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White Wolf's World of Darkness

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Dream Logic said:
Seems a running problem is a lot of the time it seems like people forget you are supposed to be able to maintain something akin to a regular human morality and or mindset even while dealing with your species quirks.
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I mean, not necessarily - Sin-Eaters, for example, lose the ability to feel instinctive guilt over killing other people, to the point where the closest they have to "thou shalt not kill" is a relatively high-Morality sin about not killing people by accident, as opposed to on purpose. There's some interesting stuff in the setting fluff on how that affects different Sin-Eaters to different degrees, provoking all sorts of responses and setting up creepy moments where mortal allies suddenly realize that this perfectly nice, reasonable guy they know just shot someone in the face and there's just... nothing in his eyes, none of the emotional responses that are supposed to be there. He just looks faintly aggrieved.

You can make all sorts of neat stuff out of characters whose supernatural involvement causes their sense of morality and personal values to drift away from cultural standards.

The problem with Zombie: the Coil is that Carnes have no means of survival without either attacking and slowly torture-murdering people in back alleys or getting a contact in human trafficking so they can have people delivered to their house for the aforementioned slow torture-murder. Worse, the more interesting factions, the ones who get into exploring the metaphysics of being a Zombie or engage in Centimanus-esque biomodding as a way of rejecting the idea that they should have to keep their original shape and physical limitations? They all have to feed even more often, because their studies eat up the mana-equivalent that can only be restored by consuming the flesh of the living.

The farther you move from "dude who doesn't need sleep and can take more bullets than normal before dropping", the more unspeakable crimes against humanity you have to commit on a regular basis - which might make sense if we were going for a "Not-Human Are Bad, GRAAAR!" moral, but then why is the game even bothering to put them in the playable faction part instead of just having them be enemies? In fact, why is the game demanding that 90% of players commit combined cannibalism, torture, and murder every few days if that's the case?
 
The Laurent said:
Again, this sounds like an argument until you actually say it aloud in front of someone you love and care for, in moderate context.
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I'm sure soldiers, who kill people for a living, have loved ones, and occasionally mention that they're soldiers and that this is the sort of profession that is heavily linked to making holes in living people. I'm pretty sure both the soldiers and their relatives ones commonly think that this is justified (e.g. "But I kill them and not us!").
People are good at making and accepting arguments in situations like that.
 
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vicky_molokh said:
I'm sure soldiers, who kill people for a living, have loved ones, and occasionally mention that they're soldiers and that this is the sort of profession that is heavily linked to making holes in living people. I'm pretty sure both the soldiers and their relatives ones commonly think that this is justified (e.g. "But I kill them and not us!").
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I'm pretty certain that if one of these guys moved in next to you, you'd have a different tune > : V

Seriously, comparing "I torture people to death as slowly as possible while I eat them" to "I protect my country" is pretty insulting to soldiers, unless you think, like "Baby-killers" is a serious face apt description for every soldier.
 
vicky_molokh said:
I'm sure soldiers, who kill people for a living, have loved ones, and occasionally mention that they're soldiers and that this is the sort of profession that is heavily linked to making holes in living people. I'm pretty sure both the soldiers and their relatives ones commonly think that this is justified (e.g. "But I kill them and not us!").
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You're not actually following along.

Explain the logic to a loved one whose opinion you respect: (This is partially paraphrased, and partially direct quotes)

"So we were talking about a game where the zombie characters have to slowly kill and torture people to death and eat their flesh, and I said that it wasn't necessarily a problem, either morally or as far as playing them goes. You just have to accept that you're more valuable than people, and remember you could always kill a ton of people at once to stock up on magic points.

Honestly, I think a lot of people fail to understand how flexible the normal human mindset and morality actually is. The people responsible for making the beef that goes into your hamburgers don't love their pets any less."

Like, say this out loud. In front of multiple people. Who have an opinion of you that is positive and respect you as a decent and friendly human being.

The trick is that in saying it out loud, you realize 'Holy shit.'

Edit: Also what Akuz said.
 
hyzmarca said:
But yeah, to be a Grande you pretty much have to accept that your existence is just more valuable than a living human's. The rules, however, don't give any cap to the size of your Viscera pool, unlike vampires and their blood pool. This means that you don't have to feed regularly, so long as you gorge yourself every now and then. Vampires who drink more than their blood pool max waste the extra. Zombies can keep eating, and eating and eating, without wasting anything.
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The Laurent said:
You're not really making much of an argument for it?
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I'm with @The Laurent here. Vampire: the Requiem already had the idea that your character eventually choosing to commit suicide could be a perfectly reasonable, moral response to the vampiric condition. Zombie: the Coil amps it up to the point where you can't really excuse the Grandes' choice to keep existing anymore - they're all the equivalent of Humanity 3 or lower and place no value on human life or dignity, to the point where...

Well, let me put it this way - I took a little peek at the PDF just now, and one of the factions that does take the Grandes' diet into account opens with a description of semi-sedated, restrained humans being wheeled in so that a group of Zombie businessmen can devour them, complete with mentions of how they've had all the hair on their bodies shaved off for an optimal feeding experience. That's some Titus Andronicus shit, and making comparisons to how people who work in slaughterhouses can still love their pets doesn't work in this scenario. Hell, even if we don't use this particularly fucked-up example, it still doesn't work, because you can't seriously argue that roleplaying as H. H. Holmes is something that should be baked into the fabric of a game.

Again, the issue is that Grandes only get any benefit from the meal as long as they are tearing flesh off of a living, breathing person, and sedatives taint the meat. Essentially, there's no way for them to feed "humanely", so every single one of them will have to be either clinically delusional or completely inured to the idea of tearing strips of flesh off an innocent person while they beg and plead for mercy. Does that sound like a good narrative idea to you?
 
GardenerBriareus said:
I'm with @The Laurent here. Vampire: the Requiem already had the idea that your character eventually choosing to commit suicide could be a perfectly reasonable, moral response to the vampiric condition. Zombie: the Coil amps it up to the point where you can't really excuse the Grandes' choice to keep existing anymore - they're all the equivalent of Humanity 3 or lower and place no value on human life or dignity, to the point where...

Well, let me put it this way - I took a little peek at the PDF just now, and one of the factions that does take the Grandes' diet into account opens with a description of semi-sedated, restrained humans being wheeled in so that a group of Zombie businessmen can devour them, complete with mentions of how they've had all the hair on their bodies shaved off for an optimal feeding experience. That's some Titus Andronicus shit, and making comparisons to how people who work in slaughterhouses can still love their pets doesn't work in this scenario. Hell, even if we don't use this particularly fucked-up example, it still doesn't work, because you can't seriously argue that roleplaying as H. H. Holmes is something that should be baked into the fabric of a game.

Again, the issue is that Grandes only get any benefit from the meal as long as they are tearing flesh off of a living, breathing person, and sedatives taint the meat. Essentially, there's no way for them to feed "humanely", so every single one of them will have to be either clinically delusional or completely inured to the idea of tearing strips of flesh off an innocent person while they beg and plead for mercy. Does that sound like a good narrative idea to you?
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Also, on a more practical edge, I'm pretty sure 'I sucked your blood' heals faster than 'I tore off your arm and ate it.'

So, even if you eschew feeding primarily on animals, you can have prolonged (unhealthy, sure) interaction with humans as a vampire that allows for feeding as well.
 
I'd like to amend my earlier comments to a pc must be able to exist within society.

I like geists and how they are able, even encouraged to be a bit cold and callous and even when they aren't it's almost intellectual rather then instinctive.

Also like how vampire rewards keeping humanity as a way to stay away from the beast and that most alternate moralities let you function in society even if how and why is different( also path of night is fun when people don't become sadist about it).

The thing with coil is I'd either adjust the setting so human eating isn't as bad or probably make it so you need to be cannibals but the longer te corpse was dead the less mana it gives. If you are another zombie? More mana. Make it an unpleasant reality and help make the science guys less evil about it(I'm sinning now so we might live without sin. Y'know the cannibalizing people stuff, scientist zombie isn't going to assume your religious views, he's cool like that).
 
AKuz said:
I'm pretty certain that if one of these guys moved in next to you, you'd have a different tune > : V

Seriously, comparing "I torture people to death as slowly as possible while I eat them" to "I protect my country" is pretty insulting to soldiers, unless you think, like "Baby-killers" is a serious face apt description for every soldier.
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Well, not "to eat them and save myself" (in our world). More like "torture him because there is a chance that some minor benefit may be gained from it" or "torture him because he seems to be an enemy journalist", or (if we talk cops/SWAT-equivalents instead of soldiers, in 2014) "torture him because he doesn't support the current president". And I fully realize that things like that keep happening, including the times when they're done by people on 'my' side, on my behalf. Of course I more often hear (and remember!) when the enemy side is doing it, but I'm not stupid and I understand that both sides aren't shiny paladins. And I greet them by shaking their hands, and pay both taxes and charity to help them out. Because turns out that once it's 'us vs. them', in practice I'm no longer the pacifist I used to be two-three years ago, even though I still wish for a demilitarized world in theory. And I'm not the only one engaging in such flexibility. And I think a family of a zombie with "or else I will literally die, this time forever" hanging over the zombie's head will be even more flexible.

Does it psychologically hurt to discard ideals and accept a Humanity drop? Yes, it does. But it won't hurt enough to prevent people from accepting the drop. At least nowhere near for everyone. In fact, IIRC stories of people keeping a zombie family member 'alive' (undead) seem to be a part of zombie fiction, so it's not like it's out-of-theme.
 
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vicky_molokh said:
Well, not "to eat them and save myself" (in our world). More like "torture him because there is a chance that some minor benefit may be gained from it" or "torture him because he seems to be an enemy journalist", or (if we talk cops/SWAT-equivalents instead of soldiers, in 2014) "torture him because he doesn't support the current president". And I fully realize that things like that keep happening, including the times when they're done by people on 'my' side, on my behalf. Of course I more often hear (and remember!) when the enemy side is doing it, but I'm not stupid and I understand that both sides aren't shiny paladins. And I greet them by shaking their hands, and pay both taxes and charity to help them out. Because turns out that once it's 'us vs. them', in practice I'm no longer the pacifist I used to be two-three years ago, even though I still wish for a demilitarized world in theory. And I'm not the only one engaging in such flexibility. And I think a family of a zombie with "or else I will literally die, this time forever" hanging over the zombie's head will be even more flexible.

Does it psychologically hurt to discard ideals and accept a Humanity drop? Yes, it does. But it won't hurt enough to prevent people from accepting the drop. At least nowhere near for everyone.
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No, I really doubt it. Because the way it's framed doesn't allow for the nice self-justification that Vampire has baked into it. Where you could potentially go years without murdering a human, even if you're draining people's blood and spreading overall misery.

A vampire could tell their family, genuinely, that they haven't killed anyone and ultimately the blood comes back and they'll even eat animals if that makes things better...and, better yet, not be lying.

Vampires can also have blood dolls, which is something a zombie's nature makes impossible.

It's just bad Roleplaying set up.
 
ManusDomine said:
I find Dark Sector so extraordinarily boring that I cannot force my eyes open during it.
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Hey, Dark Sector wasn't that bad. Sure, the poor thing felt like the designers wrote up the beginning and end, then lost all of their notes and had to assemble the middle portions via Scanners-style early morning writing binges, but it felt like a legitimate story was desperately struggling to escape what I was playing.

Hell, the idea of a freakish viral contagion that slowly turns you into a lumbering, calcified horror driven mad by the pain of your transformation happening in an oppressive Eastern European micronation, with a mixture of classified Soviet paranormal experimentation and strange antediluvian things waiting in the deep sprinkled on top, could have made for a damn good game, and Dark Sector's game mechanics do enough to shore up the shoddy execution of its plot that I feel it's worth playing.
 
For zombie I could see it working if the Grandes could eat animals for lesser gain. You're still going to have people flip out when you start eating live mice by the dozen or whatever you get your hands on. Make it like some of the other splats where you have the moral ways of getting resources that take longer and the immoral ones that get you nice and full fast. Jackals meanwhile you stick to needing human corpses because animal corpses are rather simple to get. Leaves room for sniping between the two over the superiority of their methods of feeding.
 
The Laurent said:
No, I really doubt it. Because the way it's framed doesn't allow for the nice self-justification that Vampire has baked into it. Where you could potentially go years without murdering a human, even if you're draining people's blood and spreading overall misery.

A vampire could tell their family, genuinely, that they haven't killed anyone and ultimately the blood comes back and they'll even eat animals if that makes things better...and, better yet, not be lying.

Vampires can also have blood dolls, which is something a zombie's nature makes impossible.

It's just bad Roleplaying set up.
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The thing is, that's really not a justification. That's just having a medical condition that requires regular blood transfusions. I mean, it's like saying that anemics and hemophiliacs are evil because they require blood transfusions. At that point, there is really no moral dimension to vampire feeding at all, merely logistical, and the Masquerade is a pointless endeavor that serves only to prevent Wealth 10 Elders from getting slammed with multiple anti-trust lawsuits.


And there's no point in moping about having a severe but ultimately manageable medical condition that gives you immortality and superpowers. Which is why the Lestat-inspired I'm-a-rock-star-and-I-do-what-I-want Sabbat game has appeal.

The fact of the matter is that people are complex. Human beings are not walking 10-point morality scales. And there is nothing wrong with playing a character who has strong moral standards, but is nevertheless willing to murder people who are outside his monkeysphere.



Where Zombie fails miserably is in the logistics, since the number of murders that they have to commit are absurdly high. I mean, absurdly so. There is no way that stuff like that could be covered up, especially with a zombie population above the single digits. But the need to kill in order to survive, in and of itself, is not so much of a problem. It's the sort of thing that leads to complex moral justifications.
 
hyzmarca said:
The thing is, that's really not a justification. That's just having a medical condition that requires regular blood transfusions. I mean, it's like saying that anemics and hemophiliacs are evil because they require blood transfusions. At that point, there is really no moral dimension to vampire feeding at all, merely logistical, and the Masquerade is a pointless endeavor that serves only to prevent Wealth 10 Elders from getting slammed with multiple anti-trust lawsuits.


And there's no point in moping about having a severe but ultimately manageable medical condition that gives you immortality and superpowers. Which is why the Lestat-inspired I'm-a-rock-star-and-I-do-what-I-want Sabbat game has appeal.

The fact of the matter is that people are complex. Human beings are not walking 10-point morality scales. And there is nothing wrong with playing a character who has strong moral standards, but is nevertheless willing to murder people who are outside his monkeysphere.



Where Zombie fails miserably is in the logistics, since the number of murders that they have to commit are absurdly high. I mean, absurdly so. There is no way that stuff like that could be covered up, especially with a zombie population above the single digits. But the need to kill in order to survive, in and of itself, is not so much of a problem. It's the sort of thing that leads to complex moral justifications.
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Here's the thing, he can't actually keep it up, and neither can she. Like, you don't seem to understand vampires at all, nor even the mechanics involved. All it takes is a vampire scared and furious and hungry and suddenly they rip someone apart who they might have normally fed nicely on. And the amount of blood they take is often enough to cause short-term problems for the human, in addition to the often questionably consensual nature of what they're doing.

It's not really ultimately manageable: it's manageable in the short term if nothing goes wrong, and unmanageable except by becoming rather horrible in the medium and long-term, all that changes being the degree.

And even the sort of scenarios I'm putting up, at their best, are impossibly vulnerable and feather-light, the kind of thing that all it takes is one other vampire being an asshole and suddenly people are dying, your system is falling apart, and you're probably not sticking to your rules.

Vampire existence can be safe and steady for short periods of time, but the literal mechanics, let alone the thematics, gaurentee that there's no such thing as long-term promise.

You also seem to consistently, like, downplay everything about vampires, including the fact that most of them die earlier than they would as humans, because it turns out that being a predator among a society of angry predators where fire and the sun burn you and if you get too pissed you go crazy is, you know, hard.
 
The Laurent said:
Here's the thing, he can't actually keep it up, and neither can she. Like, you don't seem to understand vampires at all, nor even the mechanics involved. All it takes is a vampire scared and furious and hungry and suddenly they rip someone apart who they might have normally fed nicely on. And the amount of blood they take is often enough to cause short-term problems for the human, in addition to the often questionably consensual nature of what they're doing.
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If you're worried about frenzying during feeding, or simply drinking too much, then the simple solution is to not be in the same room as the person you're drinking from. Use a very long straw. Or, you know, hire a phlebotomist to take the blood. Then they both leave and by the time you go in the room there's just the blood waiting for you in a convenient sports bottle.

It is a logistical issue.

If you're frenzing in other circumstances then someone is probably trying to kill you, and that's a whole other kettle of fish.
You also seem to consistently, like, downplay everything about vampires, including the fact that most of them die earlier than they would as humans, because it turns out that being a predator among a society of angry predators where fire and the sun burn you and if you get too pissed you go crazy is, you know, hard.
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That's less a problem with vampirism itself and more a problem with existing in a secret society full of assholes and is really an argument for any random neonate to just blow the Masquerade wide open. But it can be mitigated by dropping out of vampire society and moving to bumfuck nowhere, preferably a bumfuck nowhere that doesn't have werewolves.
 
hyzmarca said:
If you're worried about frenzying during feeding, or simply drinking too much, then the simple solution is to not be in the same room as the person you're drinking from. Use a very long straw. Or, you know, hire a phlebotomist to take the blood. Then they both leave and by the time you go in the room there's just the blood waiting for you in a convenient sports bottle.

It is a logistical issue.
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That multiplies the amount of blood you need by something like 8, which means every night you need a full adult human body's worth of blood assuming you never spend Vitae on anything else.
 
hyzmarca said:
The fact of the matter is that people are complex. Human beings are not walking 10-point morality scales. And there is nothing wrong with playing a character who has strong moral standards, but is nevertheless willing to murder people who are outside his monkeysphere.
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@The Laurent already vivisected most of your post, but I'm going to tackle this bit: the problem with Zombie: the Coil is that it demands that every single PC be down with horrible, awful murder, repeated over and over and over and over FOREVER. You seem to have no comprehension of the level of soul-destroying nightmarishness that the Grandes' feeding rules require.

Like, the pro method is to catch runaways - they're not quite as parasite-ridden as longtime hobos, and younger prey are easier to overpower. Then, once they've been restrained, you start by chewing off their fingers, making sure to cauterize the stumps and space out the consumption so the meal doesn't go into shock. You probably also want to gag them, in case somebody hears them screaming for mercy, and lay down a tarp for when the pain and fear makes them void their bowels.

Once you've finished off the fingers, move onto the toes, and then move slowly inward toward the trunk, always making sure to cauterize and space out your consumption. After that, you'll have to fully restrain their neck (fairly easy by now, since they're too traumatized to resist by this point), pop their eyes, and hurriedly slurp out the vitreous fluid from the sockets before it can go bad. Then briskly snap their lower jaw and bite out their tongue, making sure to immediately burn the stump to prevent excess bleeding.

If you're planning to keep them for a bit longer, this is the point where you install the feeding tube and cram some baby formula down there, to help replace whatever blood they've lost. The final harvesting will by necessity be a hurried affair, as you'll be racing to tear open the ribcage and harvest as many organs as you can before their body shuts down. Make sure to spare the heart and lungs for last, of course.


Yeah, you could totally do that on a regular basis and still be a sympathetic character! It's completely reasonable to demand that every single PC take part in that!
 
Maugan Ra said:
... Alien the Breeding?

I find myself morbidly curious. Surely a game with such a title could never be anything other than good, clean, wholesome fun!
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Alien as in xenomorphs
I have a link to the page if anyone would like it
One the parts I like is ideas on how they interact with other world of darkness games
And the chronicle ideas
 
GardenerBriareus said:
@The Laurent already vivisected most of your post, but I'm going to tackle this bit: the problem with Zombie: the Coil is that it demands that every single PC be down with horrible, awful murder, repeated over and over and over and over FOREVER. You seem to have no comprehension of the level of soul-destroying nightmarishness that the Grandes' feeding rules require.

Yeah, you could totally do that on a regular basis and still be a sympathetic character! It's completely reasonable to demand that every single PC take part in that!
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In game, most will probably just go for the brain. It's faster, and is easier bookkeeping.

It's a Return of the Living Dead zombie simulator. And Return of the Living dead is ultimately a comedy. Don't think too much about it. That said, I certain agree that zombie dietary requirements weren't exactly thought through well, and it's obvious that the writers because handwaved that shit in their playtesting.
 
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Dream Logic said:
And I've been reading panopticon quest and was thinking about a hunter variant I was curious how strong is a mid level hunter cell supposed to be? Like I know Mage is higher power and hunters are lower but is that, one vampire kills them all or 'can't beat werewolves in force'
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Depends entirely on that cell's firepower, endowments, and strategy.

Sydonai said:
IIRC you can do this in Masquerade but not in Requiem, in Requiem the blood has to come directly from a living body.
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Not always true as Qiq-ol-mal, the River of Blood, in Underworld is a great source of infinite tasty vitae.
Sure temporarily losing mental capability is bad?
Frenzy here and you'll be trapped gorging yourself for centuries. . .
. . . while not caring about getting dangerously swept downstream.
For just a few:turian: minor:turian: inconveniences you don't have to drink from people.
Vampire? Need infinite blood? Book an Underworld Vacation Today with Generalissimo Tour Company!
Generalissimo Tour Company is not liable for loss of life or soul.
 
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