notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
Presumably, by using Time and Life to buff their capabilities and nerf their enemies.
White Wolf's World of Darkness
Time 3, she's too fast.
Corr 4, kage bunshin no jutsu. (Alternatively, Corr 2/Mind 4/Prime 2/Forces 2, for a version that makes disposable clones that don't try to emulate body function.)
Mind 1 cognitive boosts, Time 2 precog, Forces 4 intangibility... Mages have lots of options. Biggest trick will be making sure you always have the Time 2 up so that you can set up as many of them as you can before roll initiative.
Corr 4, kage bunshin no jutsu. (Alternatively, Corr 2/Mind 4/Prime 2/Forces 2, for a version that makes disposable clones that don't try to emulate body function.)
Mind 1 cognitive boosts, Time 2 precog, Forces 4 intangibility... Mages have lots of options. Biggest trick will be making sure you always have the Time 2 up so that you can set up as many of them as you can before roll initiative.
- Location
- Spain
This is an interpretation designed for technocracy games, and only technocracy games. Because let's be fair, if we attribute all the deeds of the west to a single organization, there is little point in rejecting said organization unless you are some kind of ISIS nutjob. It's much more logical and simple to just work from inside to fix things.
Because really, even if the Technos are slighty sexist, well, they are the people who invented woman rights. And the other guys are more sexist anyway. (Same racism or wharever you care about).
- Pronouns
- They/Them
That was kinda what I was getting at, sorta? *is slightly more awake now.*
Like, if Mage is a "Philosophical Knife Fight", then the way the setting is interpreted, the Traditions have a butter knife and the Technocracy has a Machete and a lot of the content of this thread is explaining how the Tradition fighter actually just watched 'American Ninja' while the Technocracy fighter is a Navy Seal.
Like, making it a legit 'sin' of the Technocracy that they're slightly sexist, it's like. It honestly felt too cut and neat when it was described to me, which is partially the point of the Technocracy in a way, but. It just feels too non-visceral (sexism of the slightly altered report that gives a woman a .95 evaluation instead of a .98 like she deserves, rather than, you know, all the bullshit our culture does with the media and marriage and divorce and rape and everything else, it's this cold-dead-flaw, at least to me, and also doesn't 100% make sense in the context of the Technocracy as a global body whose members might come from societies that are quite a bit more sexist than that and (even if they aren't stoning women in the street because that's against Technocracy Policy 5-A or whatever) would be showing it[2]) and...yeah, I agree with TenFoldShields in that respect.
[2] In that respect, the internationalism and lack of racism (another slightly-cold-dead sort of 'sin' that's apparently 100% gone now) might actually make things worse, because you'd be accepting 'Old Boys' into the club who are more sexist (by degrees at least) than the old boys of America and France and whatever. Like, that'd be an actually interesting thing where the Technocracy sets itself back by being international in some respects, trading some ideals regarded as secondary for their global presence and International cachet.
If these 'trades' just happen to already work with existing biases and actually screw a ton of people over in the short, medium, and possibly long-run. Good. That's called fucking up: organizations do that, as do politicians. It's a non-cold-dead sin/problem, even if it's still open to the "But the Traditions are worse" thing.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Yes. Chaos Theory does.
Do you know anything about the actual history of Chaos Theory? Because actually, if you look at how it was discovered, its entirely bound up in classical physics failing to be able to predict things that it thought it should be able to predict. Lorenz basically came up with it because he found that even tiny differences in atmospheric input would produce huge changes in final conditions.
So accurate long range weather prediction was impossible.
I mean, we could also talk about the super untechnocratic way several people got into it, like Feigenbaum staring at clouds and reading a lot of Goaethe
That's not Chaos theory, its modern science in general. Every branch of modern science requires huge amounts of lab space and general technocratic team building. Biology for instance has become something that requires more and more equipment to properly perform.
You realize that the predictions made of how predictable the world was were far stronger before Chaos theory right? Lorenz wasn't sticking stuff into his computer for his health, he was doing it because he thought that you could derive long range weather predictability from gross modeling of the atmosphere. What he found though was that this was impossible, because even tiny changes will set things in a different direction.
Look at the actual history of Chaos Theory before you talk.
Also, examine what the technocracy actually wants, and whether Chaos Theory gives it to them.
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TenfoldShields
Lounging on a Hoard of Words
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Nah. It's sorta counter to the ethos in general I think of the Union and lends itself too much to racist shit like "well it's all those 'Crats from the [insert region that I dislike here] that are holding things back". I think the problem with seizing on that and saying that the Union lacks the biases it should exhibit is that you're focusing on sex and race, trying to make it blanketly 1:1, when like...
"Racism was not a problem on the Discworld, because -- what with trolls and dwarfs and so on -- speciesism was more interesting. Black and white lived in perfect harmony and ganged up on green."
-Pratchet
Women and LGBT and blacks and minorities of all stripes have been cycled into the Union command structure, especially post '99. They're part of the establishment. They're "In". And the new minority, the new largely disenfranchised group coming up behind them is constructs. Chimera and cyborgs and the Men In Black; the manufactured and the vat-grown. Constructs hit a ceiling in terms of command and posting that natural-born (well "natural") peers don't hit. Constructs get shitty jokes flung their way. Constructs don't get to go to Technocratic!Hogwarts and network and make friends and get on that golden career path. Constructs are deliberately sexualized and commodified and exploited and get it all justified as "well that's what they're for". "They're only good at what we made them to be." "We have to look out for them, if we left them to their own devices who knows what would happen."
And it doesn't help that there are degrees of constructs. Sure the average Union bipedal combat drone is an RC brick with an automatic rifle but the AI general commanding and coordinating it privately chafes against the rigid boundaries that have been imposed on it and dreads the idea that this is all it'll ever be. But mentally they both get lumped together and if they're not it's probably got shades of "well yeah, you're one of the smart ones".
Conditioning is a crutch in this sense. The Union takes it for granted that their soldiers and assets are unquestionably loyal in all respects. That they won't complain and won't really care. But the issue isn't really whether they're loyal to the Union, it's whether or not they feel like the Union's loyal to them. Which is a thornier question that has some uncomfortable answers.
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- Pronouns
- She/Her
I honestly find it kind of interesting that the general protechnocracy consensus on SV, who like revised edition, in which the technocracy is just another tradition with its own view of reality which may not actually fit with that of the sleeper consensus are unwilling to embrace the idea that anything might happen in science that the technocracy is not on board with?
Like, the technocracy's whole idea, as I've always understood it, was to create a universe of reason. One in which everything was knoweable, predictable and controllable. Instead, we've ended up with a universe which is not perfectly knowable, is predictable only in its uncertainty, and thus in which we will always have limited control.
And as long as there's a limit to control and predictability, there's a space for stuff that the technocracy doesn't like. For hope, if you will.
The technocracy embracing classical physics and then it falling apart for them, trying to capture the entire universe into predictable strings and their own hubris leading to something they never wanted is a hell of a story, and a lot better a back story than the technocracy creating chaos theory or quantum mechanics in order to make it hard for Etherites to conduct science without lab equipment.
Like, the technocracy's whole idea, as I've always understood it, was to create a universe of reason. One in which everything was knoweable, predictable and controllable. Instead, we've ended up with a universe which is not perfectly knowable, is predictable only in its uncertainty, and thus in which we will always have limited control.
And as long as there's a limit to control and predictability, there's a space for stuff that the technocracy doesn't like. For hope, if you will.
The technocracy embracing classical physics and then it falling apart for them, trying to capture the entire universe into predictable strings and their own hubris leading to something they never wanted is a hell of a story, and a lot better a back story than the technocracy creating chaos theory or quantum mechanics in order to make it hard for Etherites to conduct science without lab equipment.
From character creation a moros or thyrsus could make themselves intangible. An obrimos or Mastigos can render themselves invisible. An acanthus is an acanthus, nuff said. This only gets better as they increase in understanding of their arcana. Mage is all about controlling the situation. You don't even think about fighting unless you can grasp the upper hand somehow.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Which makes it hard to write, honestly, or at least that'd be one difficulty being faced, in giving them a good challenge. Admittedly, some of the high-level bullshit that Naruto characters can pull goes beyond what (most) Mages can do, but...
A sensible and well-played mage will not get into a combat situation. Bluntly, mages are not intended to be head-to-head fighters - and even if they could out-spec vampires and werewolves via the use of buffing, that's still at the nWoD scale. Which is not, at all, compatible with the Naruto shonen scale.
So against anyone apart from scrub-tier enemies, they're basically kinda fucked.
Mages are info-war gods and incredibly flexible. If they are getting in direct fights with Naruto ninjas, though, they done screwed up big time. Just like an EWACS plane fucked up if it goes head to head against a fighter. And the comparison is roughly appropriate considering the respective skills of the individuals in question.
- Location
- Italy
I actually can see Naruto being an actually interesting crossover for Awakening, provided the Naruto side takes it's cues from the earliest parts of the story, like Zabuza and the Wave bridge arc, before Kishimoto went full DBZ with it.
Edit:
It feels like dissing anyone who plays a combat Mage, an archetype with an entire order to support it and plenty of space in other groups, as someone not "playing well", especially given that one of the character of my NY game was all about using magic and kung fu in her personal style.
Edit:
While I agree that the shonen combat scale is completely out of the scope of the nWoD, I can't really agree with this part.
It feels like dissing anyone who plays a combat Mage, an archetype with an entire order to support it and plenty of space in other groups, as someone not "playing well", especially given that one of the character of my NY game was all about using magic and kung fu in her personal style.
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- Location
- United States
- Pronouns
- He/They
Thing is, this vision is bad and there's a reason the forum has soundly rejected it--it's boring and reduces Mage to something with all the nuance of a silver age comic book written by primitivists. Whether this is authoritial intent or not, its stupid.
Well... yes.
I've always tended to see the core conflict of Mage as something of an allegory for liberal politics. The Technocracy represents authoritarian left--not just in its American form.. It's the Progressives in the US (as well as the neoconservatives, actually, if you think about it) and the idea that giving power to educated experts with the ability to be objective and rational can improve the human condition, its the vanguardists in the radical left, it's whig history and the idea that humanity always moves towards progress and that every culture is fundamentally the same, that everything fits into one grand pattern moving towards the Technocracy's end-state utopia. To them, the values of the Enlightenment are fundamentally correct, and people must conform to them. They're laïcité--simultaneously preserving secular humanism in schools and trying to ban burkhas (Not literally, but in a symbolic sense).
So, no the Technocracy does not have a problem with people based on their skin color, sex, religion, culture, etc. That would be irrational and illiberal. They merely demand that all of these people conform to a basic culture, a culture that was and largely remains written by white European males. For a vision of the Technocracy at its core, look at Singapore--a government sponsored narrative that embraces equality on a shallow level, but does little to nothing to combat institutional discrimination at its core that harms people in more subtle ways, and punishes those people who try to because they're questioning the government narrative. And yes, this culture might change, and as more minorities gradually push their way into the upper ranks of the Technocracy it might start to shift to be more inclusive--maybe it even is right now. But it's a slow process if it even exists at all, it's hard to see, and in the meantime people are being ground under the cogs of conformity every day without any hope that things might change in their lifetime.
Why yes, playing as the Technocracy and supporting an organization that perpetrates the slow, crushing institutional subconscious oppression of billions of people across the globe, where any change you might be able to effect will be a slow, gradual one that will never help solve problems for people right now is uncomfortable. It should be.
The Traditions, on the other hand, reject the idea that there is any one fundamentally correct truth. They're the radical libertarian left (This isn't really the right term but there isn't a more accurate one I can readily think of)--no, those "experts" will never be able to help people outside the societal consensus because they fundamentally buy into their mindset. There's no "objectivity" or "rationality"--everyone is fundamentally affected by their culture they were raised in. The values of the Enlightenment are just as Western, and their imposition just as imperialistic, as anything else to come from the West--it's not some rationally correct set of ideals that everyone has to buy into. It's the young radicals who first raised the idea that, no, homosexuality might not be a mental illness. It's the people who attack the sexism endemic in STEM fields--but also the people who think that makes E=MC^2 a "sexed equation". It's the people who legitimately criticize how Macklemore and Eminem benefit from white privilege in their music sales, but also the people who cross over into saying that white people shouldn't be allowed to rap because it's an act of cultural appropriation.
These people are the core of the Traditions, but not all of it.The Traditions represent the coalitions they build--and, let's face it, the radical left does have a tendency to ally with people who are less than savory because they oppose the general Western consensus. They're people like tankies who called for peace and freedom at home but were willing to support the USSR crushing protestors abroad. They're people like George Galloway who genuinely do good work fighting Islamophobia but cross into genuinely supporting Islamists while doing so. And while these people don't control the traditions--hell, they're probably only a small fraction of them--they're a vocal enough minority that it sometimes seems like, yes, the Traditions tolerate the racists and the sexists and so forth more than the Technocracy does. And the rest of the Traditionalist core is pragmatic to recognize that, as unsavory as some of the people they're working with are, they need their support to win against the Technocratic behemoth. The thing is, in Mage, the Technocracy defining the scientific consensus adds a whole new dimension to this conflict that is really only a fringe thing in real life because science is actually correct. And so people who oppose mainstream science are going to have their place in the Traditions just as other fringe groups that would be called far-right if not for the fact that they oppose the current consensus are in real life. And in real life, the fringe groups that oppose mainstream science tend to be the Western far-right.
In real life, these people have genuine power which means that they're not going to be part of a rebel group. But Mage posits that that is just a facade--that, ultimately, the liberals really are always in control. So the alt-right and their fellows are just as much of a fringe as Islamists or black nationalists or plenty of other fundamentally anti-liberal people in the West that the radical left has worked with in the past--and when you're a part of that fringe, you're a potential ally of the Traditions.
Why yes, playing as the Traditions, where for all that you're fighting for immediate equality, you're tolerating, even working with people who most certainly aren't because they might help topple the current system--and where those people are now the reactionary aristocrats you're familiar with at home instead of, say, a gulf sheik with similar views--is uncomfortable. It should be.
The World of Darkness isn't an idealistic or optimistic setting--there's nobody here who's fighting purely for truth, justice, and equality. What Mage should do is push the sins of both ideological tendencies to the forefront, use fantasy as an allegory to make them all but explicit. And then ask you, when you see just how horrible both sides can be, which one is right.
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Relativity is what caused replaced Ether, though. Without relativity, Newtonian mechanics require ether, and the math doesn't work without it. There is a reason that Ether persisted for so long, after all. Relativity allows the math to work without Ether.
TheLastOne
Person of impeccable tastes (for destruction)
You're getting cause and effect confused here, along with timeline.
Ether was discredited in the Michelson-Morley experiment both to punish the Sons and because Aether left the door open to spiritualism. Relativity was the patch that took when the Sons walked away from the Union without first fixing the damage the Union did.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Given the Technocracy was litterally founded by the British empire, I think it's safe to say they at least once had a problem with race and sex.
They might not have it so much anymore though, but Imperialism was certainly a thing for them.
I also think it's questionable whether the traditions have it completely. Some of them probably do... and some of them would be far more permissive than modern society. Because they're a very diverse group.
They might not have it so much anymore though, but Imperialism was certainly a thing for them.
I also think it's questionable whether the traditions have it completely. Some of them probably do... and some of them would be far more permissive than modern society. Because they're a very diverse group.
- Location
- United States
- Pronouns
- He/They
That's precisely what I'm saying. The Technocracy's social views pretty much always track to "Moderately left-wing in the general Anglosphere's societal consensus"--so of course during the 19th century it was way into white man's burden stuff, for instance.
Likewise, the Traditions always should contain a wildly disparate spread of social views--they're simultaneously hippies and dominionists, social justice activists and reactionaries, and so forth. They're diverse, but their diversity is first and foremost a diversity of ideas--that's the whole point of their postmodernism. Thing is, one shouldn't whitewash the fact that some of those ideas are horrible and that the rest of the Traditions are, to some extent, willing to tolerate them.
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Because the alternative is being "re-educated" by the Technocrats.
- Location
- America
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Totem Spirits, Spirit Hierarchies/Ecologies, Memes, Paradox, and Nephandi from the perspective of a Arete 6 Virtual Adept familiar with theories of Dimensional Science and Primal Utility
The Void Engineers like to say that any possible model exists somewhere as a pocket dimension. These are often brandished to explain why the Traditions believe in supernatural phenomenon. The truth, although Dreamspeakers and Werewolves are loath to admit it, is that the spirits actually came after the beliefs. In fact the spirits came from the beliefs. Examination of so called Spirit hierarchies reveals this (Which is incidentally why the Dreamspeakers resist spirit classification systems).
Studying spirits is basically studying memetic theory from the back end instead of the interface. The most basic of spirits, referred to as Englings by werewolves, are basically the basic axioms (or letters, to use a linguistic analogy) upon which all other spirits are based upon; kinda like single-cell organisms. The more complicated spirits take spirits as basic building blocks and put them together into more complex formulations. To continue with the linguistic analogy, Gafflings would be words, Jagglings would be ideas, and Incarna and Celestines would be whole philosophies and schools of thought. This manifests most obviously in what the Void Engineers refer to as Ensemble Space, and the Traditions the Astral Regions.
Now these ideas manifest in different forms depending upon a person's background and belief systems. Your mind looks at the philosophical ideas and mythologies of other cultures in terms of your own personal experience and cultural biases (Though learning about cultural relativity and philosophy can help you to see things more in line with their culture of origin). Hollywood, for example is a realm largely based upon western cinematic storytelling (although it's actually connected to other narrative realms; likely owing to intersections with other schools of thought, and the origins of many books being movies.)
This all started way back when differing cultures and their ideas met and fought in the ancient world. Eventually one idea would win out, but the other would still exist in the collective consciousness (sometimes even having some support). That other idea was forced to go take a hike, kinda like how colonists often forced native off of their land. The big difference is that ideas can't always just move across a river or mountain, they travel with people.
Since people were still familiar with the ideas, even though they rejected them, the ideas moved shop to the other side of the barrier of reality (known as the Gauntlet). Dragons and other Bygones (themselves manifestations of these differing beliefs and mythology) were forced to flee across this border with them.
Now it's damn hard to kill an idea (as the NWO will tell you). People still thought about the ideas, people still dreamed about the ideas, people still talked about the ideas, some even still believed in them. The metaphysical manifestation of this belief and position in the human consciousness is quintessence, and serves as fuel for both the ideas, and the philosophical grounding they were set in.
Some people could even provide enough belief to force those ideas upon the world around them. Those people were the first mages. The amount to which an idea resembles the reality you impress it upon is the amount to which it won't be rejected.
So, where do Nephandi come in? We'll explain Nephandi in a minute, but first we need to explain Totem spirit contracts.
Ideas are fueled by their support in the collective consciousness (or arguably un-consciousness in the case of some ideas). You can specifically pledge yourself to a particular idea/spirit. All kinds of wonderful abilities await, as long as you pledge your support to the idea/spirit in question.
Tasked with such a proposition, some people choose to pledge themselves to pretty toxic ideas. Their fanaticism and willingness to sacrifice (often very literally) for those beliefs offer up a great amount of support and power to said beliefs. This very power grants the beliefs the ability to fulfill their demands and thus reinforce their belief in said ideas in a bloody cycle.
I decided to write that up as a means of (hopefully) clarifying mage's fuzzy position on how Spirits and spirit worlds fit in with the whole belief effects reality thing.And as an excuse to try my hand at rules hacking/patching
Now on to Totem Spirits and their Spirit Hierarchies in actual mechanical details!
As you might have guessed, I happen to like the spirit sphere. However, I've always felt that the listed benefits for a totem spirit could sometimes be a little lackluster. I made a pact to enter into service with the spirit whose purview is war and all I get isthis lousy t-shirt a few dots in attributes and abilities! This is the spirit who was called Mars by the Romans and Huitzilipochtli by the Aztecs? So I decided to try my hand at something that actually resembled the Totems of the Spirit-Talkers with a little bit of Patron and Rank tossed in ( as opposed to the cross between Allies, Familiar and a few more dots in abilities and attributes that Totem was before).
Totem Spirits and their Hierarchies
Totem spirits are usually important spirits. Why would you pledge your service to a spirit who had little to offer you? When you are pledging a pact to a Totem spirit you are basically entering into their employment so that you can get a position in their command hierarchy and whatever benefits they give to employees. (It's even more formalized like applying for a job if your making a pact with the Residents, Pentex, or other Corporate Spirits1)
Each dot in Totem costs two freebie points (like the device background) and gives you two dots to divide between the Spirit's Power and your Rank in its hierarchy. For every dot you put into the Spirit's Power the Totem Spirit gets two dots to put into the Pillars from Dark Ages Mage. These are to represent the Totem Spirit's purview so that you know what kinds of spirits fall under its command and how important that particular spirit is in related spirit hierarchies. These are NOT for use by the mage. The Totem is his boss, or sometimes even, his boss's boss's boss's boss. The Totem being in charge of an entire spirit hierarchy rarely, if ever has time to meet the mage personally. If the Totem ever graces the mage with his presence, it is probably either that the mage has done something wrong and is high up enough for some serious punishment or the Totem has something really important for the mage to do (Either one isusually almost always bad for the mage in question). For Rank, the chart below shows your spirit underlings by dot. (Misuse of the Totem's spirits will bring down higher authorities like a ton of bricks, you do not want to know what angry war or deception spirits can do to you.):
Examples of what Totem Power creation could look like:
Uncle Sam: 5 Chieftain, 5 Warrior
Crow, the Wise Trickster: 5 Trickster, 5 Wise One
Archangel Gabriel: Gavri-El 5
Thor: Hjaldar 5
Examples of what the final product would look like:
Lieutenant Colonel of Uncle Sam: Totem 4 (8 freebie points)
General of Crow, the Wise Trickster: Totem 5 (10 Freebie points)
Lieutenant of the Archangel Gabriel: Totem 2 (4 freebie points)
Major General of Thor: Totem 3 (6 freebie points)
This has not been play tested and is a work in progress. Please give feedback. Yes it is deliberately designed to be more powerful than the normal Totem.
[1] Cities, Corporations and even entire Nations, owing to the huge effect they have on people's lives, and the position they hold in the public consciousness, have developed Totem spirits and spirit hierarchies of their own. The United States2, New York, and Apple for example have developed Totem spirits representing their "Personalities". (The Glass-Walkers blame/attribute it on Corporate Personhood)
[2] Yes, this does mean that there were Dreamspeakers during WWII whose Totem spirit was Uncle Sam.
Edit: Upon looking over this I realized I left out the bans that the Totem places on its followers. Oops. That's still a work in progress/I'll get to it later.
The Void Engineers like to say that any possible model exists somewhere as a pocket dimension. These are often brandished to explain why the Traditions believe in supernatural phenomenon. The truth, although Dreamspeakers and Werewolves are loath to admit it, is that the spirits actually came after the beliefs. In fact the spirits came from the beliefs. Examination of so called Spirit hierarchies reveals this (Which is incidentally why the Dreamspeakers resist spirit classification systems).
Studying spirits is basically studying memetic theory from the back end instead of the interface. The most basic of spirits, referred to as Englings by werewolves, are basically the basic axioms (or letters, to use a linguistic analogy) upon which all other spirits are based upon; kinda like single-cell organisms. The more complicated spirits take spirits as basic building blocks and put them together into more complex formulations. To continue with the linguistic analogy, Gafflings would be words, Jagglings would be ideas, and Incarna and Celestines would be whole philosophies and schools of thought. This manifests most obviously in what the Void Engineers refer to as Ensemble Space, and the Traditions the Astral Regions.
Now these ideas manifest in different forms depending upon a person's background and belief systems. Your mind looks at the philosophical ideas and mythologies of other cultures in terms of your own personal experience and cultural biases (Though learning about cultural relativity and philosophy can help you to see things more in line with their culture of origin). Hollywood, for example is a realm largely based upon western cinematic storytelling (although it's actually connected to other narrative realms; likely owing to intersections with other schools of thought, and the origins of many books being movies.)
This all started way back when differing cultures and their ideas met and fought in the ancient world. Eventually one idea would win out, but the other would still exist in the collective consciousness (sometimes even having some support). That other idea was forced to go take a hike, kinda like how colonists often forced native off of their land. The big difference is that ideas can't always just move across a river or mountain, they travel with people.
Since people were still familiar with the ideas, even though they rejected them, the ideas moved shop to the other side of the barrier of reality (known as the Gauntlet). Dragons and other Bygones (themselves manifestations of these differing beliefs and mythology) were forced to flee across this border with them.
Now it's damn hard to kill an idea (as the NWO will tell you). People still thought about the ideas, people still dreamed about the ideas, people still talked about the ideas, some even still believed in them. The metaphysical manifestation of this belief and position in the human consciousness is quintessence, and serves as fuel for both the ideas, and the philosophical grounding they were set in.
Some people could even provide enough belief to force those ideas upon the world around them. Those people were the first mages. The amount to which an idea resembles the reality you impress it upon is the amount to which it won't be rejected.
So, where do Nephandi come in? We'll explain Nephandi in a minute, but first we need to explain Totem spirit contracts.
Ideas are fueled by their support in the collective consciousness (or arguably un-consciousness in the case of some ideas). You can specifically pledge yourself to a particular idea/spirit. All kinds of wonderful abilities await, as long as you pledge your support to the idea/spirit in question.
Tasked with such a proposition, some people choose to pledge themselves to pretty toxic ideas. Their fanaticism and willingness to sacrifice (often very literally) for those beliefs offer up a great amount of support and power to said beliefs. This very power grants the beliefs the ability to fulfill their demands and thus reinforce their belief in said ideas in a bloody cycle.
I decided to write that up as a means of (hopefully) clarifying mage's fuzzy position on how Spirits and spirit worlds fit in with the whole belief effects reality thing.
Now on to Totem Spirits and their Spirit Hierarchies in actual mechanical details!
As you might have guessed, I happen to like the spirit sphere. However, I've always felt that the listed benefits for a totem spirit could sometimes be a little lackluster. I made a pact to enter into service with the spirit whose purview is war and all I get is
Totem Spirits and their Hierarchies
Totem spirits are usually important spirits. Why would you pledge your service to a spirit who had little to offer you? When you are pledging a pact to a Totem spirit you are basically entering into their employment so that you can get a position in their command hierarchy and whatever benefits they give to employees. (It's even more formalized like applying for a job if your making a pact with the Residents, Pentex, or other Corporate Spirits1)
Each dot in Totem costs two freebie points (like the device background) and gives you two dots to divide between the Spirit's Power and your Rank in its hierarchy. For every dot you put into the Spirit's Power the Totem Spirit gets two dots to put into the Pillars from Dark Ages Mage. These are to represent the Totem Spirit's purview so that you know what kinds of spirits fall under its command and how important that particular spirit is in related spirit hierarchies. These are NOT for use by the mage. The Totem is his boss, or sometimes even, his boss's boss's boss's boss. The Totem being in charge of an entire spirit hierarchy rarely, if ever has time to meet the mage personally. If the Totem ever graces the mage with his presence, it is probably either that the mage has done something wrong and is high up enough for some serious punishment or the Totem has something really important for the mage to do (Either one is
- You're a Corporal of the Spirit; 3-4 Gafflings and Jagglings
- You're a Lieutenant of the Spirit; 15-30 Gafflings and Jagglings
- You're a Lieutenant Colonel of the Spirit; a whole battalion of Gafflings and Jagglings
- You're a Major General of the Spirit; a whole division of Gafflings and Jagglings
- You're a General of the Spirit; a whole field army of Gafflings and Jagglings
Examples of what Totem Power creation could look like:
Uncle Sam: 5 Chieftain, 5 Warrior
Crow, the Wise Trickster: 5 Trickster, 5 Wise One
Archangel Gabriel: Gavri-El 5
Thor: Hjaldar 5
Examples of what the final product would look like:
Lieutenant Colonel of Uncle Sam: Totem 4 (8 freebie points)
General of Crow, the Wise Trickster: Totem 5 (10 Freebie points)
Lieutenant of the Archangel Gabriel: Totem 2 (4 freebie points)
Major General of Thor: Totem 3 (6 freebie points)
This has not been play tested and is a work in progress. Please give feedback. Yes it is deliberately designed to be more powerful than the normal Totem.
[1] Cities, Corporations and even entire Nations, owing to the huge effect they have on people's lives, and the position they hold in the public consciousness, have developed Totem spirits and spirit hierarchies of their own. The United States2, New York, and Apple for example have developed Totem spirits representing their "Personalities". (The Glass-Walkers blame/attribute it on Corporate Personhood)
[2] Yes, this does mean that there were Dreamspeakers during WWII whose Totem spirit was Uncle Sam.
Edit: Upon looking over this I realized I left out the bans that the Totem places on its followers. Oops. That's still a work in progress/I'll get to it later.
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- Location
- Aurora, Ontario
Well, yeah. They're quite literally every 90s era Right-Wing conspiracy theory that keeps Dale Gribble up at night. They're the secret atheist New World Order that built the lizard men and brainwashed all the sheeple with chemtrails to convince them the world is round.
In contrast, the traditions are the kinds of people who believe in those conspiracy theories.
I think a big part of the broken base in this fandom is because in the 90s, the second group was way more acceptable. Things changed, though, and instead of being interesting scifi protagonists, now they're the douchebags calling you a sjw shill at 3am on reddit for believing that the Holocaust happened or vaccines work.
Quantumboost
Now with 50% more dots in Dimensional Science
- Location
- Ensemble Space
...Wait, aren't the Spirit-Talker Totems their...
...yeahhhhh okay.
That's a major fundamental problem with the current implementation. This Totem Background gives you Sphere-alikes for incredibly cheap. Pillars are actually broader than Spheres; in theory you can accomplish much the same breadth of things with four Pillars as you can with, say, eight Spheres. Wise One has most of Spirit, and a good chunk of Prime and Entropy, along with a few additional bits.
Given that a Background point is considerably cheaper than a Sphere level, and Spheres are the major source of a Mage's capability, that's... an issue. Especially when this doesn't have hard limits like soul-trading does, and doesn't care whether your Arete is 1 or 10. The bans might be able to mitigate that but they'd need to be holyshit huge to actually make this remotely comparable to other Backgrounds.
Basically, there is no reason for any Mage character to not take this Background instead of whatever else, and that's a problem unless you want to play Totemist Adventures where all the players have Sphere Mastery.
FourthWall
May The Sun Never Blind Your Eyes
- Location
- Chiraq
oh my god shut up about the technocracy laurent we got that you don't like them the last hundred fucking times this came up
So, moving on from that: if you were to dream the impossible dream and actually run a crossover Monster Squad in the World of Darkness, which system/book would you use as a baseline? Co'D seems like a decent fit as long as you never run anything other than Quick 'n Dirty Combat, while V20 might be able to get it done on the oWoD side.
So, moving on from that: if you were to dream the impossible dream and actually run a crossover Monster Squad in the World of Darkness, which system/book would you use as a baseline? Co'D seems like a decent fit as long as you never run anything other than Quick 'n Dirty Combat, while V20 might be able to get it done on the oWoD side.
- Location
- America
- Pronouns
- He/Him
To be fair, the pillars belong to the spirit you serve. He's not necessarily going to be taking cues from someone, in his eyes, equivalent to a Jaggling. His Power is more about what kind of spirits are in his employ than about the exact things he's going to be doing for you. But, yeah, it probably could use some tweaking.
Aaron Peori
Rest in Peace
Isn't "Innocents" literally "children versus monsters; the game" for White Wolf?
For nWoD, Vampire, Werewolf and Changeling play fairly nicely together in a sandbox and they're around the same power level and work by similar "pay XP, get one power" mechanics so no one feels screwed over there. Changelings might need a slight nerf to pledge powers to prevent them from just negating all the hard work Vampires put into building their social networks and their influence over mortal society, but that's just a ballparking thing.
Promethean would also work with them if it wasn't for all the mechanics which make it hard for them to play with others. Get rid of Disquiet affecting non-humans, though, and a Promethean could join the party just fine.
Mage (of both ilks) does not play nicely with others. Mages are fuckers who spend XP and get a wide range of freeform powers - and the more powers they already have, the more each extra spend gets them. Do not let Mage PCs into your crossover game. They will ruin all your plots with their lol-infowar powers, and they will make everyone else feel hard done by by their generous freeform powers.
Quantumboost
Now with 50% more dots in Dimensional Science
- Location
- Ensemble Space
Ahhhhhh. Okay. "For every dot you put into the Spirit's Power you get two dots to put into the Pillars from Dark Ages Mage" read to me like it meant "you, the character, have Pillars based on how powerful your Totem Spirit is". That part should probably be made explicit insofar as whose Pillars they are.