World Of Darkness General (VtM, WtO, MtA, etc.) -

[Bass]

They can't help themselves. They are such retards who can't understand the irony of championing a game world whose entire purpose is shades of grey who let's you PLAY as the traditional 'villains' and adds layers and nuance to their activities and declaring a whole subset of people as evil based on one political affiliation.

NuWoD is full of these retards who just don't get it. I keep hoping they'll fuck off and just leave us oldfags in peace but they still keep squatting in my hobby like a bad stink.

Most people nowadays miss the point that the most vampires in WOD should care about mortal politics is "Have I ghouled Candidate A's secretary or personal assistant? Because if I haven't I should really get on that." and maybe "does specific policy fuck with my herd?"

 

[Snekposter]

Most people nowadays miss the point that the most vampires in WOD should care about mortal politics is "Have I ghouled Candidate A's secretary or personal assistant? Because if I haven't I should really get on that." and maybe "does specific policy fuck with my herd?"

You forgot, "What will this do to my stock portfolio?" Ventrue, Tremere, and Toreador all have at least that much to be worried over. And yeah, I can totally see younger Torries getting involved with SocJus as the "hip" thing and then dropping it almost as soon as they realize what its about. There's reasons to be involved with mortal politics, but politics for morality's sake as opposed to personal gain is a fucking stupid concept.

 

[Corn Flakes]

As my friend's Ventrue was fond of saying, why should the lion care about the politics of a flock of sheep? Mortals are food and expendable resources, championing their causes is just going to get you manipulated by other vampires into doing what they want. And then there's a good chance you'll wake up one night with a great view to the sunrise.

 

[Bass]

You forgot, "What will this do to my stock portfolio?" Ventrue, Tremere, and Toreador all have at least that much to be worried over. And yeah, I can totally see younger Torries getting involved with SocJus as the "hip" thing and then dropping it almost as soon as they realize what its about. There's reasons to be involved with mortal politics, but politics for morality's sake as opposed to personal gain is a fucking stupid concept.

Dont forget about short selling stocks. You can make money when the markets go down as well as up. Lol.

But yeah, I am in total agreement, no vampire is ever going to approach mortal politics from a point of morality rather then from a view for personal convenience. Except for a very young vampire that was embraced in the last 20-ish years, a very "hip" toreador, or maybe a brujah for stupid brujah reasons. Even then, there still should be an element of " how do I win either way?"

 

[Snekposter]

Well, Brujah doing stupid shit that tends to backfire on them is par for the course. The rest... agreed.

 

[Secret Asshole]

Good Vampire games are basically a blend of RTS and RPG. You've got this swath of territory and you've got to manage it from these other older assholes and these crazy psychopaths. Influence is such an underrated background stat that you can basically fucking crush everyone in the coitere if they try stupid shit. God, I had so much fun as a Lasombra Antribu who poured everything into influence vs. this tarded character who wanted to be Prince and completely subvert our city which basically maintained full independence due to the really fucking hard work of our group. He was a Venture and was planning to sell us out completely to the Camarilla. Mind, our group had been working to get this city independent for like 3 years of IRL time. There was a time when he just started using dominate and forced blood bonds and basically pissed off the entire group. Absolutely no nuance whatsoever, typical Cam 'obey me' shit. So we decided to dispose of him. I had the most influence of the group and was basically the highest ranked in the city. Now, the way he came in was to completely disrupt the nice city we were running. So I decided to pour gasoline on the fire.

I initiated a combined truck and garbage strike. He'd already cut food supplies to fuck our politicians over, so me making a truck strike just made it worse. Garbage strike added to the agitation and let the Nos basically have free reign at dumps and sewers. The rest of the coterie just started inciting fucking riots everywhere, total fucking Armageddon (the combat oriented Malk and Brujah just went fucking HAM on his ghouls with charmed and insane rioters). I just got on the phone with the police commissioner and politely 're-distributed' riot police away from the warehouse where he was keeping his refrigerated blood stored. Got a Nos friend to spread a rumor that he was hoarding food there, so the unwashed masses started molotving his warehouse. He had to go there personally. He sucked at combat (So did I), but I loved getting creative with my limited pools. I looked. "Its a warehouse, I got drive 1. I got Obteneration 2, Celerity 1...."

Shrouded his ass with Obteneration 2 and beheaded him from behind....with a forklift (and a piece of conveniently placed sheet metal). "Nothing personal kid". Forklift-Kun decapitating a would-be prince became a meme in our group. The Cam was so embarrassed they never tried again because their Venture was killed by a forklift.

 

[Bass]

Good Vampire games are basically a blend of RTS and RPG. You've got this swath of territory and you've got to manage it from these other older assholes and these crazy psychopaths. Influence is such an underrated background stat that you can basically fucking crush everyone in the coitere if they try stupid shit. God, I had so much fun as a Lasombra Antribu who poured everything into influence vs. this tarded character who wanted to be Prince and completely subvert our city which basically maintained full independence due to the really fucking hard work of our group. He was a Venture and was planning to sell us out completely to the Camarilla. Mind, our group had been working to get this city independent for like 3 years of IRL time. There was a time when he just started using dominate and forced blood bonds and basically pissed off the entire group. Absolutely no nuance whatsoever, typical Cam 'obey me' shit. So we decided to dispose of him. I had the most influence of the group and was basically the highest ranked in the city. Now, the way he came in was to completely disrupt the nice city we were running. So I decided to pour gasoline on the fire.

I initiated a combined truck and garbage strike. He'd already cut food supplies to fuck our politicians over, so me making a truck strike just made it worse. Garbage strike added to the agitation and let the Nos basically have free reign at dumps and sewers. The rest of the coterie just started inciting fucking riots everywhere, total fucking Armageddon (the combat oriented Malk and Brujah just went fucking HAM on his ghouls with charmed and insane rioters). I just got on the phone with the police commissioner and politely 're-distributed' riot police away from the warehouse where he was keeping his refrigerated blood stored. Got a Nos friend to spread a rumor that he was hoarding food there, so the unwashed masses started molotving his warehouse. He had to go there personally. He sucked at combat (So did I), but I loved getting creative with my limited pools. I looked. "Its a warehouse, I got drive 1. I got Obteneration 2, Celerity 1...."

Shrouded his ass with Obteneration 2 and beheaded him from behind....with a forklift (and a piece of conveniently placed sheet metal). "Nothing personal kid". Forklift-Kun decapitating a would-be prince became a meme in our group. The Cam was so embarrassed they never tried again because their Venture was killed by a forklift.

Influence is fucking awesome. Nothing like having a rivals haven condemned and bulldozed in the middle of the day and they had no idea who engineered it. All your Tremere wards are no match for the city department of public works my friend.

Granted it took a couple of months of in game time to pull off, but done right nothing can top influence given enough time.

That section of town really needed a new parking lot.

 

[Unexpected Genitals]

O boi time to sperg. So I'm a massive CtL nerd despite having never actually played a game of it myself, I just really love the setting and the themes. I like folklore, I like high fantasy, and I like existential horror. Putting em all together just seems logical.

I've also concepted a Beast Cleareyes character because I'm autistic like that even though she'd likely never see any use in an actual game.

 

[Titan Lithos]

Influence makes Werewolves cry. Old school players who want to turn everything into a kill all characters game turn around and complain when their caern becomes a parking lot for a Dave and Buster's after they kill a few too many kindred.

 

[Snekposter]

I don't know what your experiences are, but I had fun with Resources and Contacts in my Vampire game. Turns out when you're a bunch of poorfags in the bad part of LA a former PMC with a few years' worth of Blackwater money stashed in the bank and some war buddies with the hookup on questionably legal protective equipment might as well be God for all the boons he can bestow. Especially when nobody else in the weird-ass non-coterie the game was about took Computers so he's the only one who can use a search engine with any real degree of success...

 

[knightlautrec]

So V2 of MET vampire is out and I am tempted since it isn't V5 and a revamp of their rules (which are fairly decent obviously for LARP reasons and in v20 TTRP. Their version of knowledges should just be used across OWoD imo)

https://vampirelarp.com

I was interested but seeing the Editor did make me roll eyes because obvious troon is obvious but I'm hoping it's okay since I am gonna put down for the hardback copy. But we'll see.

Edit: Also I hate v5 but I am a slave to board/card games. Did anyone pick up the v5 version of Vampire the Eternal Struggle? And given it a play?

 

[Corn Flakes]

Influence makes Werewolves cry. Old school players who want to turn everything into a kill all characters game turn around and complain when their caern becomes a parking lot for a Dave and Buster's after they kill a few too many kindred.

I don't know what your experiences are, but I had fun with Resources and Contacts in my Vampire game. Turns out when you're a bunch of poorfags in the bad part of LA a former PMC with a few years' worth of Blackwater money stashed in the bank and some war buddies with the hookup on questionably legal protective equipment might as well be God for all the boons he can bestow. Especially when nobody else in the weird-ass non-coterie the game was about took Computers so he's the only one who can use a search engine with any real degree of success...

Everybody seems to get fixated on the disciplines and the superpowers and forget that vamps are meant to be manipulative creatures that operate in the shadows. Even the meatheadiest of Brujahs should be using plenty of goons, gang members, rabble-rousers, contacts and what have you to do their dirty work for them. After all, the Prince may frown upon vamp-on-vamp violence in his domains, but if a bunch of rowdy "protesters" suddenly and randomly "decide" that the museum that arrogant Ventrue who's getting a bit too big for his boots holds most of his valuables in is a "monument to white supremacy"... well, that's just bad luck, isn't it?

This sort of social engineering is just about the most fun you can have in a Storyteller game, if you have a storyteller who knows how to handle these things. In a game ages ago (way back when Revised was still brand new), our player group had to pool almost every single pip of Contacts, Influence, Resources, Allies and Retainers we had among us over three sessions in order to solve a problem in a spectacular fashion. The problem being a Glass Walkers caern hidden under the basement of a skyscraper right in the middle of the city. The solution being having the building condemned and demolished in record time. We didn't quite drop it on top of the pups' heads, but it was close.

 

[Snekposter]

Its especially since ironic since that character was supposed to be the actual meathead of the party. I just picked skills I thought even a meathead would pick up after about a decade overseas trying to not die, either from bullets or boredom. Probably the only Marine boot in the history of the Corps who didn't blow his enlistment bonus on a sports car and women of loose-to-no morals though, which was probably the most unrealistic part of the whole game, never mind the fact there's vampires and other spooky supernatural things.

Edit: I did take a dot or two in Finance, oddly enough, mostly because I figured he'd actually listen to what his accountant was telling him at tax time and do reading on his own in down time. Real popular with his buddies as you can imagine since he'd be the only one not up to his eyeballs in credit card debt and predatory auto loans.

 

[knightlautrec]

Influence makes Werewolves cry. Old school players who want to turn everything into a kill all characters game turn around and complain when their caern becomes a parking lot for a Dave and Buster's after they kill a few too many kindred.

I mean, in defense of Garou and influence thing is that its under the purview of the kinfolk. That's literally their job - taking care of the day to day human relations so Garou can focus on the Wyrm and not have to play 4D chess with vampires because, let's face it, vampires are better at for the most part. It is supposed to highlight the huge difference between them ideally, really in terms of game and operation.

Though it does kinda also highlight that the splats were not supposed to cross streams really. Not in the way CofD does.

 

[Corn Flakes]

I mean, in defense of Garou and influence thing is that its under the purview of the kinfolk. That's literally their job - taking care of the day to day human relations so Garou can focus on the Wyrm and not have to play 4D chess with vampires because, let's face it, vampires are better at for the most part. It is supposed to highlight the huge difference between them ideally, really in terms of game and operation.

That's true. It's unfair to expect kinfolks to be able to play ball against vamps. Even a comparatively very young vamp (call it 80 years or so) has decades more experience than most kin, and likely more supernaural assets available to them. IIRC (it has been a while), the Glass Walkers we were going up against in that story had a couple actual garou at the top trying to counter our schemes, but most of their operation was kinfolk and we even had to subvert/remove a few of them along the way. Either way, having an attack pool of 18d10 can be a blast but sometimes just fooling the pelts off a bunch of fleabags is just more fun.

Though it does kinda also highlight that the splats were not supposed to cross streams really. Not in the way CofD does.

Nope. The splats were, at most, meant to operate antagonistically. If you're playing one game, the GM runs the other supernatural creatures and balances them as he sees fit. That powerful Hermetic Mage in a wide-brimmed hat hunting down the city's Tremere? He follows basically no rules from the Mage the Ascension rulebook, he just does what the story needs him to do. The trapped werewolf the coterie accidentally released when skulking around this chemical plant for evidence to take down a political enemy? He has no tribe, no auspice, no intermediate forms and no stats. He's just one big ball of claws, fur, teeth and dice. And he's your problem now.

Bloodlines did a surprisingly good job with that, actually. You had to be more creative than "just shoot/claw at it until it dies", which is how most climactic encounters should be resolved.

Anyway, it's when you start mixing splats that things go to hell in a handbasket. See, Samuel "Ashtray" Haight.

 

[knightlautrec]

See, Samuel "Ashtray" Haight.

He has 10 Rage. As a Theurge. 9 WP, 6 Arete, 9 Gnosis. And Thaumaturgy.

I've often thought about doing a ridiculous one shot cross splat of trying to kill him with high levelled PCs. The equivalent of a DnD lvl 20 'kill a God' scenario.

 

[Snekposter]

He has 10 Rage. As a Theurge. 9 WP, 6 Arete, 9 Gnosis. And Thaumaturgy.

I've often thought about doing a ridiculous one shot cross splat of trying to kill him with high levelled PCs. The equivalent of a DnD lvl 20 'kill a God' scenario.

Automatic shotguns with a silver/DB mix. Just start rolling up those grievous wounds from extra successes on top of fire/silver agg damage and there's no more problem. Assuming you can get close enough to open fire, that is. Alternatively, depending on which splat you use, Crinos Glasswalker with an M61. 20mm HEI solves just about any problem. Or lure him to Iraq and have the military call in Mr. Specter to 105 his ass from a few thousand feet up. And then call in the Warthogs to BRRRT and napalm bomb his ass.

 

[Corn Flakes]

He has 10 Rage. As a Theurge. 9 WP, 6 Arete, 9 Gnosis. And Thaumaturgy.

I've often thought about doing a ridiculous one shot cross splat of trying to kill him with high levelled PCs. The equivalent of a DnD lvl 20 'kill a God' scenario.

Automatic shotguns with a silver/DB mix. Just start rolling up those grievous wounds from extra successes on top of fire/silver agg damage and there's no more problem. Assuming you can get close enough to open fire, that is. Alternatively, depending on which splat you use, Crinos Glasswalker with an M61. 20mm HEI solves just about any problem. Or lure him to Iraq and have the military call in Mr. Specter to 105 his ass from a few thousand feet up. And then call in the Warthogs to BRRRT and napalm bomb his ass.

If you guys ever want to have buckets of fun with a one-shot session or a short campaign/chronicle with experienced players, try what our GM did at a con way back:

Void Engineers hunting Samuel Haight in the Umbra. Played completely for laughs.

It may or may not have turned into Evolve, years before Evolve was a thing. It was the most fun I ever had playing a Technocrat.

 

[Snekposter]

The hallmarks of Void Engineer Technology are their command of Correspondence and Dimensional Science (or DS). Void Engineer DS differs greatly from the Traditions' Spirit Sphere. Void Engineers find it easiest to access alternate dimensions in high-technology areas such as Constructs and laboratories. Conversely, they find it almost impossible to use DS in natural areas such as Caerns and primal Nodes. DS holds that the atmosphere of the Near Universe (or Near Umbra) is poisonous, and when travelling beyond the Penumbra, Void Engineers must carry their own supply of atmosphere. If the Near Umbra is poisonous, the Deep Umbra is a vacuum. Once past the Horizon, most Engineers find it necessary to use sealed suits or ships to breathe and avoid explosive decompression, even if Tradition mages do not. When different travellers meet, the result is often incongruities, as when an armored and suited space marine crosses the "cold and lifeless" surface of Europa, only to find a naked Dreamspeaker sitting by a fire. The Engineers also have a small number of Prime specialists who sanitize nodes and create Horizon Realms, a feat many other Conventions still cannot match.

That scene aside that I can see the 40k guys of FlashGitz having some hilarious Black Templar shenanigans with, I'm seeing your little short campaign being a bizarre mix of Starship Troopers, Aliens, and 40k. The little tech dweeb with a Fire Warrior looking outfit and some high-Forces primium-based energy weapons, the Adam Baldwin-type meatshield with a shoulder-rigged autogun and power armor, and throw in a Deist who despises sorcery, witchcraft, and abominations of all stripes, and will purge them in God's name. And the Johnny Rico style straight-man squad leader who regrets signing up to lead this band of fuck-heads.

 

[Obreon]

You forgot, "What will this do to my stock portfolio?" Ventrue, Tremere, and Toreador all have at least that much to be worried over. And yeah, I can totally see younger Torries getting involved with SocJus as the "hip" thing and then dropping it almost as soon as they realize what its about. There's reasons to be involved with mortal politics, but politics for morality's sake as opposed to personal gain is a fucking stupid concept.

I can see some Toreador as champagne socialists. Not a fucking breadtuber but an actual champagne socialists.
Back in the day there were a lot of attempts by the USSR to infiltrate high spheres within the US; some of these efforts made use of prominent artists (even Hollywood actors) who were into lefty stuff. They were not, however, like twitter lefties, but extremely sophisticated people who attended art galleries and knew the NY elites.