TheLastOne
Person of impeccable tastes (for destruction)
Unrelated to Beast.
I really want Genius to be good and work well but...yeah.
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.