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White Wolf's World of Darkness

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MJ12 Commando said:
The amusing fact is that this is not entirely true, because the people who have made their greatest mark on history were the Technocrats and Order of Reason, who were a highly organized and disciplined organization. This is actually something that keeps coming up in an amusing fashion. The problem with the Traditions, in 2E, is that you have a bunch of great men and they're disorganized, squabbling, backstabbing shits.

The mage games have anarchist sympathies but they're anarcho-collectivist, not Objectivist. The Objectivist Great Men fuck up, (like Voormas), while the ones who are willing to sacrifice themselves, without coercion or any personal benefit, to the Greater Good (like Senex) prosper. The Hermetics are the Designated Evil People of the Traditions and they're also the guys who believe the most in Great Man Theory. Insofar as you can avoid exalting Great Men in a game with world-changing heroes of legendary power who are supposed to be seen as heroic, oMage tries. It doesn't always succeed (for example, giving Turing so much credit for the Digital Web when he should be an inspirational figure and martyr rather than The Guy Who Did Everything, WW special snowflake syndrome in a lot of places), but it tries most of the time.

Remember the actual sympathies of the mage line devs were about as far from the Great Man objectivist ideas as it is physically possible to get.
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Quite - a constant theme in Mage is that a 'proper' mage is an example and exemplar, inspiring rather then leading. Powerful magic might be world changing, but it's also often presented as an exercise in Hubris, a wise mage should rarely need to dramatically change the world. It often give paradox spirits a kind of moral high ground - the mage defied the world rather then worked with it.

Gandalf more then Lina Inverse, in other words. There's a time for great works, but they're rare and out of sight. Instead you should be able to show people the way.

That theme was always a little preachy, actually.
 
The 'inspiration' thing with Dresden isn't that much better, and also still ignores how the Renaissance came to be and the whole context of literally *everything*. What, did Wizards invent printing? Does Butcher know about the High Middle Ages, or about the entire form and function of medieval academic scholastic learning?

It's *marginally* better than 'Galileo was a wizard' but it's still founded on the same fundamental misunderstanding. Hint: The Renaissance wasn't "Suddenly smart people got a good education."



Anyways, onto the topic at hand (oMage, great man, etc), I think it's one of those things where they might have failed rather horribly at it.

Certainly, oVamp didn't even try, which is fine (I don't like it, but 'a gameline has different themes' is a thing that happens). It had its own themes, and those themes involved a convoluted myth arc of shadow empires ruling the world and Cain and I don't even know what.
 
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The Dresden Files is kind of horrible when you examine any of its backstory or setting conceits. The sum total for why the masquerade continues to exist in setting is that human beings are, quite literally, too stupid and or fanatically materialistic to believe in magic. They literally refuse to believe despite, you know, the Dresden world being one step removed from a death world given the overwhelming numbers of supernatural monsters that just run amok all over the place. Frankly every time Butcher tries to hang a lampshade on any of the ridiculous stuff he trots out he just ends up sounding worse and worse.

The Dresden Files is exactly the kind of urban fantasy that the World of Darkness, any incarnation, is not designed to emulate. If you are looking at it look at it as a series of Things Not To Do In A WoD Game.
 
Aaron Peori said:
The Dresden Files is kind of horrible when you examine any of its backstory or setting conceits. The sum total for why the masquerade continues to exist in setting is that human beings are, quite literally, too stupid and or fanatically materialistic to believe in magic. They literally refuse to believe despite, you know, the Dresden world being one step removed from a death world given the overwhelming numbers of supernatural monsters that just run amok all over the place. Frankly every time Butcher tries to hang a lampshade on any of the ridiculous stuff he trots out he just ends up sounding worse and worse.

The Dresden Files is exactly the kind of urban fantasy that the World of Darkness, any incarnation, is not designed to emulate. If you are looking at it look at it as a series of Things Not To Do In A WoD Game.
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Yeah, I'd just mentioned him as being part of the trope where magic-users basically write large parts of history, that being something oWoD engages in to a greater degree than nWoD that, well...

Well, it doesn't come off as a lot better than any of Butcher's stuff in that regard, at least in my opinion.

It just somehow winded up as a tangent from there.
 
The Laurent said:
Yeah, I'd just mentioned him as being part of the trope where magic-users basically write large parts of history, that being something oWoD engages in to a greater degree than nWoD that, well...
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The thing about oMage's "magic-users play a critical part of large parts of history" is that it actually makes a lot of sense when you look at it in-paradigm and in-setting and discard the purple paradigm. See, even the weakest willworker has Willpower 5, when the human average is 3. Moreover, the low ranking spheres simply make you better than any normal human can be, coincidentally and with no cost. The end result is that mages are exceptional in very simple ways - they're the most wilful and determined specimens of humanity, and with low rank spheres they're smarter, tougher and more successful than you. It's easy for a mage to become rich and influential, and they're pretty much all obsessive ideologues who have a vision for the world - and they're spurred on by their Avatar to become more and achieve more.

And within a given mage's paradigm, a lot of what they do isn't actually "magical". The concept of magic being "supernatural" is a product of the mage in question being sufficiently far outside the ambient paradigm. For the ones who are in-paradigm - ie, the ones who "win" at history - their abilities aren't supernatural. They're just... natural. It's natural for Newton to be an alchemist and mathematician - and later eras write off his alchemical successes as a delusion of his and remember him for his work on calculus and gravitation and optics. Even Hermetics are more akin to... well, real life esoterics like John Dee, who made a serious and well-intentioned effort to systematically work out how to summon angels and very much didn't throw his hands up and go "it's magic, I don't have to explain shit, no one understands it anyway".

oMages are very specifically not urban fantasy wizards in general. Just remember - if the Sleepers don't think that how your magic works is how the world works, you're losing the Ascension War. The people most likely to affect history are on the winning side, and thus when they do magic, no one thinks they're doing magic.

(Spending time playing a NWO or Syndicate character is actually really educational as to how oMages are not standard urban fantasy wizards at all, and you're most powerful when you have lots of Sleepers on side under your command and how easy it is to solve your problems with mundane skills aided by coincidental magic buffs rather than doing anything obvious. Who needs mind control when your paradigm says that everyone has their price and you befriend them and show them that you're not such a bad person and then help them out with their money problems?)
 
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EarthScorpion said:
The thing about oMage's "magic-users play a critical part of large parts of history" is that it actually makes a lot of sense when you look at it in-paradigm and in-setting and discard the purple paradigm. See, even the weakest willworker has Willpower 5, when the human average is 3. Moreover, the low ranking spheres simply make you better than any normal human can be, coincidentally and with no cost. The end result is that mages are exceptional in very simple ways - they're the most wilful and determined specimens of humanity, and with low rank spheres they're smarter, tougher and more successful than you. It's easy for a mage to become rich and influential, and they're pretty much all obsessive ideologues who have a vision for the world - and they're spurred on by their Avatar to become more and achieve more.

And within a given mage's paradigm, a lot of what they do isn't actually "magical". The concept of magic being "supernatural" is a product of the mage in question being sufficiently far outside the ambient paradigm. For the ones who are in-paradigm - ie, the ones who "win" at history - their abilities aren't supernatural. They're just... natural. It's natural for Newton to be an alchemist and mathematician - and later eras write off his alchemical successes as a delusion of his and remember him for his work on calculus and gravitation and optics. Even Hermetics are more akin to... well, real life esoterics like John Dee, who made a serious and well-intentioned effort to systematically work out how to summon angels and very much didn't throw his hands up and go "it's magic, I don't have to explain shit, no one understands it anyway".

oMages are very specifically not urban fantasy wizards in general. Just remember - if the Sleepers don't think that how your magic works is how the world works, you're losing the Ascension War. The people most likely to affect history are on the winning side, and thus when they do magic, no one thinks they're doing magic.

(Spending time playing a NWO or Syndicate character is actually really educational as to how oMages are not standard urban fantasy wizards at all, and you're most powerful when you have lots of Sleepers on side under your command and how easy it is to solve your problems with mundane skills aided by coincidental magic buffs rather than doing anything obvious. Who needs mind control when your paradigm says that everyone has their price and you befriend them and show them that you're not such a bad person and then help them out with their money problems?)
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What's the purple paradigm? Yes, I know this is going to sound like a silly question. Also, will read this is more depth when I get back from work.

Hopefully I'll have time to think of a few WOD-y things while there I've been mulling around with.

More specifically, [strikethrough but I can't remember how to do it, hah]Giant Robots [/s] Hedgespun Automatons.
 
The Laurent said:
What's the purple paradigm? Yes, I know this is going to sound like a silly question. Also, will read this is more depth when I get back from work.
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@Revlid has some useful comments because... well, this isn't the first time this question has had to be answered.

To summarise, the purple paradigm is basically treating the rules of the game as the way the setting "really" works. M20 is very much written from this perspective - PQ, which is Revised-era, very much doesn't.

Under the purple paradigm, when you throw a fireball at someone, you're using Forces 3 to make a fireball and justifying it with invocations of the angel Gabriel. Under the version PQ uses, there is a person who can invoke the angel Gabriel to call heavenly fire down on someone, and this is represented in the game mechanics by them having "Forces 3" on their character sheet. Mostly only Hermetics talk about the Nine Great Spheres (and people trying to use the Traditions' magical Esperanto to work out how to get their ritual working and get their paradigms working together).

Hence, under the purple paradigm, Traditionalists basically know all along that they're using their Avatar to warp reality and then justifying it with whatever they believe in. This has the major problem that it means that any historical figure who was a mage didn't really believe in their ideas, and just hid the truth from the Sleepers.

Rejecting the purple paradigm, however, means that Newton could do various alchemical acts, forms of advanced mathematics which let him predict things, and magical things involving light using lenses and crystals. This is represented by him having Matter 4, Forces 3, Time 2, etc on his character sheet, but he probably didn't think about it this way. He could just do these things because he'd studied them. His mathematics and optics would be accepted into the later Consensus and so he's respected for them, but his belief in alchemy is laughed at and used as an example of how even figures as influential as he was can be wrong about things.
 
You know, I almost feel bad for asking so many questions lately (just stretching my wings and preparing some stuff for QMing, though I'm trying to be vague) but what are the nWoD rules for poison? I know/have read that Exalted poison is literally insane to the point where if you don't have a charm that negates it you basically just die, and I know they both are sorta based off of each other, but I was thinking of an enemy that would have poisoned weapons and how I'd handle that.

Edit: Size not affecting strength feels really weird. Not that a slightly taller guy should have greater strength, but...hrm *looks more up.*

Edit 2: Yet somehow Elephants have over 5 Strength. I assume that's some sort of...species factor thing? And thus 5 is only the limit for basic humans?
 
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The Laurent said:
You know, I almost feel bad for asking so many questions lately (just stretching my wings and preparing some stuff for QMing, though I'm trying to be vague) but what are the nWoD rules for poison? I know/have read that Exalted poison is literally insane to the point where if you don't have a charm that negates it you basically just die, and I know they both are sorta based off of each other, but I was thinking of an enemy that would have poisoned weapons and how I'd handle that.
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The nWoD rules are very fuzzy. Each poison has a Toxicity rating and an interval, and inflicts its Toxicity in lethal damage every interval. A Stamina+Resolve roll at each interval may be allowed, which will negate the damage on that interval if and only if it overcomes the Toxicity, and do nothing otherwise. Poison is very, very lethal, and most of its mechanical factors are left up to the Storyteller.

Under GMC rules, "poisoned" is also a combat Tilt. You suffer one level of bashing or lethal damage every turn unless you succeed on a Sta+Res roll, and doing any action other than that incurs a -3 penalty to that roll. This keeps going until you're out of combat, at which point either the storyteller waives further rolls or resumes using normal Toxicity rules.

Exalted poison rules are actually fairly reasonable in a vacuum, they just exist within a system where very little damage is enough to kill you and any amount of dice penalties in combat will also kill you. Ex3 poison rules are a lot better about it.
 
Omicron said:
The nWoD rules are very fuzzy. Each poison has a Toxicity rating and an interval, and inflicts its Toxicity in lethal damage every interval. A Stamina+Resolve roll at each interval may be allowed, which will negate the damage on that interval if and only if it overcomes the Toxicity, and do nothing otherwise. Poison is very, very lethal, and most of its mechanical factors are left up to the Storyteller.

Under GMC rules, "poisoned" is also a combat Tilt. You suffer one level of bashing or lethal damage every turn unless you succeed on a Sta+Res roll, and doing any action other than that incurs a -3 penalty to that roll. This keeps going until you're out of combat, at which point either the storyteller waives further rolls or resumes using normal Toxicity rules.

Exalted poison rules are actually fairly reasonable in a vacuum, they just exist within a system where very little damage is enough to kill you and any amount of dice penalties in combat will also kill you. Ex3 poison rules are a lot better about it.
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Hmm, it could be made less lethal by fluffing it as not being 'all or nothing.' So, Stamina+Resolve, and each success reduces one point of damage to Toxicity, or something. Unless that would nerf it too much. The person I'm using it on I want to be scary with poisons, but not like, 'He just somehow ganked everyone everywhere' scary.

The problem of STing, after all.* Don't want to be accidentally lethal...when I could be purposefully lethal.

* I tread QMing a little like STing, so sue me.
 
Pufff. Don't use poisons that cause damage in combat. Poisons don't work like that. Poisons are too slow to actually cause damage in a combat.

Instead, the kind of poisons that are actually used in combat (Like curare) cause paralysis, confusion and other problems like that. Penalties are a much better way to represent the effect of combat poisons. And that is actually lethal enough, given what a -2 penalty can do to your combat effectiveness in the storyteller system.
 
Broken25 said:
Pufff. Don't use poisons that cause damage in combat. Poisons don't work like that. Poisons are too slow to actually cause damage in a combat.

Instead, the kind of poisons that are actually used in combat (Like curare) cause paralysis, confusion and other problems like that. Penalties are a much better way to represent the effect of combat poisons. And that is actually lethal enough, given what a -2 penalty can do to your combat effectiveness in the storyteller system.
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Well, mortal poisons are, at least. But I get your drift.

I'll save doing damage for whenever I need to throw something that spits acid at you. Well, it spits acid at you, and I throw it at you, both of them. :p

Will start working on the update tonight, probably, stalled with the other Quest while I make character sheets.
 
Omicron said:
The nWoD rules are very fuzzy. Each poison has a Toxicity rating and an interval, and inflicts its Toxicity in lethal damage every interval. A Stamina+Resolve roll at each interval may be allowed, which will negate the damage on that interval if and only if it overcomes the Toxicity, and do nothing otherwise. Poison is very, very lethal, and most of its mechanical factors are left up to the Storyteller.

Under GMC rules, "poisoned" is also a combat Tilt. You suffer one level of bashing or lethal damage every turn unless you succeed on a Sta+Res roll, and doing any action other than that incurs a -3 penalty to that roll. This keeps going until you're out of combat, at which point either the storyteller waives further rolls or resumes using normal Toxicity rules.

Exalted poison rules are actually fairly reasonable in a vacuum, they just exist within a system where very little damage is enough to kill you and any amount of dice penalties in combat will also kill you. Ex3 poison rules are a lot better about it.
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What's really annoying is a good chunk of the time they forget about the interval and only specify Toxicity.
 
Okay, I love Changeling, but can its books get any more convoluted...

Wait a second, why isn't this book listed as existing on the Wikipedia page?

*just started reading Venice Unmasked.*

Oh, it's fan written. Huh. Seems sorta cool, though.

Anyone else ever read it?
 
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Okay, does anyone else like the Sorcery books from the OWoD more than the main-line Mage books? Because I've honestly found myself more fond of them than I ever was of Mage. Maybe it's because I find the mechanical design more to my liking, maybe it's the smaller scale of the storytelling (Seriously, the whole battle to define reality shtick never grabbed my interest.)

But Sorcerer does; I can imagine the trails and tribulations of a Sorcerer as she desperately searches for the one tome that can teach her to banish the spirits that, she believes, plague her dreams. (Whether or not she's actually being haunted is up to interpretation) or how a cult will gather together to work their will upon the world as one, accomplishing miracles that only reinforces their fate. Or the worst kind of monster who has struck the foulest of barging to become something both more and less than human.

Not to mention that it's easier to play crossover games or include mage-y antagonists in other games if they aren't reality warpers; I mean a group of hunters is probably going to die against a Mage, but a Sorcerer is something they can overcome. And of course Were-Creatures don't have to worry about them changing the steel of their sword into silver or some bullsh*t. (My Mage is weak spot but they can get pretty bullshit around their higher levels.)
 
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Broken25 said:
Nope.

Can you provide a link?
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Parts of it *do* read like it's a first draft (some of the NPC sections could use an editor, for instance, for grammar), and the section on NPCs is way, way too damn long. It basically, like, if you actually start counting, lists what has to be 2/3rds of the entire Freehold, unless it's an oversized one. But I like the concept of the Court of the Carnival, at least, and I can respect its attempt to make a unique history, complete with politics and roles and etc, since doing a 'city book' can always be interesting.

http://s60.podbean.com/pb/ee2c81cd8.../blogs18/286887/uploads/Changeling_Venice.pdf

This should be fine since it's a free fan product, right?
 
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So, anybody has any hints on how to survive Vampire The Requiem for some time without becoming a draugr? Because other than the humanity experience tax, things look really harsh for the neonate. I guess now I know why the focus on more local stories on this game. You pretty much can't have too many vampires without them becoming psychopathic monsters, because seriously, the humanity breaking points look brutal as fuck.
 
ryuan said:
So, anybody has any hints on how to survive Vampire The Requiem for some time without becoming a draugr? Because other than the humanity experience tax, things look really harsh for the neonate. I guess now I know why the focus on more local stories on this game. You pretty much can't have too many vampires without them becoming psychopathic monsters, because seriously, the humanity breaking points look brutal as fuck.
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One thing that helps neonates out there easily is that they can still go and drag down a animal, or use modern hookup areas to get a slight bite in which helps with the night to night stuff.
 
Yeah, but the thing is, you can get into frenzy easily with a bad roll if you get 2-4 vitae, specially after a tough fight where you used it to boost yourself/heal yourself, which will in turn most likely makes it reach a breaking point, and good bye humanity. Since accidental murder is breaking point 5 thats 2 humanity that can go in less than a week if you have bad luck.
 
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