhad.

Enforcing the Mageisms on top of that completely misses the point and craps over Vampire's themes worse than a seagull with diarrhea.
 
EarthScorpion said:
You're still not getting it.

oMage is still rampaging in clad in armour of postmodernism, wielding the blade of Derrida and the shield of Foucault, and furiously smiting oVampire's Christian apocrypha setting and oWerewolf's eco-animism. It is telling oVampire and oWerewolf that they are explicitly wrong, and no amount of sophistry and limp-wristed "everyone's right really" will cover that up, because "everyone is right, really" is still a Mageism.

Vampire, for example, says objectively that no, the Paths are wrong and they're how monsters self-justify acting inhumanly without letting the Beast win. If you are on anything other than Humanity, you're a terrible person (effectively Humanity 3 at best). The Tzimisce are sociopathic monsters who pretend to high minded ideals - for all their prattling about transcendence, they're delusional pawns of an ancient god-monster who isn't as dead as they think it is. Cain is real, and the earth was made in around 6000 BC. Vampires can lie and cheat and steal and murder and come up with all their pretty justifications, but in the end it'll all come down to their souls - and their judgement will likely not be kind for any of the monsters of the Jyhad.

Enforcing the Mageisms on top of that completely misses the point and craps over Vampire's themes worse than a seagull with diarrhea.
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You seem to be saying that all cases of "everyone is right" are Mage-isms. I say that the Mage Paradigm is a specific subset of "everyone is right", and it just so happens that the mages of WoD have a better insight into the workings of the world than, say, Vampires, Shih or Gypsies. "Everyone is right" is no more inherently mageistic than monotheism is inherently Abrahamic; it just so happens that one is a well-known and dominant example of the other.
 
vicky_molokh said:
You seem to be saying that all cases of "everyone is right" are Mage-isms. I say that the Mage Paradigm is a specific subset of "everyone is right", and it just so happens that the mages of WoD have a better insight into the workings of the world than, say, Vampires, Shih or Gypsies. "Everyone is right" is no more inherently mageistic than monotheism is inherently Abrahamic; it just so happens that one is a well-known and dominant example of the other.
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Okay, let's try again:

Vampire is built on the themes that there is one true answer and that the answer is unpleasant and unpalatable.

Mage is built on the themes that there is no right answer.

These are logically impossible to reconcile and if you say that Mage mythos allows impossible things you are declaring it right.

You can't have your cake and eat it too, Vicky. Either the world is one run by the old testament God or it is not. Either God is omnipotent or he is not.
 
Aaron Peori said:
Okay, let's try again:

Vampire is built on the themes that there is one true answer and that the answer is unpleasant and unpalatable.

Mage is built on the themes that there is no right answer.

These are logically impossible to reconcile and if you say that Mage mythos allows impossible things you are declaring it right.

You can't have your cake and eat it too, Vicky. Either the world is one run by the old testament God or it is not. Either God is omnipotent or he is not.
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If said entity is truly omnipotent, can it create a rock that is so heavy it can't lift it? And if yes, can it lift it? See, omnipotence already demands being an entity that can have a cake and eat it too. (Unless you postulate that such contradictions are stronger than even an allegedly-omnipotent entity's power. In which 'omipotence' becomes just hype.)
 
vicky_molokh said:
If said entity is truly omnipotent, can it create a rock that is so heavy it can't lift it? And if yes, can it lift it? See, omnipotence already demands being an entity that can have a cake and eat it too. (Unless you postulate that such contradictions are stronger than even an allegedly-omnipotent entity's power. In which 'omipotence' becomes just hype.)
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Well, that's an utterly facile and puerile attempt to divert from a discussion of themes with semantic quibbling.

How about you actually engage @Aaron Peori's point vis a vis how a postmodernist relativist setting's axioms are incompatible with a gothic-punk Christian apocryphal setting's, old boy, rather than flail and fail trying to change the topic because you can't counter his point?
 
vicky_molokh said:
If said entity is truly omnipotent, can it create a rock that is so heavy it can't lift it? And if yes, can it lift it? See, omnipotence already demands being an entity that can have a cake and eat it too. (Unless you postulate that such contradictions are stronger than even an allegedly-omnipotent entity's power. In which 'omipotence' becomes just hype.)
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Unless you accept that God is acting in a logical manner because a logical manner is how he is.Thus the question if he can create a square circle. Or as Augustine argued, god can not stop himself from being god , that is the limit to his omnipotence and so he can't act against his own nature of being.
Which thus also gives us the classical church answer on Gods omnipotence.
Yes he could, but he can't as that is not possible in a universe as doing it would make the universe confirm to this new state and so stop it from being unmovable again. The Frame of refference is here breaking down.
 
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Scia said:
Unless you accept that God is acting in a logical manner because a logical manner is how he is.Thus the question if he can create a square circle. Or as Augustine argued, god can not stop himself from being god , that is the limit to his omnipotence and so he can't act against his own nature of being.
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No, don't encourage him. He's trying to change the topic rather than addressing the point. Don't fall for his bait.
 
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