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White Wolf's World of Darkness

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Sydonai said:
Yeah, we already have "Lesser Templates" so why don't we just call guys with a PowerStat at 6+ "Greater Templates" and the normal guys just "Templates"?
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Because Archmastery is not in any way the same thing as having Gnosis 6+. Gnosis 6+ is a precondition, but is not sufficient.

The Legacy system assumes that players can hit Gnosis 6+ in play. There is no such assumption for Archmastery, which is a totally different game.
 
Having Powerstat 6+ is not changing Templates, it's just being superhuman. Vampires don't change, werewolves neither, changelings must wait to Wyrd 10 to become True Fae, etc. etc.

Note that nothing forbids you to create Archmage-like Templates for all others Prodigals. It was a fad on White Wolf forums when Imperial Mysteries came out.
 
The Laurent said:
Plus, with Mages, isn't Archmastery supposed to be 'once in a blue moon' rare?

I do admit I also like the fact that 2e vampires are limited to five dots. Mostly because they've already been made stronger than 1e Vamps, so why not stop Elder Vampires from literally stomping over everyone with Vigor 7 or some shit.
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Archmasters are rare indeed, both because the requirements to even attemp the Threshold Seeking are steep ( aside from Gnosis 6+, you need to be a Master of an Arcanum and an Adept of at least three more IIRC) and because among even those who do go for it the success rate isn't great.

Still, Imperial Mysteries says that there are like, less than a hundred Archmages, across all Ententes and unaffiliated. So it's not like there are only a handful of this guys.
 
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ganonso said:
Having Powerstat 6+ is not changing Templates, it's just being superhuman. Vampires don't change, werewolves neither, changelings must wait to Wyrd 10 to become True Fae, etc. etc.

Note that nothing forbids you to create Archmage-like Templates for all others Prodigals. It was a fad on White Wolf forums when Imperial Mysteries came out.
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Also, Wyrd 10 doesn't make you into a True Fae. It *can* and if you reach that high you're definitely playing with fire and need to be careful that your Clarity doesn't hit the bargain basement, but...

It's mostly academic, since Wyrd 10 is rare, anyways.

BlueBiscuit said:
Archmasters are rare indeed, both because the requirements to even attemp the Threshold Seeking are steep ( aside from Gnosis 6+, you need to be a Master of an Arcanum and an Adept of at least three more IIRC) and because among even those who do go for it the success rate isn't great.

Still, Imperial Mysteries says that there are like, less than a hundred Archmages, across all Ententes and unaffiliated. So it's not like there are only a handful of this guys.
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Less than a hundred is pretty few, and I might make their numbers be even smaller in my Quest, but that's another matter.
 
BlueBiscuit said:
Still, Imperial Mysteries says that there are like, less than a hundred Archmages, across all Ententes and unaffiliated. So it's not like there are only a handful of this guys.
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Remember, immortality (well, eternal youth, to be pedantic) is easy for Mages. It's a relatively low level Time or Life rote, to prevent aging or to age backwards. So mages tend to live for a very long time so long as they don't get eaten by whatever they decided to poke with a stick. Those hundred Archmasters are likely from at least the past five hundred years.
 
Broken25 said:
Frankly, Archies don't have a place in a changeling game. Or in a Mage game, for that matter. They are basically living gods, and is better to leave them in their place, AKA, tier 4 games.
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I don't know about Changeling, but Archmasters have more than enough to offer to normal games. Imperial Mysteries itself describes a lot of the ways archmages interact with non-Seekers.
 
The Laurent said:
Plus, with Mages, isn't Archmastery supposed to be 'once in a blue moon' rare?

I do admit I also like the fact that 2e vampires are limited to five dots. Mostly because they've already been made stronger than 1e Vamps, so why not stop Elder Vampires from literally stomping over everyone with Vigor 7 or some shit.
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For a moment I thought you were talking about owod vampires.

How 1e vamps are weaker than 2e vamps? Aside from a few differences in the disciplines, it felt they were overall weaker than 1e. I mean, Conditioning is now a Devotion, no free agg damage for Protean 2, etc etc.

The only thing that 2e vamps have is that they threat most 'mortal' forms of lethal damage as Bashing damage, and only trully horrific damage counts as lethal now, with agg being only supernaturally inflicted wounds.
 
The Laurent said:
Also, Wyrd 10 doesn't make you into a True Fae. It *can* and if you reach that high you're definitely playing with fire and need to be careful that your Clarity doesn't hit the bargain basement, but...

It's mostly academic, since Wyrd 10 is rare, anyways.
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Wyrd 10 gives daily visions of Arcadia bad enough to count as a Clarity 1 breaking point. You might last awhile but unless you find a way to drop back down to 9 you're going to be a True Fae within a couple weeks.
 
Joebobjoe said:
Wyrd 10 gives daily visions of Arcadia bad enough to count as a Clarity 1 breaking point. You might last awhile but unless you find a way to drop back down to 9 you're going to be a True Fae within a couple weeks.
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It CAN give you visions of Arcadia daily. @Imrix pointed out previously that that's entirely optional, in the very book where it is introduced.

I think it was Imrx, at least.

Imrix said:
By default, reaching Wyrd 10 just makes it hard to maintain Clarity as per the corebook and gives you a second Major Frailty.

Equinox Road however, provides rules for becoming one of the True Fae as a path that a Wyrd 10 character can unconsciously step onto at a dramatically appropriate moment, decided upon in discussion between the player and the Storyteller. At that point, yes, the character starts taking Clarity rolls at regular intervals and will either become one of the True Fae or turn away from that path and lose a dot of Wyrd.

There is, however, nothing stopping a player from simply declaring, "I'm not interested in telling that story with this character," and continuing to play a Wyrd 10 character who doesn't feel the call to shuck off their humanity and venture into Arcadia to be reborn as an inhuman prince of chaos. That's not Rule Zero in action or anything, that's written into the rules given in Equinox Road; they're an optional storytelling path that opens upon reaching Wyrd 10, not a mandatory consequence.
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Yup.

My own head-canon is somewhere between 'Wyrd 10 means nothing' and 'Wyrd 10 means auto-True-Fae.'

It's not a very safe place to be, mentally, physically, and even spiritually, but it is a place one can be.
 
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You wish Wyrd 10 Clarity 1 Changelings automatically turned into True Fae. That would mean they would fuck off to Arcadia to play make-believe with the other demigods and only the occasional ruining of lives and spreading of misery, instead of spreading their time between the mortal world and the Hedge, both places where you live, being overpowered madmen playing to the tune of their own delusions and feeding off passions and emotions, haunting your dreams.
 
BlueBiscuit said:
I don't know about Changeling, but Archmasters have more than enough to offer to normal games. Imperial Mysteries itself describes a lot of the ways archmages interact with non-Seekers.
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Archmages are the best plot device. You need some kind of special mcguffin but can't or don't want to handwave it too much, archmage did it. Need to make use of 'the old mysterious stranger that knows just what you need and shows up right when you need it then vanishes' trope, archmage time. They're great because they can be anywhere and do/know damn near anything you could need them to.

Hell, a lot of the mythical bullshit is or can be attributed to archmages doing their thing. Camelot/Arthur/Excalibur? Merlin was an archmage of Fate that orchestrated the rise and fall of Camelot in order to ascend. Either the Exarches or his own ascension wiped it from the timeline but through Merlin it became Supernal Truth so everyone knows about it even though no one can find any hard evidence relating to it.
 
cmwatford said:
Archmages are the best plot device. You need some kind of special mcguffin but can't or don't want to handwave it too much, archmage did it. Need to make use of 'the old mysterious stranger that knows just what you need and shows up right when you need it then vanishes' trope, archmage time. They're great because they can be anywhere and do/know damn near anything you could need them to.

Hell, a lot of the mythical bullshit is or can be attributed to archmages doing their thing. Camelot/Arthur/Excalibur? Merlin was an archmage of Fate that orchestrated the rise and fall of Camelot in order to ascend. Either the Exarches or his own ascension wiped it from the timeline but through Merlin it became Supernal Truth so everyone knows about it even though no one can find any hard evidence relating to it.
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Imperial Mysteries actually has Mordred as the Aeon of Fate. So yeah, the Arthur mythos holds some sway in the nWoD
 
Mordred has been the Aeon of Fate since Astral Realms. He turns up in a lesser aspect in Dancers in the Dusk, too, which made him the prime candidate to be the Aeon I picked out as the example in Imperial Mysteries, because we'd seen several sides of him.

Merlin's been an archmaster since Awakening's design - Morvran (the old Thyrsus signiature character) is technically "Merlin Morvran" - the Walkers in Mists Legacy call their leader "Merlin" after their legendary founder, who's talked about a bit more in Tome of the Watchtowers. And then, because Mordred, also in Imperial Mysteries. The original Merlin's old stomping grounds (possibly including his Wending) is talked about in Left Hand Path, as the Lower Depths-serving Legacy Cwm Annwn are exploiting the somewhat weakened reality.

Before he became an archmaster, Merlin was a Welsh Silver Ladder Acanthus living sometime in the 800s or 900s.
 
Hi WoD buffs, I need some help.

I want to run a Vampire: The Masquerade game but really cannot afford any of the books, or to put money into something that may peter off out of lack of interest. I've read the 20th anniversary version a while back and I've played through Bloodlines several times, but that's about the extent of my knowledge, and I'm fuzzier on stuff that wasn't covered in the game, like the Paths of Enlightenment, etc.

So instead I've downloaded the Vampire Revised Quickstart and I'm hoping to use that as the basis of my game and possibly a future campaign. The upside and simultaneous downside is that it's rather simplistic - no morality/humanity meter, and skills divided purely into broad Physical/Social/Mental/Psychic aka Willpower traits. I'm rather inexperienced as a GM/ST and playing with a few people who have little to no experience in tabletop gaming, so I don't want to scare them away, but at the same time I'd like to have a few more precise ways to track things as well as to give the players a sense of progression if it becomes an extended thing.

For instance, I was thinking of adding a "Previous Occupation" portion as a way of more closely focusing on the PC's skills without losing the simplicity of the three stats, enough to help the players get into the mindset of their character and the roleplay, which could potentially double as a way of keeping track how far away they're moving from their humanity. Alternatively I could just get rid of the three stats altogether, keeping only the Psychic/Willpower stat, and only use "Previous Occupation" and a simplistic resolution scheme to determine roll success, if need be, since I'm hoping to use rolls only when there is a serious contest of skill or a genuine possibility of failure. I'd like to somehow implement a Humanity mechanic, as I feel its exclusion is pretty glaring, but that depends on what sort of game we'll be playing I think.

Any suggestions, corrections or advice?
 
illusivepunk said:
Hi WoD buffs, I need some help.

I want to run a Vampire: The Masquerade game but really cannot afford any of the books, or to put money into something that may peter off out of lack of interest. I've read the 20th anniversary version a while back and I've played through Bloodlines several times, but that's about the extent of my knowledge, and I'm fuzzier on stuff that wasn't covered in the game, like the Paths of Enlightenment, etc.

So instead I've downloaded the Vampire Revised Quickstart and I'm hoping to use that as the basis of my game and possibly a future campaign. The upside and simultaneous downside is that it's rather simplistic - no morality/humanity meter, and skills divided purely into broad Physical/Social/Mental/Psychic aka Willpower traits. I'm rather inexperienced as a GM/ST and playing with a few people who have little to no experience in tabletop gaming, so I don't want to scare them away, but at the same time I'd like to have a few more precise ways to track things as well as to give the players a sense of progression if it becomes an extended thing.

For instance, I was thinking of adding a "Previous Occupation" portion as a way of more closely focusing on the PC's skills without losing the simplicity of the three stats, enough to help the players get into the mindset of their character and the roleplay, which could potentially double as a way of keeping track how far away they're moving from their humanity. Alternatively I could just get rid of the three stats altogether, keeping only the Psychic/Willpower stat, and only use "Previous Occupation" and a simplistic resolution scheme to determine roll success, if need be, since I'm hoping to use rolls only when there is a serious contest of skill or a genuine possibility of failure. I'd like to somehow implement a Humanity mechanic, as I feel its exclusion is pretty glaring, but that depends on what sort of game we'll be playing I think.

Any suggestions, corrections or advice?
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Well, first, if you want more details, there is in fact a subnet that might have more details that you want.

Vampire: The Masquerade (Revised) Character Creation

The subnet's AREN'T a replacement for reading the books by any means, but they have lots of details.

Edit: Thought I'd offer that out first before I started trying to implement or think through some other stuff.
 
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A query. I remember stumbling across an alternative rule for Vampires in Vampire: The Requiem that replaced 'The Beast' with 'The Other', an intelligent spirit that tried to tempt the players rather than a feral monstrosity. Unfortunately, I can't seem to figure out where I saw it. I thought it was in the Danse Macabre supplment but I can't seem to find it there.

Does anyone know where I could find the rule?
 
Shephard said:
A query. I remember stumbling across an alternative rule for Vampires in Vampire: The Requiem that replaced 'The Beast' with 'The Other', an intelligent spirit that tried to tempt the players rather than a feral monstrosity. Unfortunately, I can't seem to figure out where I saw it. I thought it was in the Danse Macabre supplment but I can't seem to find it there.
Does anyone know where I could find the rule?
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Isn't that from Monte Cook's WoD?
 
Shephard said:
A query. I remember stumbling across an alternative rule for Vampires in Vampire: The Requiem that replaced 'The Beast' with 'The Other', an intelligent spirit that tried to tempt the players rather than a feral monstrosity. Unfortunately, I can't seem to figure out where I saw it. I thought it was in the Danse Macabre supplment but I can't seem to find it there.

Does anyone know where I could find the rule?
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The Other is from the Requiem Chronicler's Guide, which proposed various alterations to the way the game works. It's a bit of a pre-Danse Macabre, and not quite as extensive.
 
ryuan said:
No humanity? Man, those vamps have it easy as fuck huh?
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TBF it's just a quickstart, meant to be an introductory rulekit to give the players a taste, not a full ruleset :D

Omicron said:
The Other is from the Requiem Chronicler's Guide, which proposed various alterations to the way the game works. It's a bit of a pre-Danse Macabre, and not quite as extensive.
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This does sound cool as an alternative to the Beast, and one that I might think of implementing. But yeah, you definitely need some form of Humanity in there for the full Masquerade experience.
 
Shephard said:
A query. I remember stumbling across an alternative rule for Vampires in Vampire: The Requiem that replaced 'The Beast' with 'The Other', an intelligent spirit that tried to tempt the players rather than a feral monstrosity. Unfortunately, I can't seem to figure out where I saw it. I thought it was in the Danse Macabre supplment but I can't seem to find it there.

Does anyone know where I could find the rule?
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Looking at , if you want to go into the oWoD for inspiration , the Shadowguides from Wraith or the Po from Kindred of the East might also be interesting for you there. Especially the idea of giving the job of tempter over to adjectant players.
 
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