Unrelated to Beast.

I really want Genius to be good and work well but...yeah:sad:.
So if you were to add "Mad Scientists" into Chronicles of Darkness, maybe as an NPC-only thing since Mad Science can get really nuts really quickly, how would you go about doing it?

As I said last time this came up...

Yeah, if I was making a Mad Scientist game... Well, Mages have access to broad secret wisdom, so Mad Scientists shouldn't. They're not wizards, they don't have the ability to keep pulling out new tricks.

I would instead use something like Skinchangers have, where you have a point buy system you use at the start to build your Pioneer's discovery. So if you're Doctor Jakyll, your discovery, no Discovery because we're making a WoD game and need extra nouns, your Discovery a system of drugs that unlock hidden or alternative aspects of the self, transforming and empowering you. You would develop your Discovery with Innovations, but it would remain a focused thematic technology.

At the same time, while you are a Trailblazer, you sharing your Discovery is stopped or held back by Pitfalls, unique flaws that plague Pioneers that turn the world against their research, burying and destroying their work if let run wild. So Doctor Jakyll's pitfall is that his system of drugs unleashes ultimately self-destructive aspects of self. Mr. Freeze's pitfall is that his work in cryogenics ultimately creates an alien ice world, and adapts people to it - exiling them from ours.

Exiles are the minor attached splat - they're people who have followed a Mad Scientist out of the normal world, and so are plagued by their Pitfall, without the insight or ability to innovate. So if Mr. Freeze saves someones life with his technology, he'll have to be careful and limit it's use, or his subject will become an Exile, who can't live in a world of human warmth anymore. But there's a way to keep yourself from turning into an Exile, you can follow Giovanni Guasconti and repudiate the Mad Scientist who touched your life, becoming his enemy and undermining his work. Becoming a reactionary can save you.

It shouldn't be clear if Mad Scientists are changing reality, accessing some alternative zone, or actually discovering something. Maybe they make their inventions possible, or maybe they were always possible, but some force (the universal unconsciousness?) guides people away from dangerous paths. Their version of Ascension isn't personal, it's called Validation, and it means they've blazed the trail that can be brought it back to mankind, becoming a Prometheus like figure with the fire of knowledge... but they don't get to be the ones to share it with the world. A Validated Pioneer disappears, and then all around the world people start discovering or deducing the principles he's researched.

I wouldn't put in a direct rage system, but a frustrated Pioneer can use his pitfall as a weapon. When Dr. Freeze is stopped from saving his wife, and she's locked forever in an icy sleep, he can rage against the world, and purposefully use his technology as a weapon. Except... except you don't get validated then, or at least it gets a lot harder. You need to bring people into your world to Validate it. When you start using your medical Innovation to make Freeze Rays, well it's safe to say that everyone you touch will become a Giovanni, and work to destroy you and blot your accomplishments from history, to make it as if you never were.

It's not about 'not living to see it.' Like, I would probably have a bit where after being Validated they wander off to some other potential world and get to be awesome pulp heroes, because they won the game and it shouldn't be depressing, just like how you tell yourself your Promethean has a great life if he manages to succeed at his pilgrimage.

It's not about making it a sacrifice, though that's part of it. It's about making it not Mad Science.

You face the Pitfall of your work, and show the issues it introduces can and will be overcome. Mad Science is about going where man shouldn't go and being destroyed. If it's somewhere man can go and not be destroyed it is not Mad Science.

You bring others into your work, and other people also work towards your goals, share your vision, even at personal cost. They don't necessarily have to be cursed into becoming Exiles, though the risk is there, but others pay in blood and sweat to make it happen. The Mad Scientist is a lone genius and hermit who is the only one who understand what he does - he death ends his madness, and nobody truly morns him. If others are a part of the enterprise, it isn't Mad Science.

Using his dark works, the Mad Scientist will prove to the world that it should have recognized his genius. He makes it about him - how dare they deny him what is his. If you walk away, and others can achieve the same thing, if it's not about you... then it is not Mad Science. It's just scientific progress.

Validation makes it not about you. No one will see you as the next Einstein, or even Euler. Other people will go where you have gone. To win, you have to let go.
 
As I said last time this came up...
*applause*

This is honestly brilliant. My only contribution would be the idea of having the "mad science as egotism/solipsism/self-destruction" idea have a hair more mechanical representation.

The simplest option is to make Mad Scientists the equivalent of Mad Mages, or even make them some sort of "inverse Genius" that actively mangle the Validation of Geniuses they encounter as their presence turns intellectual forces inward upon themselves, concentrating their potency while crippling their spread.

I'd compare it to a moment from Fate/Empty Throne, a Bleach/TYPE-MOON fusion story I recently found on SpaceBattles. A failed Magus with a chip on his shoulder manages to snag a Servant and use her abilities to jailbreak his latent Quincy potential, all the way to achieving Vollstandig, and then uses his newfound power to take vengeance on the local Magi in his age group. He pretty thoroughly dominates the ensuing fight, because the sheer level of bullshit Quincies can pull off totally outclasses what even a talented Magus is capable of, even when he fights like an utter meathead and constantly pauses to gloat. He rants about how he's proven himself to be the greatest Magus in Japan - no, in all of Asia!

And the Magi he's currently beating up are honestly confused that he'd think that and are split between pitying him and being vaguely disgusted. Being a Magus isn't about being the Ultimate Megazord Punchmaster who can backhand mountains into orbit; it's about accepting the legacy of your forebears and adding to it before, in time, you pass it down to the next generation of Magi. Sure, Vollstandig Boy is insanely powerful, but none of the power he's gained can be passed on - which makes it a dead end, from a Magus' perspective.

Sure, a Mad Scientist can outdo a Genius by leaps and bounds if you give them the time, but their creations have no value beyond the power they offer; even if you pick it apart down to the molecular level, you won't find a single smidgen of actual innovation, just wires and lights and solder. He can't explain the mechanism of its creation to others, or how it could be repaired, without destroying their minds. The products of Mad Science are like technological mules, incapable of leaving a legacy or adding to the sum of human knowledge.

Another, simpler method is to have the Morality stat be defined by how much you avoid Mad Scientist behavior - you sin against it by doing things like secluding yourself in a laboratory on the edge of town, letting your ego take the wheel in business and/or interpersonal matters, breaking laws and endangering others to further your work, etc., so you get closer to Validation by being an actual scientist and functional member of society, not Dr. Doom.

Still, I definitely like the idea of "winning" by having your ideas become part of the scientific landscape; it has a very 'Beethoven becoming his music' sort of poetic symbolism to it.
 
*applause*

This is honestly brilliant. My only contribution would be the idea of having the "mad science as egotism/solipsism/self-destruction" idea have a hair more mechanical representation.

The simplest option is to make Mad Scientists the equivalent of Mad Mages, or even make them some sort of "inverse Genius" that actively mangle the Validation of Geniuses they encounter as their presence turns intellectual forces inward upon themselves, concentrating their potency while crippling their spread.

I'd compare it to a moment from Fate/Empty Throne, a Bleach/TYPE-MOON fusion story I recently found on SpaceBattles. A failed Magus with a chip on his shoulder manages to snag a Servant and use her abilities to jailbreak his latent Quincy potential, all the way to achieving Vollstandig, and then uses his newfound power to take vengeance on the local Magi in his age group. He pretty thoroughly dominates the ensuing fight, because the sheer level of bullshit Quincies can pull off totally outclasses what even a talented Magus is capable of, even when he fights like an utter meathead and constantly pauses to gloat. He rants about how he's proven himself to be the greatest Magus in Japan - no, in all of Asia!

And the Magi he's currently beating up are honestly confused that he'd think that and are split between pitying him and being vaguely disgusted. Being a Magus isn't about being the Ultimate Megazord Punchmaster who can backhand mountains into orbit; it's about accepting the legacy of your forebears and adding to it before, in time, you pass it down to the next generation of Magi. Sure, Vollstandig Boy is insanely powerful, but none of the power he's gained can be passed on - which makes it a dead end, from a Magus' perspective.

Sure, a Mad Scientist can outdo a Genius by leaps and bounds if you give them the time, but their creations have no value beyond the power they offer; even if you pick it apart down to the molecular level, you won't find a single smidgen of actual innovation, just wires and lights and solder. He can't explain the mechanism of its creation to others, or how it could be repaired, without destroying their minds. The products of Mad Science are like technological mules, incapable of leaving a legacy or adding to the sum of human knowledge.

Another, simpler method is to have the Morality stat be defined by how much you avoid Mad Scientist behavior - you sin against it by doing things like secluding yourself in a laboratory on the edge of town, letting your ego take the wheel in business and/or interpersonal matters, breaking laws and endangering others to further your work, etc., so you get closer to Validation by being an actual scientist and functional member of society, not Dr. Doom.

Still, I definitely like the idea of "winning" by having your ideas become part of the scientific landscape; it has a very 'Beethoven becoming his music' sort of poetic symbolism to it.


I can sort of see it, but I dislike mechanics that lock you into a path. That's why I like the idea of weaponizing your Pitfall. The bigger the things you figure out to do, the more work you're putting into figuring out ways around your Pitfall, or minimizing it, or even finding cures or solutions to it. It's like this ever growing weight on the back of your Pioneer though. All this effort you're putting into making your work safe, or allowing it to be moral.

And then you get pushed to far and snap... and everything is easier. You go full Mister Freeze and make a world of Ice where you don't have to keep fighting it, where the in-game resources you're spending on Inventions or Procedures suddenly are a lot more free, because you aren't using half of them to fight your own Discovery. Instead you suddenly have bonus dice to make it and lowered costs because you're doing things adding flaws to your work like 'it makes the pitfall WORSE' or 'it hurts people around it' or 'it's hostile to people who aren't me' and the like.

I don't want their to be a mechanical difference between a Mad Scientist and a Pioneer. I don't want there to be a way of looking at someone and saying 'one is one and the other is other.' A Pioneer is someone working towards validation. A Mad Scientist is someone working towards SHOWING THEM ALL.

But many people will do some of both, even though the later poisons the former. The moment you make that a system in itself, players will start trying to game it. So I would want that to be the outcome the system as a whole pushes for, rather then a morality subsystem. Hurting people burns bridges, makes more enemies, and has far reaching consequences outside your control, and all of those can inspire new Giovanni to rise up against you.

Like, even your good friend who generally keeps to a higher morality level can just snap one day if someone does the wrong thing. When child services takes his kid because they're heard distressing things, he can take his teleportation technology and start purposefully causing teleportation accident to make Fly Monsters to throw at them to bring his daughter back to him. And that will ruin everything he's worked towards, but it will ruin it because he's hurting people, and hurting people means your chances of causing Giovanni skyrocket, and because he's now a fugitive on the run for attack child services with a band of thugs and hoodlums to take back his daughter. But mechanically he's still the same, outside of the Morality loss.

He always could have done this, it's one of the easiest things he ever could do, and mechanically Pioneer just don't tend to grow a huge amount. They have their Innovation, and they'll get better with it, but it's not going to become bigger or broader over time.

Of course, I generally dislike most morality subsystems, so I'm biased here.
 
Yep.

See, Awakening is a game about gnostic magi, while Ascension is about post-modern reality warpers.

Alas, the lack of a time machine means we can't go back and correct things, but there's one game which better fits in with the name "Mage" and it ain't Ascension.
I have a question about this. Mages in awakening also have the power to warp reality. Hell, they can even ascend as per Imperial mysteries. So they are also reality warpers. So why are they true mages unlike the mages of Ascension? I mean mage/wizard is fundamentally a human who has and can use magic to warp reality.

From wikipedia:

  • Mage (paranormal), a practitioner of magic, the ability to attain objectives or acquire knowledge or wisdom using supernatural means
  • Mage (fantasy), or mage, someone who uses or practices magic derived from supernatural or occult sources

Nothing in MTA is particularly egregious. One need only look at magic civs in DND or villains in DND doing crazy things like trying to destroy the multiverse or Tippyverse for examples of what magic can be used for. So yeah, I'm just curious about this of why you say mages in awakening are true mages and mages in ascension aren't?
 
Last edited:
So yeah, I'm just curious about this of why you say mages in awakening are true mages and mages in ascension aren't?
Awakening Mages use their equivalent of the Purple Paradigm, they do Magic...and that's it.
They can theoretically do anything that their Arcana gives them access to.

Ascension Mages use their own varied Paradigms, including those that use cybernetics instead of casting spells.
They can be and do a lot of things but not something outside the purview of their personal Paradigm, regardless of what Spheres they have access to.
 
Last edited:
I have a question about this. Mages in awakening also have the power to warp reality. Hell, they can even ascend as per Imperial mysteries. So they are also reality warpers. So why are they true mages unlike the mages of Ascension? I mean mage/wizard is fundamentally a human who has and can use magic to warp reality.

From wikipedia:



Nothing in MTA is particularly egregious. One need only look at magic civs in DND or villains in DND doing crazy things like trying to destroy the multiverse or Tippyverse for examples of what magic can be used for. So yeah, I'm just curious about this of why you say mages in awakening are true mages and mages in ascension aren't?
Thematically, Awakening Mages are actually... like, wizards. Ascension Mages are everything from cyberpunk deckers to space opera starship pilots to spirit-mediums to shaolin monks to, yes, occasional actual wizards. All of whom superimpose their genre on reality.

Or put more poignantly, Awakening has wizards who can warp reality... Ascension has reality warpers who occasionally pretend to be wizards.
 
Thematically, Awakening Mages are actually... like, wizards. Ascension Mages are everything from cyberpunk deckers to space opera starship pilots to spirit-mediums to shaolin monks to, yes, occasional actual wizards. All of whom superimpose their genre on reality.

Or put more poignantly, Awakening has wizards who can warp reality... Ascension has reality warpers who occasionally pretend to be wizards.

Which is ultimately why I like the latter more than the former to an extent.
 
I really hope that it's playable this time. The whole idea of Sin-Eaters always really appealed to me, so it'd be great if there was a version with functional rules.
 
What were the issues with the first edition?
Lack of direction mostly. There was some initial issues with editing but most of that got cleared up afterwords.

The game had some solid ideas and lots of cool stuff you could do but no real reason to do any of it. You could easily compare them to low end mages in terms of power and flexibility but their primary antagonists were things that trained mortals could handle. The underworld was cool and thematic but there wasn't any reason to go there unless you raised your power stat real high. You had a ghost riding shotgun in your head who had their own wants and needs but you could just ignore them without consequence. There were no hooks, no reasons to care. That's fine for some groups but it leaves most people lost.
 
What were the issues with the first edition?

The game was literally non functional. They sold me a printed book with rules that were from an earlier draft which referred to things that didn't exist.

Also the game was a confused mess, they don't really cue off a monster archetype, and there's nothing for them to do. Geist felt like an elevator pitch that had never got past the first concept stage.
 
Also the game was a confused mess, they don't really cue off a monster archetype, and there's nothing for them to do.
I think we've had this conversation before, but I didn't get that feeling. The existence of ghosts, abmortals, and other Sin-Eaters gives the party a pretty wide range of things to do, from trying to take over NYC's criminal underworld to joining a secret society that wants to use necromantic geomancy to "resurrect" Detroit to fighting off a roving gang of Sin-Eater serial killers. Then you have things like deathmasks, vanitas, fetters, and mementos, which are essentially high-density inspiration fuel for the DM to make use of.

The lack of a monster archetype is just kind of baffling as an accusation: who cares if they aren't doing a monster archetype? nWerewolf doesn't really follow the conventions for werewolf flicks and is all the stronger for it. Hell, nMage doesn't sync with any monster archetype I can think of, and to my understanding it's one of your favorite lines.

What killed Geist was the fact that its rules didn't work. It's basically the Silent Hill 4: The Room of nWoD, in that sense.
 
Reading through the book, personally I got the impression that the intended social model for Sin-Eaters was basically that of street gangs, and that the main antagonists were supposed to be rival Sin-Eaters, especially of opposing Archetypes and beliefs. Reapers/Advocates vs. Gatekeepers, for example.
 
Hey guys, as some of you know I'm writing a Changeling: the Lost fic here on the forum and I have some questions. Largely regarding 2nd Ed.

You see, I already own all of the 1e Changeling stuff and the previews of 2e (while more mechanically sound than 1 in my opinion) ultimately turned me off lorewise (I don't like the thematic changes to the Seemings for example) and I didn't want to spend money on new Changeling material if I didn't like it (Books are expensive and while I believe in "cannibalizing the things you like and ignore the things you don't" that idea ends when it hits my wallet too hard especially since, again, I own all the 1e books).

Overall, I'm just asking what are the setting and lore changes to Changeling for the sake of adding 2e stuff I like into the fic I'm writing.

Note: I've already incorporated kenning (which was something I was house-ruling anyway) into my story and will probably incorporate more of the Contracts I've seen in previews.
 
First time hearing about this. Well vampire as you play as a monster after all. So it fits? Need more details about why they had this idea of all things.
Sample anarch bruja is a Neo nazi and in the word of the designer " 1/5 of all voters in sweden and in the US are open to such politics so of course it would be amiss of us not to react to that." to quote a vague remembered twitter @Eukie and @open_sketchbook do have more details there including general problems with the main designers behaviour.
 
Sooooo I think this is the right place to ask M:tA questions?

I'm kind of debating restarting a quest thing I did for a bit on akun here. I'm kind of hoping for a little help figuring out a couple of foibles to running Technocrats.

1. Echoes. The PC has Echoes, and I'm a little shaky on exactly how much of an effect echoes can have on the environment. Is it intended to be mostly cosmetic, with only people who really get what Echoes are reacting? And how aware is a character of their own Echoes?

2. Avatar flavors. I feel a little like Questing overlaps with other Avatar types, and planning out a major NPC kind of means I need to nail down an Avatar type to decide how the base of the character is flavored. I want to try and not state openly people's Avatar alignment, but show it through how they do things, so I need to have this planned out, and am just a little confused how Questing fits in.

If this is the wrong place, lemme know, and maybe link to the right place...?
 
Sooooo I think this is the right place to ask M:tA questions?

I'm kind of debating restarting a quest thing I did for a bit on akun here. I'm kind of hoping for a little help figuring out a couple of foibles to running Technocrats.

1. Echoes. The PC has Echoes, and I'm a little shaky on exactly how much of an effect echoes can have on the environment. Is it intended to be mostly cosmetic, with only people who really get what Echoes are reacting? And how aware is a character of their own Echoes?

2. Avatar flavors. I feel a little like Questing overlaps with other Avatar types, and planning out a major NPC kind of means I need to nail down an Avatar type to decide how the base of the character is flavored. I want to try and not state openly people's Avatar alignment, but show it through how they do things, so I need to have this planned out, and am just a little confused how Questing fits in.

If this is the wrong place, lemme know, and maybe link to the right place...?
Mage the Ascension Discussion, Homebrew, Worldbuilding, and Game finding. - Pen & Paper

Ascension stuff was kudzu strangling this thread to death so things related to Mage the Ascension was spun off into it'd own thread. :)
 
Sample anarch bruja is a Neo nazi and in the word of the designer " 1/5 of all voters in sweden and in the US are open to such politics so of course it would be amiss of us not to react to that." to quote a vague remembered twitter @Eukie and @open_sketchbook do have more details there including general problems with the main designers behaviour.

This thread has some analysis I appreciated:



Edit: the one thing I disagree with is the lumping in of Zak Smith with the GamerGate/Nazi crowd. Like, the Jewish artist who runs a D&D game with disabled/trans/minority women, who canned his own show at Escapist after they hired a transphobe, is a Nazi panderer? srsly? He's an asshole in internet arguments, but come the fuck on.
 
Last edited:
Edit: the one thing I disagree with is the lumping in of Zak Smith with the GamerGate/Nazi crowd. Like, the Jewish artist who runs a D&D game with disabled/trans/minority women, who canned his own show at Escapist after they hired a transphobe, is a Nazi panderer? srsly? He's an asshole in internet arguments, but come the fuck on.

I agree that Zak's probably not a Nazi, but let's not pretend that the bolded things were any barrier to his continued harassment of multiple transwomen in the tabletop industry.
 
I agree that Zak's probably not a Nazi, but let's not pretend that the bolded things were any barrier to his continued harassment of multiple transwomen in the tabletop industry.

The thing is, I don't know if he has done that.

Full disclosure: yesterday I didn't know Zak Smith from a hole in the wall. Then today I see someone I follow on twitter, a trans woc involved in the OSR community, retweeting him. I dig around and find that he's apparently involved in this whole WW Nazi nonsense, and that seems bizarre given what I know of my twitter friend. So I ask her what's up, and she says she knows him, and that the claims of bigotry and harassment are horseshit. She links me to this blog detailing the "Zak Wars" (Fair warning, LONG read with lots of links) and after the better part of a day reading through it I'm really not convinced Zak Smith is who everyone is claiming he is. I keep seeing a lot of he said she said, along with multiple instances of queer/trans/disabled women stepping up to defend him only to be ignored or dismissed or even accused of being his "shield"---sometimes by other queer women, but a lot of times by cis men, and that doesn't sit right with me.

Maybe there's stuff I'm missing, but after going through that list there are just too many instances of "Zak Smith harassed and stalked me" being downgraded into "Zak Smith was an asshole in an internet argument" (Which, after reading that huge list, I will 1000% believe) for me to take the narrative at face value. I realize that makes me sound like a conspiracy theorist, but there's just this jarring disconnect between what people are saying he did and what I'm looking at.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top