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White Wolf's World of Darkness

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Brother Mouse said:
So. Camarilla motivation to aid the allies is "Hitler is hunting down vampires and capturing them to use their vitae as a conponent in a combat stimulant"

Help me come up with a recipie that soubds vaguely plausible and horrendous.
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Just make it straight Vitae. The recipients become Ghouls. But that's okay. If you think that would require kidnaping too many vampires (and it would), make it Typhon's Brew. Typhon's Brew is created using a one-dot Akhu ritual, which is why Settite ghouls make awesome independent ghouls. The ritual brewing process multiplies vitae put into the beer, you spend one point per gallon and get one point per quart. But it only works for ghouls, vampires who chug it only get a point of vitae per gallon, for some reason.

It's a ritual that makes independent ghouls viable, but is completely useless to vampires unless they like to drink beer.


Generalissimo said:
Technocrat would generally, if grudgingly, accept Progenitor human experiments on kids part of status quo.
Contrast with Aya Brea who could never shrug that off.
Busting down Technocratic facilities isn't conducive with Technocracy membership?
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Neo-Ark aren't Progenitors by any stretch of the imagination. The Progenitors want to improve humanity, but they have a vision of progress, better, faster, stronger, smarter. Neo Ark seeks to create a new humanity that can survive in more sustainable environmental niches that our current complete ruler of the planet and master of technology niche. This generally involves turning people into mindless animals incapable of higher thought.

In short, they're environmentalists.

If I wanted to know who was behind this, I wouldn't start by investigating the Progenitors. I'd start with the Gaian Changing Breeds.
 
hyzmarca said:
Just make it straight Vitae. The recipients become Ghouls. But that's okay. If you think that would require kidnaping too many vampires (and it would), make it Typhon's Brew. Typhon's Brew is created using a one-dot Akhu ritual, which is why Settite ghouls make awesome independent ghouls. The ritual brewing process multiplies vitae put into the beer, you spend one point per gallon and get one point per quart. But it only works for ghouls, vampires who chug it only get a point of vitae per gallon, for some reason.

It's a ritual that makes independent ghouls viable, but is completely useless to vampires unless they like to drink beer.




Neo-Ark aren't Progenitors by any stretch of the imagination. The Progenitors want to improve humanity, but they have a vision of progress, better, faster, stronger, smarter. Neo Ark seeks to create a new humanity that can survive in more sustainable environmental niches that our current complete ruler of the planet and master of technology niche. This generally involves turning people into mindless animals incapable of higher thought.

In short, they're environmentalists.

If I wanted to know who was behind this, I wouldn't start by investigating the Progenitors. I'd start with the Gaian Changing Breeds.
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First off thank you on the Akhu trick, didn't know about that.

Second, I don't think Fera or Gafrou would try that shit unless they were trying to make a surefire way to get kinfolk or revive extinct breeds. That shit also doesn't end well in most scenarios.
 
Oh, just a curious thought. As far as nMage ages go, they can be any age at all, I know that, but how would you guess (this is obviously a general thing) their population curve tends to be? I mean, I assume that there aren't ten year old Mages running around except as a special character/it's a plot point that they're ridiculously young and not mentally developed.

How young *can* Mages be, anyways?

...also, I'm guessing you don't know Hubris until you give a nine year old awesome cosmic powers.
 
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The Laurent said:
Oh, just a curious thought. As far as nMage ages go, they can be any age at all, I know that, but how would you guess (this is obviously a general thing) their population curve tends to be? I mean, I assume that there aren't ten year old Mages running around except as a special character/it's a plot point that they're ridiculously young and not mentally developed.

How young *can* Mages be, anyways?

...also, I'm guessing you don't know Hubris until you give a nine year old awesome cosmic powers.
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Well, at least oMage had some canonical pre-birth Awakenings. For nMage... honestly, I'm OK with that if reincarnation bullshit is involved. Or the mother Awakens and the foetus is dragged to the Supernal with them. Or a Seer immaculately conceived while vision-tripping on Mystery Commands. Basically, it's special snowflake stuff, but I think it has a place in the game - not least because it opens up hilarity like "Guardians watching your child to see if they're the Hieromagus" and "oh shit, my baby was born Awakened with Mystery Commands 5, are they literally the incarnation of an Exarch?".

In a more general case, I actually tend to treat the "age of Awakening" curve as pretty flat, once you've got out of early childhood. As I see it, you certainly need to have established your own identity and sense of self developed to burn "I AM" into the Supernal, so it won't tend to be too young, but once that happens, any age can do it if given the right stimuli. I'm against any kind of "most mages are photogenic teenagers and young adults" stuff, because I like my mages weird, obsessive and more Unknown Armies than Harry Potter. And freaky cults looking for ten year old Mages (oh hai thar Daksha) are fitting for that.
 
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EarthScorpion said:
In a more general case, I actually tend to treat the "age of Awakening" curve as pretty flat, once you've got out of early childhood. As I see it, you certainly need to have established your own identity and sense of self developed to burn "I AM" into the Supernal, so it won't tend to be too young, but once that happens, any age can do it if given the right stimuli. I'm against any kind of "most mages are photogenic teenagers and young adults" stuff, because I like my mages weird, obsessive and more Unknown Armies than Harry Potter. And freaky cults looking for ten year old Mages (oh hai thar Daksha) are fitting for that.
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Wasn't there a pretty young Mage in the Three Shades of Night novel?
And the hint that they had been a Mage for a while already?
 
hyzmarca said:
Just make it straight Vitae. The recipients become Ghouls. But that's okay. If you think that would require kidnaping too many vampires (and it would)
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In the Old World of Darkness Soviet KGB used lab's worth of captured vampires to make a "super soldier" drug.
(in reality all they ended up making were independent ghouls)
To a lesser extent Pentex does it with Anagath F45.6!
Why should the Nazis have a harder time making successful vampire blood farms compared to Pentex or Soviets?
 
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EarthScorpion said:
Well, at least oMage had some canonical pre-birth Awakenings.
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My inclination on oMage awakenings is that formal Awakenings tend to cluster around young adulthood, where your worldviews start becoming more and more set in stone. If you don't Awaken by then, your chances of Awakening via tuition and study start dropping rapidly after that.

The two big spikes are probably when you start hitting your teenage years and creating a drastically different individual identity from who you were as a child and when you get into young adulthood. If your family are mages, you will also tend to awaken earlier, largely because you've been exposed to and are more likely to internalize the attitudes and will needed for magery. But in PQ musings, at least, Damien expects that its successes will awaken around 12-15 (they go into the gifted/talented classes) or after they get the equivalent of a Ph.D plus linear sorcery at ~22 or so (this is more common). The Traditions probably see it similarly, and have similar demographics.

These are engineered Awakenings, of course. Both sides prefer engineered Awakenings because they are safe, reliable, and give you plenty of time to indoctrinate your new wizard with godlike powers into your ideology.

I think that non-engineered Awakenings will tend to be relatively flat because it's not always that your worldview can be broken and you can hold onto the strength of will needed to piece it together and make the world Listen to you. It's just that because Awakening tends to come with some pretty significant, formative incident, mages who awaken young are generally... not the sanest of people. Doubly so because being a mage tends to skew your worldview pretty easily.
 
MJ12 Commando said:
My inclination on oMage awakenings is that formal Awakenings tend to cluster around young adulthood, where your worldviews start becoming more and more set in stone. If you don't Awaken by then, your chances of Awakening via tuition and study start dropping rapidly after that.
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Yeah, I agree that oMage is likely to have a much more "major turning points in life where you challenge existing authorities and form your own beliefs" bent to it. oMage, after all, is you realising that the world is much stranger than you had previously thought and turning your beliefs into a crowbar to get into the loot crate of existence. By contrast, nMage is gnostic and you're going to have to balance the "I am more chained in my beliefs so I'm less likely to Awaken that everything is a Lie as I get older" against the "as I get older I get wiser and the glitches in the Matrix I've seen nag at my mind and young people haven't seen enough".

MJ12 Commando said:
It's just that because Awakening tends to come with some pretty significant, formative incident, mages who awaken young are generally... not the sanest of people.
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Too much Dynamism, clearly.
 
EarthScorpion said:
Yeah, I agree that oMage is likely to have a much more "major turning points in life where you challenge existing authorities and form your own beliefs" bent to it. oMage, after all, is you realising that the world is much stranger than you had previously thought and turning your beliefs into a crowbar to get into the loot crate of existence. By contrast, nMage is gnostic and you're going to have to balance the "I am more chained in my beliefs so I'm less likely to Awaken that everything is a Lie as I get older" against the "as I get older I get wiser and the glitches in the Matrix I've seen nag at my mind and young people haven't seen enough".



Too much Dynamism, clearly.
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That probably throws a wrench in people's traditional evaluation mechanisms. I mean, that twenty year old college student might have been a Mage for three years, and be fully capable of blowing you to Kingdom Come, while the retired greybeard with a Wizard Staff and everything might have just Awakened last year.

And the same for most of the other traditional indications of 'This person is important, listen to them.'

In less modern times, neither gender nor race would actually provide (as they might in Sleeper society) an accurate sorting of, "This person has opinions that matter, this person can be discounted."

...I wonder how many people have made mistakes of that sort, and how badly it ended for them?
 
The Laurent said:
That probably throws a wrench in people's traditional evaluation mechanisms. I mean, that twenty year old college student might have been a Mage for three years, and be fully capable of blowing you to Kingdom Come, while the retired greybeard with a Wizard Staff and everything might have just Awakened last year.

And the same for most of the other traditional indications of 'This person is important, listen to them.'

In less modern times, neither gender nor race would actually provide (as they might in Sleeper society) an accurate sorting of, "This person has opinions that matter, this person can be discounted."

...I wonder how many people have made mistakes of that sort, and how badly it ended for them?
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You ever read Beauty and the Beast? Multiply that by a lot.
 
The Laurent said:
That probably throws a wrench in people's traditional evaluation mechanisms. I mean, that twenty year old college student might have been a Mage for three years, and be fully capable of blowing you to Kingdom Come, while the retired greybeard with a Wizard Staff and everything might have just Awakened last year.

And the same for most of the other traditional indications of 'This person is important, listen to them.'

In less modern times, neither gender nor race would actually provide (as they might in Sleeper society) an accurate sorting of, "This person has opinions that matter, this person can be discounted."

...I wonder how many people have made mistakes of that sort, and how badly it ended for them?
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Experienced or savvy WoD players already know traditional evaluations mechanisms usually mean nothing.
It's often better using a roleplayer's paranoia against them?
 
The Laurent said:
That probably throws a wrench in people's traditional evaluation mechanisms. I mean, that twenty year old college student might have been a Mage for three years, and be fully capable of blowing you to Kingdom Come, while the retired greybeard with a Wizard Staff and everything might have just Awakened last year.

And the same for most of the other traditional indications of 'This person is important, listen to them.'

In less modern times, neither gender nor race would actually provide (as they might in Sleeper society) an accurate sorting of, "This person has opinions that matter, this person can be discounted."

...I wonder how many people have made mistakes of that sort, and how badly it ended for them?
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Well honestly, like, both Trads and 'Crats have canonical access to anti-aging formulae and shit like that. So generally speaking if someone looks old and haggard, especially in the Union, they either can't afford the pretty-pills or don't want to and either way makes them a bit weird. High ranking 'Crats at least are going to look super dignified and sleek and stuff. Silver fox for people who prefer an older style and bishie as hell for people who want to turn back the cock forty or fifty years, high appearance scores all around.

Basically the more someone owns the room/the more out of your league they are the more highly ranked they are. And you can extend this to like "obvious enhancements" and "do they blend in more than the fuckibg wallpaper" where appropriate.

(Trads just age like Naked Snake. :p Scarred up but even Ocelot wants him.

Especially Ocelot.)
 
The Laurent said:
That probably throws a wrench in people's traditional evaluation mechanisms. I mean, that twenty year old college student might have been a Mage for three years, and be fully capable of blowing you to Kingdom Come, while the retired greybeard with a Wizard Staff and everything might have just Awakened last year.
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There's a thing Masquerade I believe had as an in-universe thing; "small man syndrome". Be wary of short vampires, because short vampires are probably going to be older - because olden days people are shorter than modern ones.
 
So what's the most fun paradigm anyone here has played/created for image? I had a lot of fun playing as aneeded alien once, as well as a super hero.
 
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