They don't live in the same setting though, and they don't know about each other. By default, each splat is the only (or most important) supernatural thing in their setting. Werewolves don't know about mages and vampires, because by default there are no mages or vampires (but there might be humans who have learned to make bargains with spirits for mystical power and corpses possessed by spirits of hunger and violence that seek to feast on the living). This is one of the big divergences from oWoD.
Yeah, in W:A, the Technocracy are the dupes of the Weaver; they don't control reality through the masses, the Weaver has dictated how reality works. Just as in M:A, the Werewolves and Vampires are low level players of a game they don't even know their in. While in the Demon splat, god is real, active and everyone else is either plain wrong, being tricked by a demon or just ignorant.

Ultimately, each splat is its own AU of the World of Darkness, where their concerns are the most important part of the setting.
 
There's no actual benefit to writing each splat such that it has to be beholden to the explicit existence of other splats, and more than a few detriments. I like my UF kitchen sink Monster Mash as much as the next girl but you gotta think about it a little if that's the way you're taking your WoD game table, because you're putting together pieces that weren't meant to assemble. They don't work the same when put together as they do on their own, if they work at all.
 
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And JayTee just said that that's why he doesn't like it.
Not really, he said this
I think you might misunderstand my beef with Chronicles of Darkness, then. Vampire, Mage and the like all work off the same engine as well, and my issue isn't with anything mechanical. Its the fact that the lore for each splat treats them like they're totally ignorant of one another, even though they all exist in the same setting and all know about each other.
He said he doesn't like that they don't know about each other despite all existing in the same setting.
Now I don't know if it's changed ever since it became Chronicles instead of simply, but while they share the same rules that doesn't mean that they all exist in the same setting.
Hell I'm even gonna quote myself (and Revlid):
I think that the people in that thread need to remember that despite whatever else they may believe, or what they do in their own games, the nWoD is not written with the assumption of crossover.
I could say more, but Revlid said it best in this very thread:
nHunter - as a game where you hunt supernaturals - is the only gameline that necessitates "crossover", and you know how it does that? By completely ignoring the actual gamelines it's supposedly involved with. In part this is to offer Hunter Storytellers greater freedom, as an extension of the nWoD's toolbox attitude - maybe werewolves are infectious? Maybe they're demon-possessed dogs? Maybe they're fascist ecowarriors? - and in part it's because running trying to run NPC monsters with the full range of options and powers and detail given to player characters is generally a bad idea, and in part it's because actual genuine witch-hunts against the Mages presented in Mage: The Awakening ends with the pitchfork-armed mortals in question finding their livers spontaneously combusting last Tuesday

*snip not relevant parts*
 
It isn't though. It's set out to create a setting where you can have Witches (who are Witches, not general reality benders), Atlantean reincarnaters (who aren't witches, instead using ancient Atlantean technology), Werewolves, Angels, Demons, Priests, Alex Mercer before Alex Mercer was a thing, Vampires, Ghosts. Super-Ghosts, Enlightened Reality Warpers, Minor Gods, Vampires, and probably more that I'm forgetting about, and have them all feel distinct, and have them all work on the same engine and same rule-set in a way that works.

And it does work. Admittedly, some spats are vastly stronger then other splats. But they're up front with this. A game with Greater Gifted in it is not the same as one with normal gifted, but they're up front about it.
Tell me more about these atlantean reincarnators
 
Tell me more about these atlantean reincarnators

Well, they're Immortal and nearly unkillable, coming back from anything short of complete immolation or having their souls ripped out. I think Their static nature means they can't use mortal magic like witchcraft, or psychic powers, or necromancy, but I could be misremembering. They do have some of their own unique powers, things like being able to boost their attributes if I remember right, but I no longer have the book.

They're most distinguishing characteristic is their ability to reproduce Atlantean Crystal Technology. Most of it is a bit underwhelming - it's good stuff, and being able to equip your entire team with gears that's a bit better then what everyone else has is nice, but they talk about it likes it's this big expensive flashy thing, like you can make doomsday machines, and you can't.

You can make UFOs though. Yes, Atlantean's are the source of UFOs.
 
Tell me more about these atlantean reincarnators

Right so, Atlanteans have disgusting amounts of regeneration going on. Like, "Make Garou look like perpetually sick children" levels of regen.

They can't use any of the big forms of magic in setting. Some of them can work Ritual Magic, but that's real limited by virtue of the fact they've gotta gather all the power for it the slow way.

They can pick up some real limited telepathy stuff; talking to people, commanding them, guarding their mind, etc.

There's two "Sub Types" of Atlantean, Shittari and Denazi, both warrior forms made to fight against the Metaplot(which sucks).

Shittari have crazy augmented strength and durability, natural armor, and a higher attribute cap. They're also limited to only getting Atlantean punchy powers, which are in both short supply and suck.

Denazi are the next gen model and far superior. They're a bit more fragile than even baseline Atlanteans(but still far tougher than any human), but make up for it with crazy augmented Dex and Willpower(and as usual, Dex is a God Stat), and some natural magic resistance. They can also take any Atlantean power except for the Berserker/Battle Boost power.

A note on what I mean by crazy augmented stats, Witchcraft's attribute system is similar to WoD's. You have a set of physical and mental attributes measured in points on a scale of 1-6. Six is the human maximum and everyone gets one point in everything by default. Atlanteans get, by default, an extra point for each of the physical attributes; Strength, Dex, and Constitution and their cap is 7. Shittari get +5 in Strength and Con in addition to the normal Atlantean bonus before they spend any other points on it and a stat cap of 12. Dezani get that for Dex and Willpower instead.

The biggest thing that Atlanteans have is their Maker powers which lets them their magictech stuff. Options in the books are kinda light, you've got Adamant which is a superhard material, Orikalk a magic conductive material that also fucks with spirits, and Energy Crystals(magic batteries).

Those are your basic materials that you can make. You can use them to make things like Crystal Skulls(spoopy telepathy boosters) or a Thought Ship(magitech UFO).

It's a crafting power, so basically the big limits are "What can you think to make with it?" and "What will your ST let you get away?" I remember a thread from back in the day where people had new Arcana they came up with showcased.
 
In nWoD? I imagine not much and kept away from most important magic. At least in oWoD you can change their consensus, no such luck in nWoD.
I mean... technically you can change their consensus.
It just literally causes them mental trauma to do so.
3 failed Integrity tests caused by exposure to magic and you become a sleepwalker.

but they should at least be aware of each other and the the different factions that exist within each group.
It has always been played up, in literally every game circle, that supernatural groups are aware that there are others out there.
In the old fanclub LARPS you, for the most part, just ignored them politely due to the paperwork for getting 2 venues to crossover for even a single night being a pain in the ass.
At the table, as others have said, you adjust it to match the game and tone you want and what mechanical ness you want at the table.

Many games I've known of have had someone do something with other supernaturals, sometimes to the point that it can warp the game somewhat due to having to come up with stuff for that person(s) with regards to whatever they're dealing with. Like, say, having to come up with Werewolf plots that are going on because a vampire managed to somehow get in good with one of the local packs.

As an example, in the game I'm currently running each city has a tendency for one big supreme power block of supernaturals to form with only the largest cities in a region likely to see multiple power blocks. The only ones that ignore this rule are mages, who are actively encouraged by their peer mages by other mages to project a somewhat united front to other supernaturals, codifying that there are 3 kinds of mage. The Pentacle, the Seekers/Exarchs, and the Insane. Pentacle portray themselves as ancient and powerful inheritors of Atlantis, which is totesmagotes a place but you'll never see it because it didn't sink it ascended, and is where the most powerful Archmaster reality warping types live, so don't mess with us. The Pentacle's portrayal of the Seekers of the Throne / Exarchs is as pretenders to the throne who started an ancient war that saw their own homeland and that of several others destroyed. As such the Exarchs stole off into the Supernal and caused a lot of damage to reality and are still actively playing at reality terrorist, but the more they've exerted direct power the more they've chained themselves and limited how they can apply that power, which is why they work through Seers now. Seers are mostly described as being either crazy or duped, and depending on the age of the Pentacle you ask you'll get lots of allegories to stuff like Nazi Germany, the various powers in WW1 who would send their men charging into no man's land for basically no good reason, Communists states during the cold war, with some more modern ones likening them to ISIS/ISIL. Pentacles describe any mage that isn't actively 'with' the Pentacle or a Seeker as being one of 'the mad' or 'the insane' or any number of other words and basically actively spread that they're dangerously insane lone wolf types, with agents of the Guardians and Arrows in particular being notable for often times paying for info on these "dangerous rogue elements".

The Seekers of the Throne on the other hand portray themselves as the winners of an ancient conflict and the servants of the rightful rulers of all of reality who are in the process of slowly purging the last sparks of the ancient and fallen Atlantis which they definitely destroyed. As a supernatural if you get caught up in their web you generally have 3 outcomes. First they don't care about you, second they do so you had better bend knee and serve, third if you don't then they'll destroy you. Seekers also tend to pay for information on the "Insane" though they don't actively comment on them being dangerous, with some seekers actively dropping hints that these supposed 'rogues' are actually their own agents. Which from a meta standpoint is 100% BS, but the Seekers have need to BS that they're in total control. As for the Pentacle, the Seekers call them enemy combatants fighting a war that's already been won, with their own allegories being paintings of some modern conflicts with groups that hide out in remote places waging wars long after the war is already over because they refuse to accept that it's over. Hiroo Onoda is a good example off the top of my head, but generally speaking the Seekers try to play off the conflicts as necessary but decidedly tragic and how it would all just end if the Pentacle would just accept the war was over and rejoin society and stop rocking the boat that is reality.

Lone wolf types, aka 'the insane', are to varied to pin down.

But yeah. Various groups form their own blocks of power, many of which might overlap, and it just kind of depends on the area whether 2 groups actively work together or avoid one another or what. The biggest issues with working in a group is being pulled in different directions, which is also exacerbated by things like Mages moving around somewhat freely and generally ignoring any powers in an area that aren't other Mages, werewolves being able to jump into the Shadow with few being able to follow, and Changelings being able to do much the same with the Hedge. Which leaves vampires as kind of an odd duck out as they run around in purely mortal circles and don't have the same kind of travel gumption.

I have a tendency to not incorporate God Machine Demon stuff or Promethean or Beast or Mummy or Geist. God Machine because their stuff tends to warp everything around it due to the scale of things. Mummy because why does this even exist? Promethean because while the game has a neat concept, anything that's going to basically slowly destroy the world in a decently visible way just by existing is going to have been squashed by the Mages at some point. Geist because it only got 1 book in the past and its powers are kind of insane at times. And finally I'm not going to talk about Abuser: The You Had It Coming Beast.


But yeah, as others have said, there's no benefit to writing all splats as beholden to another splat in their own book. Also we have a unifying version that built the entire world around concepts that all of the things exist at once. It's called Monty Cook's World of Darkness and there's a reason no one ever talks about it, and that reason for those of you who can't read subtlety in text is that it's pretty awful and is WoD: D20 Modern (Sort of) Edition. Because that's just what WoD needed! An edition where everyone is a different class and we all roll like it's D&D up in here! :tongue:
 
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I've always approached it as anyone who has been aware of the supernatural, and not pretending it doesn't exist, for a few years probably has some idea that the big three exist. Weather they know about anything else is down to individual experience. Like, I'd expect most freeholds have some idea that blood drinking corpses, were creatures, and mortal magicians are a thing. They probably don't know, or care to know, the specifics. One or two of that freehold's members has probably encountered something else at some point. There are a lot of risks getting involved with other supes enough to learn anything concrete about them.

Edit:
Adding on to this, not every blood sucking undead is one of the Kindred. Not every wolfman is spawn of Urfarah and Luna. Not every mortal with arcane power is one of the Wise. The CoD is weird and scary place with all manner of griblies that blur the lines. What one hunter might refer to as a vampire might be unrecognizable to one that speciallizes in hunting the Kindred.
 
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So I plan on combining Mage: The Awakening, Hunter: The Vigil, Changeling: The Lost, and Demon: The Descent.

Mage - Played straight.
Hunter - Again, basically played straight.
Changeling - The True Fae are remnants of the old gods, along with some spirits.
Demon - Angles are servants of the Exarchs
 
Oh so the Pentacle is all dead. :V

In the Seers of the Throne book, there are a race of Supernal creatures that serve the Exarchs that sound like an earlier version of the Demon: The Descent "Angles", Its stated that the Exarchs can't deploy these servants fully for some reason, so my logic was that the rarity of Angles and the presence of Demons would counter-balance how powerful Angles are.
 
In the Seers of the Throne book, there are a race of Supernal creatures that serve the Exarchs that sound like an earlier version of the Demon: The Descent "Angles", Its stated that the Exarchs can't deploy these servants fully for some reason, so my logic was that the rarity of Angles and the presence of Demons would counter-balance how powerful Angles are.
I mean... rare is extremely overselling the whole thing. Yes they're more rare then the other servants of the God Machine, but there shouldn't be an overwhelmingly larger number of Demons. Because if that were the case, the God Machine would have moved onto some other kind of servant. This also doesn't get into how powerful some Angels can be. Less we forget the Angle the size of the Oort Cloud.

Note, your game your rules and all.
Still, the joke stands and is quite valid. Because as has been said, the God Machine at base warps everything around it to extreme degrees, and as such the whole game line built around it and the giant spy game that is Demon just overwhelms all other game lines. Much like how oWoD gets dominated by Ascension so much that it has to have its own thread here.
:tongue:
 
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I mean... rare is extremely overselling the whole thing. Yes they're more rare then the other servants of the God Machine, but there shouldn't be an overwhelmingly larger number of Demons. Because if that were the case, the God Machine would have moved onto some other kind of servant. This also doesn't get into how powerful some Angels can be. Less we forget the Angle the size of the Oort Cloud.

Note, your game your rules and all.
Still, the joke stands and is quite valid. Because as has been said, the God Machine at base warps everything around it to extreme degrees, and as such the whole game line built around it and the giant spy game that is Demon just overwhelms all other game lines. Much like how oWoD gets dominated by Ascension so much that it has to have its own thread here.
:tongue:

Oh, yeah I get how powerful they are.

I would use them as a full arch villain, not something they could randomly run into on the street.
 
I've always approached it as anyone who has been aware of the supernatural, and not pretending it doesn't exist, for a few years probably has some idea that the big three exist. Weather they know about anything else is down to individual experience. Like, I'd expect most freeholds have some idea that blood drinking corpses, were creatures, and mortal magicians are a thing. They probably don't know, or care to know, the specifics. One or two of that freehold's members has probably encountered something else at some point. There are a lot of risks getting involved with other supes enough to learn anything concrete about them.

The way I go at it, most cities will usually have a population of vampires and changelings, who are aware of each other(if not necessarily in detail) and in various states of war or civil/"civil" coexistence depending on who's in charge of what groups. Regardless, they tend to make up the bulk of the social scene in the shadows.

A cabal or two of mages is also usually present and usually poking things with sticks that most people and not-people would agree should not be poked at. The mages would, of course, deem these people and not-people cowards and return to poking.

Werewolves, I am admittedly less familiar with in both editions. But I imagine there's a pack running around doing werewolf things that also eats the occasional disagreeable vampire and/or changeling and who's dinner may or may not have been arranged by another vampire and/or changeling who benefited from a rival ending up a meal. And depending on how well they arranged that, they may end up the second course.
 
I've been taking a self-imposed extended break from World of Darkness/Chronicles of Darkness for a while due to a mix of real-life concerns and dealing with horrible people online.

But after talking with a few of my IRL gaming friends, I think my interest might be rekindled.
 
The way I go at it, most cities will usually have a population of vampires and changelings, who are aware of each other(if not necessarily in detail) and in various states of war or civil/"civil" coexistence depending on who's in charge of what groups. Regardless, they tend to make up the bulk of the social scene in the shadows.

A cabal or two of mages is also usually present and usually poking things with sticks that most people and not-people would agree should not be poked at. The mages would, of course, deem these people and not-people cowards and return to poking.

Werewolves, I am admittedly less familiar with in both editions. But I imagine there's a pack running around doing werewolf things that also eats the occasional disagreeable vampire and/or changeling and who's dinner may or may not have been arranged by another vampire and/or changeling who benefited from a rival ending up a meal. And depending on how well they arranged that, they may end up the second course.
Not a bad way of putting it.

The thing about werewolves is that unless there's either a pack or many packs around doing werewolf things, or a powerful spirit mage doing the same general work, the Shadow can get really REALLY gnarly. Tokyo appears in almost every core book for Chronicles, and its modern day shadow is a terrifying mess of Magath due in part to how many people live in such a relatively small area, all the variety emotions and what not, and the fact that local werewolves don't really go by the Father Wolf mythos or really develop packs and keep the shadow clean and stable.
 
The "thing that sounds like Angels in Mage" are basically the Agents in the Matrix, so of course they both sound kinda similar, because they draw on similar source material. Though actually, as the Archmage Gamebook reveals, good guys can have the same, like, Avatars/etc. Which makes one wonder what *those* are up to.
 
Oh god I remember reading that thread when it first showed up. I had no idea it would develop to this point, this is fucking hilarious.
 
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