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White Wolf's World of Darkness

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Early Free Council I can see as a sort of support network for minor Awakened groups. They're effectively a sort of message board or association, but don't really have as much cohesion as later on. Still democratic, but rarely do anything that merits a vote, and democratic to appease the constituent cults instead of some high ideal. Technically each Awakened has a vote, but practically each subgroup votes as one most of the time. You've got the occasional Libertine who had one of the organizers as his introductory point of contact, but a good 90% or more think of the Council as a bunch of groups who just happen to exchange info instead of a faction unto itself. You've got the beginnings of an Order but it's nowhere near unified yet.
 
Early FC I see like Crowley and Friends but with legit I Cast Fireball magic(k); instead of the Atlantis woo bullshit of nMages (which is still totally a thing in 2e) they use a hodgepodge of Sleeper woo bullshit instead. So you have a core of cultural appropriators who go around looking for "cool" Sleeper occultism, picking up the odd Proximi or Nameless One who rocks an indigenous form of magic(k). They don't believe or hold very dear the orthodox explanation of magic(k), so they look for "authentic" or "ancient" wisdom, untainted by modern Hubris.

So even more so, they're the in-universes version of assholes who are like "Our magic comes from Atlantis and we take 'dox because Tower of Babel? Fuck that noise, let's play Ascension again." :V
 
FourthWall said:
Early FC I see like Crowley and Friends but with legit I Cast Fireball magic(k); instead of the Atlantis woo bullshit of nMages (which is still totally a thing in 2e) they use a hodgepodge of Sleeper woo bullshit instead. So you have a core of cultural appropriators who go around looking for "cool" Sleeper occultism, picking up the odd Proximi or Nameless One who rocks an indigenous form of magic(k). They don't believe or hold very dear the orthodox explanation of magic(k), so they look for "authentic" or "ancient" wisdom, untainted by modern Hubris.

So even more so, they're the in-universes version of assholes who are like "Our magic comes from Atlantis and we take 'dox because Tower of Babel? Fuck that noise, let's play Ascension again." :V
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And that's precisely why the Free Council sucks and literally has no purpose in the game that can't be fulfilled by Nameless Orders.

Because literally all this shit already belongs to the other Orders, so the Free Council has to throw a big conceptual tantrum until everyone else is limited in the kinds of magic they can use so the Free Council has its own special thing. The Mysterium goes into full time "find hidden secrets in Sleeper phenomenon" and there is no reason at all that Crowley couldn't be in the Silver Ladder.

The Free Council demands that the other Orders be reactionary old fogeys to justify its own existence. But its existence isn't worth that - not when you have Nameless Orders to be actually interesting weird cultural sects without being chained to the Free Council's "LOOK AT US, WE'RE THE FACTION FOR PEOPLE WHO LIKED ASCENSION".
 
EarthScorpion said:
And that's precisely why the Free Council sucks and literally has no purpose in the game that can't be fulfilled by Nameless Orders.

Because literally all this shit already belongs to the other Orders, so the Free Council has to throw a big conceptual tantrum until everyone else is limited in the kinds of magic they can use so the Free Council has its own special thing. The Mysterium goes into full time "find hidden secrets in Sleeper phenomenon" and there is no reason at all that Crowley couldn't be in the Silver Ladder.

The Free Council demands that the other Orders be reactionary old fogeys to justify its own existence. But its existence isn't worth that - not when you have Nameless Orders to be actually interesting weird cultural sects without being chained to the Free Council's "LOOK AT US, WE'RE THE FACTION FOR PEOPLE WHO LIKED ASCENSION".
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Who is Crowley, by the way?

Hrm, though it does sorta raise the question of, like. Nameless Orders, how have they been able to stand up/keep from being absorbed/punted into oblivion by the Diamond Order or the Seers?
 
The Laurent said:
Who is Crowley, by the way?

Hrm, though it does sorta raise the question of, like. Nameless Orders, how have they been able to stand up/keep from being absorbed/punted into oblivion by the Diamond Order or the Seers?
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The same might be said for the Free Council. If the Free Council can survive, lots of independent Nameless Orders can survive (as described in Left Hand Path).

Remember, a small Nameless Order is just a cabal. There's no reason that a cabal can't just grow and grow if it's good at recruiting.
 
The Laurent said:
Who is Crowley, by the way?
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o_O Can't tell if serious.

Aleister Crowley - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
10 Unsettling Teachings Of The Eccentric Aleister Crowley - Listverse
10 Facts About the Great Beast Aleister Crowley - Listverse
EarthScorpion said:
The same might be said for the Free Council. If the Free Council can survive, lots of independent Nameless Orders can survive (as described in Left Hand Path).
Remember, a small Nameless Order is just a cabal. There's no reason that a cabal can't just grow and grow if it's good at recruiting.
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I think it's implied that the Diamond Orders would rather deal with a single big-ish group than a bunch of little ones.
So they just lump together all of the vaguely related Nameless Orders, and the ones that stay in contact, and call them "The Free Council".
Despite them possibly not even knowing about that group's existence until then.
 
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EarthScorpion said:
The same might be said for the Free Council. If the Free Council can survive, lots of independent Nameless Orders can survive (as described in Left Hand Path).

Remember, a small Nameless Order is just a cabal. There's no reason that a cabal can't just grow and grow if it's good at recruiting.
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Well, in theory, the Free Council is all of them working together (rather than hanging separately) because on their own they wouldn't have been able to stand up to the heat? I mean, I thought that was the general deal. They decided they were Stronger Together (tm)? Or something like that.

Anyways, I might be able to use that, yes. Hrm.

I wonder how that'd effect the nature and definition of heresy. If you had a bunch of Radical Mystagogues, Radical AA's, and Radical SL's running around on the fringe of their Coventions rather than breaking out/joining together, it'd be an interesting situation in the sense that if you start declaring everyone expelled heretics you're tearing the local Order apart, and yet at the same time their dangerous experiments and willingness to traffic with Nameless mages...hrm!

Sydonai said:
o_O Can't tell is serious.
Aleister Crowley - Bing
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I actually knew who that was in a theoretical sense, though I don't know much about him. But when he said 'Crowley' it made me imagine he was a nWoD iconic character or something.
 
FourthWall said:
Early FC I see like Crowley and Friends but with legit I Cast Fireball magic(k); instead of the Atlantis woo bullshit of nMages (which is still totally a thing in 2e) they use a hodgepodge of Sleeper woo bullshit instead. So you have a core of cultural appropriators who go around looking for "cool" Sleeper occultism, picking up the odd Proximi or Nameless One who rocks an indigenous form of magic(k). They don't believe or hold very dear the orthodox explanation of magic(k), so they look for "authentic" or "ancient" wisdom, untainted by modern Hubris.

So even more so, they're the in-universes version of assholes who are like "Our magic comes from Atlantis and we take 'dox because Tower of Babel? Fuck that noise, let's play Ascension again." :V
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You are aware that in second edition the Atlantis thing is literally just a ritual prop used by the orders to be more powerful and everyone knows it, right?

I mean, that's the most baffling thing about the Free Council in 2e, their refusal to enter the "symbolic cabal" formed by the Diamond Orders and benefit from the ritual roleplaying they have carried on for centuries. That's a lot of power they are giving up for what amounts to simple pride.

Hell, the Silver Ladder actually handed them the place of transgressors and innovators in the "Atlantean" symbolism so they could have carried on as if nothing had changed and still benefit from it. But no, the Free Council it's special and has the monopoly on sleeper occultism even though, as shown in To The Strongest, the Orders grew out of real world religious and mystic movements.

Really, I respect DaveB's work and generally like his stuff, but the Free Council as shown in the 2e corebook is just pointless. it's just seems to be there to pay token respect to modern sensibilities.
 
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Brother Mouse said:
Whats the right way of importing the Apocalypse Tribes into Forsaken 2e?
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Generally its better to convert the WtA Tribes into Lodges than Tribes as the Translation Guide says, they work better as Lodges than Tribes in WtF and it did a good job of converting the Tribes into Lodges.

While the Vampire TG was crappy and a waste (as the majority of the material was common sense stuff any decent player/storyteller familiar with both games could piece together own) both the Werewolf and Mage TGs put some effort into it.

Oh and speaking of Werewolf, I'm nearly done reading W20 Shattered Dreams and it is good. Though they have declared that the book is non-canon since it deals with historical events around the Wars of Rage and how they could have been changed as well as alternative events that could have triggered the Wars. Personally I'm not entirely sure the entire book deserves that label. Certainly the chapter that deals with alt triggers to the War of Rage deserves it but much of the book cleaves to the canon. Even with the two adventures that involve going into the past, it takes the assumption that the group will strive to restore history to what it was rather than trying to improve it.

Though with the first adventure, Into the Past, at times maintaining the status quo can be tragic and horrifying when you stop and think about it as the group is actively ensuring the war and genocide that happened throughout the history of the Changing Breeds. Not to mention ensuring the non-existence of those helping the group travel back in time. The second adventure doesn't quite have that as it's more that the group is restore corrupted memories of those events.
 
EarthScorpion said:
The Free Council demands that the other Orders be reactionary old fogeys to justify its own existence.
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Young idealists have pawed at old fogeys to justify their own existence from dawning of history.
Just be patient and give it a few hundred years.
We'll have a new generations of revolutionary mages who stand against reactionary Free Council.
Just needing to prepare a sufficiently derisive smug laughter ahead of time.

Ravraxas said:
it's just seems to be there to pay token respect to modern sensibilities.
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Playing token respect to modern sensibilities certainly seems like a good recruitment strategy?
 
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Generalissimo said:
Young idealists have pawed at old fogeys to justify their own existence from dawning of history.
Just be patient and give it a few hundred years.
We'll have a new generations of revolutionary mages who stand against reactionary Free Council.
Just needing to prepare a sufficiently derisive smug laughter ahead of time.

Playing token respect to modern sensibilities certainly seems like a good recruitment strategy?
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I dunno, it seems like it wouldn't be that out of line with Mystagogue stuff, though? I mean, there are some people who go on endless tangents on how Lovecraft was right, or that Atlantis is actually in the future or in another dimension or...like, Mystagogues who weren't kicked from their order because of it. So why not have some Mystagogues say something like, "The advancing of technology reveals hidden pieces of the Truth inseminated into reality, something something, Augustine."

A brief summary of the idea (which I read about in a philosophy class) that I just found online: "Using more technical language, Augustine asks his readers to think of the created order as containing divinely embedded causalities that emerge or evolve at a later stage."

Basically, claim that modern technology can have a part of the Truth because Time shenanigans and contignent uber-magic or whatever means that it's not just the past that holds Arcane Secrets that the Mysterium can then mine to learn the truth, and that the unfolding of these new technologies reveals new pieces of an Ancient Truth.
 
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On a much less thoughtful note, I wish they sold a Legacies cheat sheet or something. It'd certainly help city-building or the like, because as it is, Legacies are scattered throughout a ton of different books.

Edit: Also, still trying to think of numbers. Is a Consilia (god I can't spell that word) with 80 members too many for easy play? Too few?
 
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Ravraxas said:
You are aware that in second edition the Atlantis thing is literally just a ritual prop used by the orders to be more powerful and everyone knows it, right?
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Yes, I know that. The joke behind my post was that the FC are the annoying hipsters of the Orders, literally trading one set of ritual props for another while being incredibly smug about it. Thus the colon v face.

Now if only the Five nWoD Character Types thing went to a Sorting Hat ritual prop too, we'd get somewhere :V
 
Generalissimo said:
Playing token respect to modern sensibilities certainly seems like a good recruitment strategy?
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Sure, my problem with the FC isn't that, but that it's only that. Well, and that it doesn't really make much sense overall.

I mean, Mages are almost by definition a bunch of secretive assholes with too much price (and I love them for it). Why would they even consider submitting any of their grievances with other mages to an Assembly made up of all mages in the general vicinity for them to scrutinize and then judge? Because that's what mage "government" it's supposed to be, a court of law meant to resolve disputes.

Leaving aside why doing this with an assembly is a bad idea (like bribes, bias and general corruption introduced by the fact that you can have anyone in an assembly muddying up the general procedures) you have to trust not a small group of people with any secret behind your disputes but ALL MAGES IN THE VICINITY. That right there breaks my suspension of disbelief just by itself.

As for it's focus in innovation... well...

The Laurent said:
I dunno, it seems like it wouldn't be that out of line with Mystagogue stuff, though? I mean, there are some people who go on endless tangents on how Lovecraft was right, or that Atlantis is actually in the future or in another dimension or...like, Mystagogues who weren't kicked from their order because of it. So why not have some Mystagogues say something like, "The advancing of technology reveals hidden pieces of the Truth inseminated into reality, something something, Augustine."

A brief summary of the idea (which I read about in a philosophy class) that I just found online: "Using more technical language, Augustine asks his readers to think of the created order as containing divinely embedded causalities that emerge or evolve at a later stage."

Basically, claim that modern technology can have a part of the Truth because Time shenanigans and contignent uber-magic or whatever means that it's not just the past that holds Arcane Secrets that the Mysterium can then mine to learn the truth, and that the unfolding of these new technologies reveals new pieces of an Ancient Truth.
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That isn't even needed really, maths and numerology have been long associated with magic and the mystical. One could argue that any mathematical construct describing a natural phenomenon is a symbol of that phenomenon due to the Supernal Symbolism of numbers. If numbers are symbols of Truth and they are describing a phenomenon it's stands to reason that they Symbolize that phenomenon.

It's the same with the example the book gives us for more "classical" mystical symbols really. The Tarot may be a recent invention, but the symbols used in it's creation are hardly new.
 
Ravraxas said:
Sure, my problem with the FC isn't that, but that it's only that. Well, and that it doesn't really make much sense overall.

I mean, Mages are almost by definition a bunch of secretive assholes with too much price (and I love them for it). Why would they even consider submitting any of their grievances with other mages to an Assembly made up of all mages in the general vicinity for them to scrutinize and then judge? Because that's what mage "government" it's supposed to be, a court of law meant to resolve disputes.

Leaving aside why doing this with an assembly is a bad idea (like bribes, bias and general corruption introduced by the fact that you can have anyone in an assembly muddying up the general procedures) you have to trust not a small group of people with any secret behind your disputes but ALL MAGES IN THE VICINITY. That right there breaks my suspension of disbelief just by itself.
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I find tangled, useless, dysfunctional Assembly of Mages inherently hilarious.
House of Cards: Mage Edition
Bribes, politicking, bias, lobbying, and general corruption is the appeal!
Has me wanting to see a bit of experimental democracy elsewhere across the World of Darkness.
 
The Laurent said:
Incidentally, what's everyone's opinion about Goetic magic/summoning? Overpowered? Underpowered? Overrated? Underrated?
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In 1e it was overpowered and underrated. In 2e it's balanced and still underrated.

I don't think a lot of people actually use Goetic Summoning, which is a shame 'cause it's awesome, as @EarthScorpion can attest to.

[IMAGO OF RUST AND CRIMSON INTENSIFIES]
 
ManusDomine said:
In 1e it was overpowered and underrated. In 2e it's balanced and still underrated.

I don't think a lot of people actually use Goetic Summoning, which is a shame 'cause it's awesome, as @EarthScorpion can attest to.

[IMAGO OF RUST AND CRIMSON INTENSIFIES]
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Oh. So THAT'S what Taylor was doing. When I first read it I didn't know Mage from a hole in the ground (still don't :p), so I was just like, "Mages can do that? Well, okay." Where are the rules for that laid out? Is Summoner the main place?

And yes, totally trying to figure out stuff for a Quest I might not even do.
 
The Laurent said:
Oh. So THAT'S what Taylor was doing. When I first read it I didn't know Mage from a hole in the ground (still don't :p), so I was just like, "Mages can do that? Well, okay." Where are the rules for that laid out? Is Summoner the main place?

And yes, totally trying to figure out stuff for a Quest I might not even do.
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I think it's in core if I remember correctly.

But yes, Taylor is using a variant of Goetic Summoning (assuming she isn't just some two-bit mortal with a Psychic Merit and EarthScorpion has been trolling us the entire time).
 
The Laurent said:
Oh. So THAT'S what Taylor was doing. When I first read it I didn't know Mage from a hole in the ground (still don't :p), so I was just like, "Mages can do that? Well, okay." Where are the rules for that laid out? Is Summoner the main place?

And yes, totally trying to figure out stuff for a Quest I might not even do.
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The Awakening corebook actually has basic Goetic Summoning (pp. 323-326 for 1e), though Summoners expands on the notion.

(I can hardly wait to try it with my Void Engineer psychic, gonna freak people out so much)
 
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