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White Wolf's World of Darkness

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greensun said:
So what book covers Pentex? I'm thinking of running a game and I want to a antoginist to go with.
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I... Pentex is problematic. It's a great idea was horrible execution. The basic idea, at the beginning of it all, is that humans are shits who will do horrible things as long as they're rewarded for it, and that we're worse shits when we don't have to own responsibility for it... like was corporations. So in an animist universe there should be companies that have actually embraced the whole 'Animist Universe' thing, in the most ugly way imaginable. That's a great idea.

Like, why wouldn't you work with a political corruption spirit to get your way? Everyone else is bribing and networking, you're just getting paid to do what everyone else is already doing. It's not your fault. And sure you're dumping chemicals in the river in return for the pollution spirit killing your father's cancer, but you probably doing that anyways. It's cheaper.

And so on.

Making Pentex this... singular thing, this unique evil... made it weaker. It should be a class of things that happen, rather then a shadowy conspiracy behind it all. It's easier to fight a omnipresent conspiracy, rather then it is to fight a thousand streams of corruption, each separate, each horrible.
 
TheLastOne said:
I... Pentex is problematic. It's a great idea was horrible execution. The basic idea, at the beginning of it all, is that humans are shits who will do horrible things as long as they're rewarded for it, and that we're worse shits when we don't have to own responsibility for it... like was corporations. So in an animist universe there should be companies that have actually embraced the whole 'Animist Universe' thing, in the most ugly way imaginable. That's a great idea.

Like, why wouldn't you work with a political corruption spirit to get your way? Everyone else is bribing and networking, you're just getting paid to do what everyone else is already doing. It's not your fault. And sure you're dumping chemicals in the river in return for the pollution spirit killing your father's cancer, but you probably doing that anyways. It's cheaper.


And so on.

Making Pentex this... singular thing, this unique evil... made it weaker. It should be a class of things that happen, rather then a shadowy conspiracy behind it all. It's easier to fight a omnipresent conspiracy, rather then it is to fight a thousand streams of corruption, each separate, each horrible.
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A major problem with Pentex is it undermines the actual evils of what massive corporate entities do. Instead of focusing on things like the obvious environmental devastation, economic exploitation, corruption in politics, etc, they make into a giant goddamn joke about how my Pentex subsidy brand toaster is going to turn me into a fomori or some mind numbing nonsense like that.

You are absolutely right though that there should have been multiple corporate entities with various degrees of Wyrm corruption, who probably also have issues with each other.
 
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stratigo said:
I thought that thread existed because you needed to exile mj12 and his disciples from the face of this thread
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So MJ12's opponents are being rational, perfect and not being heated or making huge argument posts?

Thats a biased perspective. Azrael below has the right of it. Mage arguments tends to start drowning everything else out and make the whole thread about the mage argument. And said argument can get heated.

Azrael said:
It exists to enable Mage discussion not drowning out everything else because of its tendency to create arguments. Which poster is on which side of that argument is irrelevant.
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Azrael said:
Which is why Mage the Ascension has its own dedicated thread, where your post probably belongs.
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Indeed. It never stops. The wonders of Mage the Ascension, no? Even after all these years. The arguments continue.

Nikkolas said:
So apparently folks like me who just gobble up the lore, read the books and talk about the world and characters on forums like but never actually play the game are prety common?

I always felt kinda weird getting into 40K and now WoD given I don't play traditional games at all.
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Welcome to the club. I'm a 40k fan and a WoD fan but I don't play the games aside from the video games.
 
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stratigo said:
I thought that thread existed because you needed to exile mj12 and his disciples from the face of this thread
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It exists because if you let @FBH and @MJ12 Commando be in the same thread for more than two minutes, they will inevitably spawn an argument about whether or not chaos theory was invented by the Technocracy, which will take up 20 pages and drown out all other arguments. Therefore, we exiled them to a future where @NonSequtur's
will is law and they have to argue about nonsensical paradigm warfare until they find their way back to undo the evil that is NonSequtur.

(Yeah this future contains pretty much nothing tbh, its just a flat plane, thats nonsequtur baby)

and similarly if you let me and mj12 be in the same thread for more than 2 minutes i will inevitably promise to write him a social system and then systematically and successfully procrastinate it for three years while he keeps asking me to write it and i keep procrastinating

get owned emjay
 
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TenfoldShields said:
Awkwardly. Like the God Machine fits into most things besides Demon.
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I feel that too. Like I can see how Mage the Awakening can fit into the other lines. Like for example, vampires remembering things wrong could just be because those things or events used to exist but has been gotten rid of via mage reality rewrite.

Its the God machine that makes me go "wait a minute!".

Like does the God machine fear the exarchs? Does it serve them? Is it beyond the whole platonic reality?

How does it fit?
 
Space Penguin said:
I feel that too. Like I can see how Mage the Awakening can fit into the other lines. Like for example, vampires remembering things wrong could just be because those things or events used to exist but has been gotten rid of via mage reality rewrite.

Its the God machine that makes me go "wait a minute!".

Like does the God machine fear the exarchs? Does it serve them? Is it beyond the whole platonic reality?

How does it fit?
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No idea. I suspect harmonizing the two is left as an exercise for the GM.

Demon Storytellers guide mentions that Angels do periodically use Seers of the Throne though.
 
My headcanon for the various gamelines coexisting is that both the Werewolf Pangea and the Mage Atlantis existed as separate universes (possibly along with the God-Machine's one and any others you need to fit in) [and it was likely the Mages had some way of traveling between them] and when they 'fell' they sort of collapsed into each other, and even though they technically exist within the same universe now, the separate powers interact weirdly and they like to stay away from one another. No one group is 'superior' or supersedes another, they merely coexist as equals in this Fallen World. Of course this means successfully extricating each of these from one another is downright impossible.
 
Space Penguin said:
So that means the God machine is superior to mages and their platonic reality stuff, then?

Does the God Machine not care about all the reality rewrites that have happened?
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Don't know. Maybe it just has angels able to trick mages. I wouldn't be surprised if it caused a couple of those reality rewrites (I don't have a source this is a gut feeling). And you could always write that off as Demons/Angels having metaphysical primacy because it's Demon if need be.
 
Having thought on it for awhile, my explanation would be that the God Machine is the single largest Paradox known to Mages. It deploys strange mockeries of spirits working towards inscrutable and oft nonsensical ends, all the while analyzing and slowly eating away at the fabric of the Fallen World with Covers and Infrastructure. Stigmatics are those touched by the Machine, able to see it because they're now on a similar wavelength of unbeing.

Demons are even worse. They trick mortals into diluting or selling pieces of their very existence, and wield nonsensical laws of reality against their foes. They also go from using tainted Essence to mainlining the abyssal run off of the God Machine. Aether doesn't occur naturally in the Fallen World for the simple reason that it's not native to the Fallen World.

Mages end up on both sides quite frequently, Demons are horrific, but also the less entrenched of the two. A united Consilium could purge their territory of both presences, but they would keep trying to keep crawling back in, and every Mage has their own lives and interests to look after. Things get especially annoying since the Machine's Covers help it counter the innate informational advantage Mages are used to.
To be clear, I like both games. I just reflected on the mechanics of Demon in terms of Mage and realized that Paradox fit disturbingly well. Not quite as malevolent as most, but far reaching, terrifyingly subtle, and seeing Embeds and Exploits as controlled Paradox is relatively simple. The power stat is even how thoroughly entrenched you are in reality.
 
Gamerlord said:
My headcanon for the various gamelines coexisting is that both the Werewolf Pangea and the Mage Atlantis existed as separate universes (possibly along with the God-Machine's one and any others you need to fit in) [and it was likely the Mages had some way of traveling between them] and when they 'fell' they sort of collapsed into each other, and even though they technically exist within the same universe now, the separate powers interact weirdly and they like to stay away from one another. No one group is 'superior' or supersedes another, they merely coexist as equals in this Fallen World. Of course this means successfully extricating each of these from one another is downright impossible.
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So sort of like if Nightvale from Welcome to Nightvale was the entire planet?

The friendly desert community where the sun is hot, the sky is beautiful, and mysterious lights pass overhead while they all pretend to sleep?
 
Gamerlord said:
My headcanon for the various gamelines coexisting is that both the Werewolf Pangea and the Mage Atlantis existed as separate universes (possibly along with the God-Machine's one and any others you need to fit in) [and it was likely the Mages had some way of traveling between them] and when they 'fell' they sort of collapsed into each other, and even though they technically exist within the same universe now, the separate powers interact weirdly and they like to stay away from one another. No one group is 'superior' or supersedes another, they merely coexist as equals in this Fallen World. Of course this means successfully extricating each of these from one another is downright impossible.
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The official answer to this is that the fall of "Atlantis" happened in a different iteration of the world. It never existed in the first place in our version of reality. The fall of Pangea is explored in Dark Eras and did happen way back in the neolithic era of our timeline.

Space Penguin said:
So that means the God machine is superior to mages and their platonic reality stuff, then?

Does the God Machine not care about all the reality rewrites that have happened?
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The interests of the Exarchs and the GM often align and they end up using each other often to accomplish their goals. It's not that one is superior to the other. The Machine is likely only vaguely aware of the reality rewrites as it is based almost entirely in the material plane.
 
nMage sounds really cool and right up my alley. I cactually asked about God Machine vs. Exarchs on another forum earlier today. Funny coincidence.

It helps CofD is loaded with religions and cults and that is totally my jam. Come my undead brothers and sisters, read the Testament of Longinus with me. Also join the Livian Heresy because, well:
e Biblical criticism has for several years engaged with feminist thinking (see for example Phyllis Trible, Texts of Terror, Minneapolis 1984); feminist expositions of the Testament, however, are perhaps unsurprisingly few and far between. A feminist critique of Longinus' interactions and relationship with his prostitute mother is sorely needed. CP


The Testament of Longinus is really good so far at sounding exactly like a modern Biblical translation. Maybe not as many footnotes as most but it is still pretty believable and of course the text itself is interesting.

This footnote stuck out to me because I remembered on the Lancea wiki page it mentions a Livia heresy where people worship Longinus' mother. I bought the Lancea book and sure it enough it has a little blurb on this. Truth be told, the Livian Heresy is probably the closest thing I'd believe. Syncretism is the best thing that can happen to a religion as you pool your knowledge and culture together like pieces of a puzzle and hopefully find the truth. It's kinda like how Beckett argues that since every culture has an apocalyptic myth that must mean all of thee myths are wrong. I take the opposite approach and say all these religions and faith must meant here's truth in there. Also just happens I would far more readily associate the divine with womanhood.

Sorry I guess that's all a bit personal and rambling for this thread but reading fictional religious stuff always makes me reflect on religious ideas in general.

And then I learn those religious ideas I reflect on a lot are at home in nMage which is all Neoplatonic and Gnostic and I love both of those things.


Still, oWoD has its cults. I found this just now:
Cults of the Sabbat - The Sabbat of OWbN

Good reading.
 
Chronicles has a lot of cults.


Vampire: The Already mentioned vampire cults

Mage: Fake cults run by Guardians of the Veil, among others

Geist 2e: Sin-Eater Krewes

Deviant the Renegades: Whatever portion of remade making conspiracies are cults.

Demon: God-machine cults and cults Demons set up around themselves

Mummy: Mummy Cults

Hunter/Core: Generic gribbly cults, along with groups like the Knights of Saint George

Werewolf: Packs? Lodges? I'm guessing here.

Not sure what cults may exist in Beast/Changeling/Promethean
 
Conjured Blade said:
Werewolf: Packs? Lodges? I'm guessing here.

Not sure what cults may exist in Beast/Changeling/Promethean
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The Pure are a group of three vaguely aligned cults that make heavy use of Stockholm Syndrome and the Sunk-Cost Fallacy, also Bale Hounds are a thing.

IIRC there are cults that worship some True Fae, as well as some True Fae that make heavy use of religious symbolism/aesthetics.
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Also IIRC some people worship imprisoned/enslaved Prometheans as Idols.
Yes, this goes just as badly as you would assume.
 
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