Hot answers tagged world-of-darkness
27
I do think you're being too cautious.
One of the key elements of the Storytelling System is the Willpower economy. It's a "virtuous cycle." The difficulty of 8 means that, in order to succeed on important rolls, you'll want to spend Willpower — those three dice generally produce an additional success. With your Willpower rapidly depleting, the best way to ...
25
As usual, there are several grades of response. In order of goodness:
Option 1. Talk to him.
Discuss this concern with him as a fellow adult, outside of game. Bring to his attention that he's behaving like a homicidal maniac rather than the character he claims he's playing (sounds like a good reason to deny him Willpower restoration in WoD, too). ...
23
The most reliable way to reduce the damage caused by sunlight is through the use of the discipline of Fortitude. Fortitude allows you to soak aggravated damage, including that caused by sunlight. According to page 302 of the Vampire 20th Anniversary edition, the difficulty for soaking sunlight while "fully protected by heavy clothes, sunglasses, gloves, and ...
22
My recommendation is to work from the other direction; instead of taking the mortal population and extrapolating how many vampires "should" be there, start with the number of vampires you want to have and decide how it is they survive on a fief that's overtaxed. Use the 50K-100K as a figure of stability; once you get twice as many Kindred in there, you've ...
20
Supernatural power comes from making mutually exclusive changes to the human soul.
My view isn't explicitly stated anywhere, but I consider it supported by statements across the nWoD books. There are a few representative quotes from the core books I own at the bottom.
To do anything majorly supernatural, you need to be more than human. A vampire's soul is ...
19
As a long-time V:tM and V:tR fan, I have always thought the 1:50k and 1:100k ratios were unimaginative, unrealistic (well, as unrealistic as a game involving vampires could be) and poorly thought out. In fact, I generally think any set ratio of vampires:humans is arbitrary and silly because ratios fail to take into account numerous real world factors.
For ...
18
Use a very strong central theme and mood. Think of your campaign as if it was a TV series held together by these things, as well returning props, characters, places etc.
Use a strong, universal antagonist, possibly an organization that has agents from all the various supernatural factions as well. Even better if your party are members / helpers of the same ...
17
On Abstract Damage
under no circumstances should you be able to damage the armor wearer unless the attack is made at a not armored part of the body.
Vampire, like many RPGs uses an abstract damage system. This means that a single attack/defense/damage/soak series of rolls represents a much more complex series of actions than a single strike and parry.
...
14
The supernatural creatures are essentially following physical laws that normal people aren't aware of, or manipulating loopholes in those physical laws that normal people aren't aware of; there are a set of laws governing the universe that vampires/faeries/etc aren't breaking, they're simply manipulating them in unusual (as far as normal people are ...
14
This subject is explained in more detail in Tome of the Mysteries in the part of Chapter One called "Spell Aspect" (pp. 40-46) In particular, the crossover section explains the manner in which the powers of other supernatural types interact with Awakened magic. The reason given is that the power of the other templates — the Kindred, the Uratha, and the Lost ...
14
I would say yes, killing another vampire calls for a degeneration roll and may lead to the loss of Humanity.
Vampires (on the path of Humanity, which we're concerned with here) consider themselves, or at least try to consider themselves (at least partially) human - that is what's reflected by their Humanity score. If a vampire strictly and unquestionably ...
14
The letter of the law:
He spoke of what should not have been spoken. All bad effects are in action.
The spirit of the law:
Nothing happens since it was not a free will action.
Trying to lawyer me?...
The person who broke the contract of their own free will is the one using Dominate. While not a signatory, they have put themselves under the ritual's ...
13
Real world: Safe donation rate is considered 1 pint per 56 days; 4 pints at once is fatal (without immediate treatment).
Thinking back to my WoD playing days...
10 blood points is fatal for mortals, so call it 3 per pint?
Given that a vampire doing nothing spectacular burns 1 BP per night. So he needs 56/3 (roughly 19) donors of 1 pint each for a minimum ...
13
I'd say yes, they do have to roll Morality, even if they killed an enemy in self defense. Even if there's no other way out (the character is cornered and being shot at), taking a life takes its toll on their psyche. However, the Storyteller may choose to consider various mitigating circumstances and award bonuses for the roll etc accordingly.
You may want ...
13
The in-game reason appears to be “It just doesn't work.”
Vampire: the Requiem, page 168
Kindred Vitae, while potent, does have its limits. When the other supernatural creatures with whom the Damned occasionally cross paths come into play, certain realities of the World of Darkness supersede the mystic strength of the Blood.
Werewolves and mages ...
12
I think we may consider the 1:50k ratio a "current" one that describes the 20th and 21st centuries. Like most societies, vampires' one has gone through changes (let's not dwell on the speed of these changes now), adapting to its environment. Consider how the jump in human population (and the human tech level) has made humanity more and more dangerous to ...
12
If you don't mind getting another book, the recent World of Darkness: Mirrors has rules for just this sort of thing, including systems for fantasy folk, heroic skills, and magic.
As for "has anyone done something similar," noted game author and designer John Snead has. You can find his ideas here.
12
Some 1870-1900 travel guides with bits about Vienna in the period:
The illustrated English guide through Vienna and its environs (1873)
A handy illustrated guide to Vienna (1906)
A Satchel guide for the vacation tourist in Europe (1873)
Notes from the Journal of a Tourist: Italy, Spain, central and northern Europe (1890), fist hand account of the Vienna ...
12
Let Them Be.
There are practical reasons why mages and players might choose to rely on rotes. Improvised spells not only have a smaller die pool (Gnosis + Arcanum vs Attribute + Skill + Arcanum), but they have a mandatory cost of 1 mana if not in your ruling arcana. If your troupe is more interested in collecting codified effects rather than doing ...
12
That rote is working as intended. If you can secure the room, maintain your focus, get the proper amount of "temporal sympathy" — the modifiers for sympathy are in effect, as detailed under the Space arcanum and made explicit in the rote — and penetrate any magical protections placed on the time of the event, then yes. They can search through time until they ...
12
One important thing to note is what the merits actually give the character compared to one without the merit. Resources zero does not mean homeless (although it can). Resources represents 'extra money'
WoD: Core pg 115
All characters are assumed to have a job or a source of income (trust fund, parents) that is sufficient to cover their basic ...
12
Remember that the Seers of the throne keep their true agenda secret from all but the upper-most echelons of their organization, and even then only parts of it are disseminated.
Most operatives know only that the Pentacle opposes them and that they are mass murderers who awakened the wrong way (they weren't picked by the Exarchs) and are trying to usurp ...
12
I think you have already come with a lot of ideas. I am going to take a more general approach.
The airport is like a strategic resource for kindred, and also for any power trying to take control of the city.
Kindred politics
As you have said, the airport is a potential entry point for enemy kindred (sabbat, anarchs, enemies of the prince,...). For that ...
11
Definitions:
Gateway: any door/arch/reflective
surface; can be opened by spending a
point of glamour
Active Gateway: a gateway that has been opened before. Can be
reopened, either by spending a point of glamour, or by succeeding a Wyrd
roll. [Active gateways can be recognised/found from the hedge side (see below) or, if you have the hedge gate sense Merit ...
11
There's no book, or collection of books, that comprises the whole of the background story for the World of Darkness. Part of what made the game so successful is the way that it spread the story in bits and pieces throughout all the books, giving collectors and fans the "metaplot" in a serialized way that kept them buying material.
However, one good place to ...
10
Things are, indeed, a little scattered in the Requiem core book, a consequence of being one of the first books to hit shelves for the nWoD. A later book, called simply The Blood, organizes things better.
To answer your question: The prospective sire kills, and probably exsanguinates, the prospective childe. At the moment of death — the "right" moment for ...
10
What's a scroll? It's a piece of paper with words on it that, when read, cause a spell to be cast. Sounds like an imbued item with a contingent trigger to me. The Mage: The Awakening core book describes them on page 84, with a reference to the "Imbue Item" rote (Prime •••) on page 225.
10
Your best bet for sourcebooks is to look at those from the core World of Darkness line. Two that address the issue most directly are Tales from the 13th Precinct (which covers things from a police perspective) and, surprisingly, World of Darkness: Innocents (which offers a great view of the average person in the WoD through the eyes of their kids).
10
The analog to White Wolf and the World of Darkness game lines in the classic World of Darkness setting is the Black Dog Game Factory. They were detailed fully in Subsidiaries: A Guide To Pentex, although there are earlier references in other books. The staffers described therein are parodies of the employees of White Wolf, and the entire sourcebook entry is ...
10
It certainly sounds like you've covered the main points. Here are a few extra considerations to bear in mind:
The Council of Primogen.
This probably overlaps heavily with "local covenant leaders", but not entirely. Influential clan members are worth considering, and covenants with little local power may not have a representative... or may only have a ...
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