Quote from: Snowman0147;1082071Actually there is a difference with blood magic.  

Theban Sorcery demands you to be at least humanity five to use all five levels of the sorcery.  Theban demands willpower and a material cost.  Finally the spells should have biblical themes with the empathise on retribution and scaring you to God.

Crone is just degrading and reduces your humanity.  In fact it eats away at it.  The cost is blood and lots of it.  Like one vitae per level of the spell.  The theme of the spells should be worst aspects of paganism.  Crows made of night, portals made if blood with baby bones, and summoning rituals via human sacrifice.

So yeah even if they share the same mechanics it doesn't mean the spells are the same.

I still think the Dark Ages: Mage works better if you're planning on inventing magic beyond those. Trying to make every magic type unique gets pretty difficult fast. Especially considering that those big two are intended to encompass a wide array of effects and thematically oppose one another.

Something I find interesting is that the White Wolf fandom seemingly takes it for granted that there are thirteen clans.

With Pokemon, there's a huge amount of creativity channeled into people creating their own fakemon.

With White Wolf, there's almost zero creativity in the community with regard to creating any original content, much less new clans.

At least currently. Apparently back in the 90s people were much more willing to make up new clans.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1082080Something I find interesting is that the White Wolf fandom seemingly takes it for granted that there are thirteen clans.

With Pokemon, there's a huge amount of creativity channeled into people creating their own fakemon.

With White Wolf, there's almost zero creativity in the community with regard to creating any original content, much less new clans.

At least currently. Apparently back in the 90s people were much more willing to make up new clans.

Well look who took it over.  In the 90's it was the pro free speech anti big anything crowd who just happened to be in the left.  Now it is just sjws and you know they don't like to create new things.

Compare that to the anti sjws who are very creative.  I mean just look at the memes and comicsgate lead by Ethan Van Schiver.  Creative people don't like being told what to do by anyone.

I prefer the Bloodlust Shadowhunter approach myself. There's a few different clans you can develop a reputation with by doing their quests. The reward includes being taught their exclusive disciplines, which are capped by the reputation.

Someone should invoke B.J. Zanzibar STAT!

Speaking of shadow hunters...

An idea I had for vampires with shadow powers mixed up the Masquerade Lasombra and Requiem Khaibit.

There is a vampire discipline called Darkness. Not some special dog latin name, just Darkness. It involves darkening things, bringing shadows to life, fast traveling through darkness, etc.

The Shadow Lords are a clan who use Darkness to achieve their lordly desires. They use Darkness for a unique kind of mind control, dependent on a connection with the target's shadow, whereas other popular forms of mind control like Dominate are dependent on eye contact and voice. They are commonly found in the vampire sect called the Sabbath or Lancea et Sanctum, a quasi-Catholic secret society whose shtick is scaring into mortals the fear of God.

The Shadow Hunters, by contrast, use their power to hunt night-haunting demons. They commonly hold membership in the Ancient Egyptian Cult of Seth, a god of deserts and storms who defended the sun god Ra from the chaos dragon Apep. They work alongside spiritually gifted werewolves, save for a nomadic tribe called the Silent Striders. This tribe holds a hatred of all vampires for the actions of the ancient vampire Apophis, who cast them out of Egypt for eternity. This is ironic and tragic, as the Shadow Hunters and Silent Striders were once staunch allies within the Aegis Kai Doru.

The Followers of Apophis are a cult that embraces vice and graft as forms of self-expression. They were hunted to seeming extinction by the Lancea+Sanctum and the Cult of Seth in the distant past, but somehow returned during the occult revival of the 19th century. They know some arts of Darkness, and unique powers over serpents.

The Lancea+Sanctum, Cult of Seth and Followers of Apophis all practice different forms of a blood sorcery that descends from Ancient Egyptian practices, now generally known as Theban Sorcery.

I had a similar idea.

Basically clan Mekhet would be one of the earliest clans, but after the fall of Egypt by the Romans the clan split up into two clans.  The honorable Khaibit and the ambitious Lasombra.  Basically a family feud as the two have the same disciplines, but done in different ways.

Quote from: Snowman0147;1082097I had a similar idea.

Basically clan Mekhet would be one of the earliest clans, but after the fall of Egypt by the Romans the clan split up into two clans.  The honorable Khaibit and the ambitious Lasombra.  Basically a family feud as the two have the same disciplines, but done in different ways.

An odd limitation of the discipline mechanic makes itself known here. By the standard 4e rules, Lasombra need ranks in Dominate to engage in any kind of shadow mind control (represented as combination disciplines), as opposed to being restricted to shadow mind control in the first place. The logic being that it removes the voice restriction, even if it is replaced with photosensitivity.

Every form of possession has generally required Dominate even if another discipline is involved, like protean to become mist, vicissitude to become sentient blood, obtenebro to become shadow, auspex to astral project, etc. You can't buy powers out of sequence.

Possessing animals varies, though. In Requiem 2e you need dominate too, in V5 you don't.

Years ago I saw a homebrew for the Daughters of Cacophony which removed their singing discipline and instead gave them a weakness/bane requiring them to sing in order to use mental disciplines. It's a neat idea that could go much further.

Do we want the disciplines to be more or less capable on their own? Should we use the discipline structure at all?

Again I was thinking disciplines done Godbound style.  So when I say done differently I mean sure some core powers, but the vampires can purchase powers from other disciplines as reskins.  So a protean transformation power could be reskin into a uncommon shadow discipline power that the clan knows of.

Holy shit, I missed all of this. Haven't been on here in awhile other than earlier today quickly. Time to reply to this before back to real-life shit.

Quote from: Melan;1081269The Codex is leaking? 'Sup.

'Sup Drog?

Quote from: Melan;1081269It is ultimately a game about youth rebellion against a corrupt adult world that Doesn't Understand You.

Much prefer VTR as a result. S'all grown-up and shit.

Quote from: Melan;1081269Most of the Tim Bradstreet art was "urban hipsters with fangs", and the game was quickly picked up by urban hipsters without fangs. Well, real fangs, at any rate.

Fucking-A!

(He literally had his friends do poses for him or used photos of them and traced them instead. Somehow they ended up awesome instead of messes as usually happens when a

Quote from: Aglondir;1081360One of the things that made it lackluster is that it was WW's third attempt at reworking the same, not very popular idea: the Fused Mortal, a supernatural being that joins their soul (or a fragment of it) to a mortal. I think this might have been an original WW idea; I can't think of any examples in folklore or myth.

Nah, it mixes psychopomps, spirits mediums and sin-eaters (very obscure reference) together. It's actually a pretty popular supernatural type: the Blackwell Chronicles are proof of that. As is Beyond: Two Souls. Hey, even the new Venom is a version of it.

(Think VTMR, when Luther Black selfishly demand-begs Christof to kill him so his "sins" transfer over to him as he his killer. Christof canonically says no because fuck that guy and rightly so. That's what sin-eaters are supposed to do, if not necessarily as extreme as that).

Quote from: Aglondir;1081360And your rapist is still hunting you. I've heard the designers say that the 2nd Edition downplays the victim aspect (?)

Yeah, they did. Which was really disrespectful, to be honest. Completely missed the point.

Put it this way, CTL 1e asked the Madonna question about its characters, particular ones who breach 6+ Wyrd: even with her mega-success, would she have become as sexually provocative and explicit in her personas over the years (as well as her infamous real-life "cougar-ing") had she not been raped when she was younger? Fucked-up analogy but it works. And that's the point. Would these characters be the way they are without these experiences? And how do they maintain their internal balance in spite of it, especially if still become successful.

Quote from: Snowman0147;1081367I regard Geist as candy goth.  Sure with all the colorless death aesthetics it should be grim, but surprisingly it is the opposite.  You got your second chance at life and at worst a ally for life.  Basically you do what you want and the only people you answer too are your fellow sin eaters.

Then you missed the point. If there's no consequences -- at least, initially -- then what stops you from being an absolutely fucked-up individual going forward? What stops anyone from being peoples' worst nightmare if they know there's no consequence? Geist comes from a place where it assumes people will -- and are -- bad given the chance.

And that's just one sliver. Your Geist (this arch-spectre), ultimately, is a very alien creature. It's needs and wants do NOT necessarily align with yours or what even a vampire might consider human. I remember there was a throwaway line in the book but its a really good one. Something like, "damm, did you hear? she has the red hook killer in her? Man, don't know how she deals..."

How do you deal with this new lease on life... but it's not just yours anymore? And how do you not fuck it up while still living life to the fullest WHILE having to do the fucked-up things you have to do here and there in order to take care of this person who can't quite take care of themselves. There's an abuser-abused dynamic in there too. And there's a "I'm getting my life together, making more money, making moves... but my partner doesn't care, they don't truly want me to win" type thing in there too.

Even Vampires can't claim this level of fucked-up. They can keep their Beast in control if they act a certain way because it's just the "other side" of them.

Quote from: Snowman0147;1081367The opposite is Changeling the Lost.  For all its color you cannot avoid the horrible truth.  You play as a kidnapped victim who was taken to alien world, horrible things are done to you, your no longer human, suffering from PTSD, and even when you return no one misses you.  The fetch your capturer had created made sure of that.  Your only friends are fellow victims who are crazy as you.  Pretty damn grim if you tell me.

A lot of players have never been in a Tier Three game. Not only do you realize there are many others who were abused like you but that a lot of them are in positions of power years later. They still act the way they're going to act. Did their abuse really do anything to change them -- or were they always going to be who they are now, particularly if they are pieces of shit. When you bring Courts in, the whole game changes and a lot of players didn't like that, at least IME. People get caught up in the faerie theme and forget that they're playing creatures that can be more fucked-up than the very things took them in the first place because they know better.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1081393I think the problem is that it doesn't have an underlying metaphor to tie it together. Vampire has an addiction metaphor (or at least addiction makes the most sense, given that addicts can and do kill people and can get others addicted; that's definitely more appropriate than, I don't know, a gay metaphor), Changling has a human trafficking survivor metaphor (neatly tying into the actual changeling myth), but for the life of me I can't tell the metaphor underlying Geist.

[...]

Geist doesn't seem to have any of that. It doesn't speak to some aspect of the human condition, except perhaps the sheer randomness of life itself. That thing we ignore because acknowledging it, our lack of control over our own circumstances, would drive us mad... like a character in a Cthulhu mythos story. I don't think you can ever make a compelling game about celebrating life because life is too nebulous.

What would you do with a second chance at life?

That is it. One of those questions that's been asked forever universally by people across the world.

Whereas Vampire simply asks "how do you handle being damned?" and Changeling is a little more profound "do you become your abuser? can you ever be at peace with what happened?", Geist asks a truly existential question.

But to keep it simple: will you fuck it up? will you become so much worse? will you completely do a 180? will things stay the same? will you become so much more than you were?

And even moreso: do you deserve your second chance?

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1081398Here are some of my thoughts on CoD2e.

I welcome any counter criticism.

It's funny. Way back in the day when CofD first became a thing via the God-Machine Chronicles book, I was calling all the shit in the new rules. My players that read it were pissed. I was pissed. The new edition was utter trash. I was younger then and now that I'm older, I just can't help but see people who worked on it as people who can't do anything without a guiding hand and a bigger authority ensuring they don't get crazy. For all the problems White Wolf had, it would never have allowed the crap that has come out of Onyx Path. The level of quality, attention to detail and "feel" just dropped off a cliff post-Geist. Completely different direction, very much the same thing Paradox is doing except before it was just an indie company doing it with not much money on the line, a handful of people who had no business making games without someone more accomplished and skilled steering the wheel.

(I mean, Mummy: The Curse was a just a fucking mess... I have never had a player literally refuse to speak of a game but Mummy was that game to do it.)

Quote from: Snowman0147;1081401I wasn't complaining about the grimness.  I was merely pointing it out.

Though with Geist I will ask you this.  Why do D&D adventurers adventure?  Why do they leave their mundane lives and risk their very existence in those dark dungeons?  Is it for fame, greed, a higher calling, or what?  Why do people in real life climb mountains?

Quote from: tenbones;1081426With Geist you need to play up the elements from Wraith *more*. The problem is then it has a very WW the Apocalypse feel... which is not necessarily bad... but it remains that the core concept of the Geist is bad in execution itself.

That could be an interesting "pathos". But that would require a lot of thought to make those distinctions meaningful and playable.

I'm confident I could do it.

Geist tends to require that its players/gms have dealt with some real shit in life. You can tell when reading it that some of those working on book have been in some really dark places. That illustration before one of the chapters with a Krewe of Sin-Eaters holding hands in a circle -- it has a very "support group" type of feel to it. It's actually surprisingly mature given this is a game where you can literally suffocate someone in a viscous baby caul (I actually did that to a player in a Mage game when they encountered some Sin-Eaters and decided to fight them to get a key mission item they had).

I think it's also why there's a lot of overlap between Geist and Werewolf fans (so it's funny you mentioned that). Geists were always different, so were Werewolves. They were always different than others -- they were never going to have what I call a "charmed life". Their life will be much harder but ultimately they have a lot more going for them than anyone else and can achieve much more than others.  

(In previous threads on here, I've seen a lot of charmed lifers showing what's up. Guess which?)

Quote from: Snowman0147;1081451Hell a mortal who returns from the dead and now have ghost powers would be more interesting than the weird fusion thing.

That's literally what sin-eaters are...

Quote from: Snark Knight;1081559Vampires are the ultimate embodiment of a privileged minority with absolute power, who take advantage of it to molest those below them on a nightly basis. That sure seems to be flying over the heads of the usual suspects who're surprisingly quick to dote on this when they'd be the first to burn down a 'problematic power fantasy', although I'm optimistic the writing team are at least self-aware enough to remember we're playing monsters.

Nah, they're just parasites who hope their host doesn't realize they're killing them inside . Otherwise, they're about to get hit with some Vermox. They only have power when you don't know what to look for and/or don't know how to fight back.

Addiction, rape and toxic relationships are all legit parallels too.

Quote from: Snark Knight;1081559So long as we don't end up with a Beasts situation where "Hunters are an embodiment of the rising alt-right neo-nazi facism in Drumpf's America, because Vampires are the REAL victims lashing out at their human abusers."

Never heard this before? Feels like sjw and alt-right appropriating everything for their "cause" again.

Beast was a really creepy book. I remember lightly skimming it only partially back when they released the unedited copy free online years back because I could just tell something was deeply wrong about it. I was like "why is this book glorifying abusers? Why is it trying to make out people who hurt others are good because their victims deserve it? Do they really have a high-schooler beating the shit out of another student in a school canteen because they felt they `deserved` it? Vampire never made it out vampires are good at all..."

And then it came out that the lead designer on the game was a child molester.

Because of course he was.

(I have never, EVER seen the RPG.net team -- or anyone of their like --  ever scramble harder than when that came out)

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1081725Firstly, the blog mistakenly assumed that the maximum penalty allowed is -5, but that's actually only for individual penalties per source. There's actually no limit to how many penalties may be applied and stacked, only that each one cannot exceed -5.

Really? Where is that in the corebook? Genuinely curious.

You can extend it to -/+10 when dealing with pure supernatural rolls, I know from GM'ing Mage that game made heavy use of that.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1081731I think we're getting off topic.

Too late.

(hahaha)

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1081731But to be quite honest, I feel like Paradox wanted to make a new IP given all of the changes they've made. They're only maintaining continuity because of brand recognition. It is entirely possible that, in the future, Paradox will devise a new world of darkness if they feel that the current continuity cannot be changed or retconned enough for their business needs.

That always happens though. It's like when a new CEO starts at a new company: gotta shake up things (fire most of the leadership team), put their own brand on everything (fuck up projects that were getting on just fine), all that good stuff (end up crarshing the stock price of the company in the following quarter and bailing on a golden parachute).

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1081731The World of Darkness 4e and the Chronicles of Darkness 2e are directly competing with each other and V5.

No, they're not. CofD is a non-motherfucking-factor in the games world right now. Simple as. On the other hand...

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1081731I don't understand why Paradox hasn't expended the resources to get the rights to remaster Bloodlines 1.

...because Bloodlines 1 possess a large portion of the fanbase who would buy Bloodlines 2. Given the choice, an uncomfortably large amount of them would simply stick with the remaster. For a recent example, look at what Activision did with the COD4 remaster: nobody was looking for Infinite Warfare but a lotta people were looking for shiny new-and-improved COD4.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1082011Warhammer vampires are superior to WoD vampires.

How so?

Also, nah. Warhammer vamps are inferior to Morrowind vamps are inferior to WOD vamps.

Vampires Wars Trilogy was sick, though!

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1082092Speaking of shadow hunters...

An idea I had for vampires with shadow powers mixed up the Masquerade Lasombra and Requiem Khaibit.

Every. Fucking. Time. I GM Requiem, somebody picks the bloody Khaibit. I really don't know why. I do not know why this Bloodline always finds a way in but it does. At least four separate people in separate games with completely different groups I have GM'd have picked them.

Fucking Khaibit...

Because Khaibits kick ass, uses shadows, and follow higher callings.  Most vampires are self serving jackasses, but Khaibits don't do that.  They protect others from even darker things that would fuck up the would.  The very embodiment of Nightbane in nWoD.  Even if they don't match up to that level they are still serve as bodyguard to the prince thus making the city more stable.

Another thing to remember is this.  Mekhets are sneaky and you would have some obfuscation before switching to Khaibit.  Khaibit is very combat focus, but can control shadows.  Add in parkour merit, a fighting style, and a good weapon to get...  the NINJA!  Your a fucking Mortal Kombat character.   Khaibit Wins!  Fatality!

My God I love the Khaibits.

Quote from: Snowman0147;1082106Again I was thinking disciplines done Godbound style.  So when I say done differently I mean sure some core powers, but the vampires can purchase powers from other disciplines as reskins.  So a protean transformation power could be reskin into a uncommon shadow discipline power that the clan knows of.

Okay. So in gaming design jargon we're using a syntactic magic system which provides more or less universal guidelines for effects.

That's not the only way to go though. Powers, and traits in general, could be described in a free-form manner, although that opens its own can of worms. I would imagine, however, that free-form would easier for the GM to arbitrate; at least compared to WoD/CoD defaults. There are so many instances in World/Chronicle of Darkness in which different splats have wildly different power levels when trying to accomplish the same effect with the core rules (power creep only gets worse in the supplements). IIRC, one example going around a while ago was that vampires and werewolves could potentially lift cars, whereas a geist could telekineticly lift all the cars on a street simultaneously. Mage had the sense to provide guidelines for effects at each level, so why couldn't the rest?

Quote from: Snowman0147;1082106Again I was thinking disciplines done Godbound style.  So when I say done differently I mean sure some core powers, but the vampires can purchase powers from other disciplines as reskins.  So a protean transformation power could be reskin into a uncommon shadow discipline power that the clan knows of.

Okay. So in gaming design jargon we're using a syntactic magic system which provides more or less universal guidelines for effects.

That's not the only way to go though. Powers, and traits in general, could be described in a free-form manner, although that opens its own can of worms. I would imagine, however, that free-form would easier for the GM to arbitrate; at least compared to WoD/CoD defaults. There are so many instances in World/Chronicle of Darkness in which different splats have wildly different power levels when trying to accomplish the same effect with the core rules (power creep only gets worse in the supplements). IIRC, one example going around a while ago was that vampires and werewolves could potentially lift cars, whereas a geist could telekineticly lift all the cars on a street simultaneously. Mage had the sense to provide guidelines for effects at each level, so why couldn't the rest?

Quote from: PrometheanVigil;1082131What would you do with a second chance at life?

That is it. One of those questions that's been asked forever universally by people across the world.

Whereas Vampire simply asks "how do you handle being damned?" and Changeling is a little more profound "do you become your abuser? can you ever be at peace with what happened?", Geist asks a truly existential question.

But to keep it simple: will you fuck it up? will you become so much worse? will you completely do a 180? will things stay the same? will you become so much more than you were?

And even moreso: do you deserve your second chance?

That's an interesting question. I only wish it could have been folded into a re-imagining of Wraith, rather than consigning sapient ghosts into a non-playable subterranean purgatory.

With a bit more leniency when it comes to the rules, it could have been possible for Wraiths to pretend to be alive. Maybe they created bodies out of ectoplasm, or possessed and reanimated and prettified a corpse, or possessed a live person and used magic plastic surgery to recreate their own features. In the half-finished fan remake, there was even a merit to indicate that nobody knew you were dead (although maintaining that facade would have required powers, like those I just mentioned).

Quote from: PrometheanVigil;1082131It's funny. Way back in the day when CofD first became a thing via the God-Machine Chronicles book, I was calling all the shit in the new rules. My players that read it were pissed. I was pissed. The new edition was utter trash. I was younger then and now that I'm older, I just can't help but see people who worked on it as people who can't do anything without a guiding hand and a bigger authority ensuring they don't get crazy. For all the problems White Wolf had, it would never have allowed the crap that has come out of Onyx Path. The level of quality, attention to detail and "feel" just dropped off a cliff post-Geist. Completely different direction, very much the same thing Paradox is doing except before it was just an indie company doing it with not much money on the line, a handful of people who had no business making games without someone more accomplished and skilled steering the wheel.

(I mean, Mummy: The Curse was a just a fucking mess... I have never had a player literally refuse to speak of a game but Mummy was that game to do it.)

White Wolf has never been particularly good at game design. That they have good ideas sometimes only makes the whole that much more frustrating.

Conditions have the potential to be useful for cross reference and saving time. How many times have you found rules that reference effects created by other rules? How many times have you noticed subsystems that are similar enough to other subsystems that they could be folded together?

And the linear experience costs are a great change for anyone who wanted to learn cool powers within a reasonable time frame.

Could it all have been done better? Oh hell yes.

Codification and streamlining is great for core rules. But when you start changing things up for its own sake, then it makes more sense to offer those as optional rules. Particularly anything that introduces complexity as opposed to removing complexity.

Superpowers especially needed to have been handled with better care. Instead of changing up the disciplines and making devotion bloat a problem (again), it would have made more sense to have multiple powers at each level (including physical disciplines) a la V5 and to cut down on redundant powers.

The vampire merits are just more bloat and unnecessary bloat at that. I don't understand why these needed to be merits specifically, or why devotions couldn't have been given more diverse prerequisites. In 1e you do see some examples of devotions with prerequisites like merits, bloodline membership, and other devotions. I don't understand why 2e couldn't have standardized that, especially considered that they standardized discipline merits. (And speaking of merits, Protean 1e offered animal forms and merge substance options at the same cost as rank 1 merits, yet never actually codified these into merits. Protean 2e would have been a good opportunity to do so... but nope.)

Requiem 2e claims to be a storytelling game, but the vast majority of the devotions are combat-centric. Are the writers even aware of the hypocrisy? Do they not realize that this could be avoided by allowing physical disciplines to have distinct and multiple powers at each rank?

Quote from: PrometheanVigil;1082131Really? Where is that in the corebook? Genuinely curious.

You can extend it to -/+10 when dealing with pure supernatural rolls, I know from GM'ing Mage that game made heavy use of that.

Page 124 of the Chronicles of Darkness 1e rulebook, last paragraph of the first column.

QuoteAs a rule, a single modifier never exceeds five, whether as a bonus or penalty. [...] Troupes may look up official values so that modifier dice for, say, tools, weather and character disabilities stack. That is, they're all cumulative.

Or your Storyteller may simply consider all the factors at work in terms of a one-to-five range and come up with one total that applies for an effort.

The book presents two options for representing modifiers.

Quote from: PrometheanVigil;1082131That always happens though. It's like when a new CEO starts at a new company: gotta shake up things (fire most of the leadership team), put their own brand on everything (fuck up projects that were getting on just fine), all that good stuff (end up crarshing the stock price of the company in the following quarter and bailing on a golden parachute).

Sometimes changes are necessary for a brand to flourish, because toxic communities don't always translate into good sales. Toxic communities drive people away. Magic: The Gathering is good example. As is the Captain Marvel movie, which made a billion dollars despite widespread hate from online parties.

World of Darkness simply isn't appropriate for the modern zeitgeist. If Mark Rein*Hagen were making it today, I imagine he wouldn't have done it the way he did in 1991. It needs to be re-imagined for the modern era, not just given a cosmetic patch job.

Ask yourself: what if you were making a grimdark urban fantasy game from scratch in the contemporary time period of an alternate timeline to our own, without any predecessor games to steal ideas from, and had to rely on fantasy fiction like Anne Rice and Briam Lumley... then do you really think it would closely resemble Vampire: The Masquerade from our timeline?

It speak volumes that the funny talking Malkavian class is what most fans of the video game talk about, despite the fact that this is an absolutely terrible portrayal of mental illness and is completely at odds with any kind of grimdark atmosphere.

Quote from: PrometheanVigil;1082131No, they're not. CofD is a non-motherfucking-factor in the games world right now. Simple as. On the other hand...

Chronicles of Darkness 1e has an adamantine metal on DriveThruRPG. So do several other Chronicles of Darkness books.

The Chronicles of Darkness books still succeed on all their kickstarters. If nothing else, it holds a huge amount of good will from fans.

Chronicles is certainly still a factor, otherwise Onyx Path or White Wolf would have killed it already.

The two are still competing and people are still fighting the stupid edition wars.

Quote from: PrometheanVigil;1082131How so?

Also, nah. Warhammer vamps are inferior to Morrowind vamps are inferior to WOD vamps.

Vampires Wars Trilogy was sick, though!

Warhammer vamps are actually loosely based on WoD vamps, but they take the concept in so many more and interesting directions.

If a warhammer vampire's beast takes over (yeah, they have those too), then they physically transform into giant bat-like monsters. That's cool and it doesn't happen in WoD.

Furthermore, vampire strengths and weaknesses are much more customizable. You aren't limited to a pseudo-Ricean mold like WoD is.

Warhammer does the "emotional stunting" better too. WoD made a big deal about vampires being emotionally limited or something but never explained this or used it as a plot point, but in Warhammer the explicitly vampires develop exaggerated personalities to explain their extreme behavior. (Oddly enough, Brian Lumley did something similar in his Necroscope books.)

Oh yeah CoD is garbage.  David A. Hill (now known as Olivia A. Hill) lied to me on what is going on with that edition nWoD.  I was led to believe that CoD was going to be streamlined, drop the merit bulk, and generally be clean up.  Instead we got bloated game with useless ass rules, merit bulk, conditions bulk, tilt bulk, two xps to track, and a fucking flow chart for spiritual beings.

Quote from: Snowman0147;1082219Oh yeah CoD is garbage.  David A. Hill (now known as Olivia A. Hill) lied to me on what is going on with that edition nWoD.  I was led to believe that CoD was going to be streamlined, drop the merit bulk, and generally be clean up.  Instead we got bloated game with useless ass rules, merit bulk, conditions bulk, tilt bulk, two xps to track, and a fucking flow chart for spiritual beings.

Speaking of flowcharts for spirits, the CoD2e spirit rules stripped away the previously evocative descriptions of spiritual manifestations. The CoD1e rulebook and the Book of Spirits described strange lights, eerie sounds, rolling clouds of ominous fog, blowing leaves... One of the bits I liked the most was the suggestion that a ghost's appearance correlated with their willpower or residual self-image, meaning that weaker ghosts looked like wisps and stronger like almost alive people, plus evocative numina like ghost sign, ghost speech, electromagnetic disruption, etc... and the best that CoD2e can do in conversion is "image." They didn't even bother to convert the example ghosts from 1e either.

EDIT: While I don't have a problem with unifying the previously scattered spirit rules, they lost a lot of nuance in translation.

Edit: Are there any simplified spirit rules? If not, then I could try my own.

EDIT: Like, one of the things I don't like about the CoD spirit rules is that they're too systematized and limited.

For example, spirits build according to those rules are limited by the concept of space. That is, they can only exist in one spot and have a definite size.

Let's use an example from fiction. In the movie IT, Pennywise isn't really limited by that sort of thing. In fact, the only reason the main characters can even fight back is because they may have psychic powers. The clown itself is just a projection, a mouth.

In fact, most hauntings in fiction don't operate by such limitations. Unless you specifically need to interact with them, ghosts and spirits don't exist at any particular point in space.

Not sure how to represent that, though.

EDIT: There's a number of other things about the CoD spirits rules I think are silly or stupid. Like the parts where it was changed to resemble the penumbra from WoD.

Twilight objects: your cigarette leaves a ghostly duplicate for the short time you remember it. This is silly. I can get ghostly doubles of destroyed beloved bars, but not that. There's pretty much no fiction where ghostly echoes of destroyed places play a role. In the few instances I know (e.g. Insidious series), these exist at the whim of the plot rather than being a visible part of the normal ethereal landscape.

The three different twilight: there's a separate twilight for angels, ghosts and spirits. This is same as the WoD penumbra rules. It's unnecessary and contradicts past supplements, like the mage intro kit in which a ghost could be asked to help fight a spirit.