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As with the vampire-to-lawn-chair problem, it involved Matter magick in Mage 1e. One of the examples listed of "coincidental magick" for Matter was "transmuting bullets into air" with the coincidence of "the gun was never loaded." Now, earlier examples in the book of coincidental magick in the book suggested that to be ...
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In first edition Mage, vampires fell entirely under the sphere of Matter, and changing the shape of matter was available at fairly low levels. (This was referenced in Book of Shadows, the Player's Guide to Mage, in a subhead: "Turning Vampires into Lawn Chairs and Other Works of 'High' Magick" -- although it wasn't a rote.) The notion that a starting mage ...
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Because of confirmation bias
The act of Awakening is not described as a coherent, logically sound philosophical reasoning that leads the Mage to believe in his paradigm over ones of his peers. Awakening is enlightenment and as such imparts the Mage with an unyielding conviction that this one particular paradigm is right, wholly right and the only one right. ...
35
Because the world is broken and it's your job to fix it.
The rules are meant to suggest a world where the Technocracy has locked down magick hard — mages are supposed to take every advantage they can, using Willpower and Quintessence to add successes and lower difficulties, take advantage of magickal tools and rotes to modify die pools, and do lots of their ...
31
There's an online article on the homepage of the University of Rochester's River Campus Libraries titled "Sex, Society and Medieval Women by N. M. Heckel" (NSFW reading, obviously.)
It is a rather thorough, concise and comprehensive summary that might very well help you with your inquiries, and may even help you and your ST outline your party's take on how ...
31
The Government has no time for small fries like you
Technocracy appears to be a monolithic Big Brother, spying on everyone at all times, but the truth is that their goals can leave even the best among them strained. Even the most oppressive governments are loath to devote precious resources (people, equipment, processor time) to small threats. In fact, such ...
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Connections and Lack Thereof
World of Darkness (Classic) and Chronicles of Darkness (formerly unofficially known as 'new' World of Darkness) are a spiritual predecessor/successor pair, not part of the same setting.
Changeling the Lost 2nd edition is not a 4th edition because is only connected with its namesake through the very broad theme of dealing with fae....
answered Jan 31 '19 at 12:07
vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica
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30
Vampire Elders are more powerful than the most powerful Werewolves.
While PC werewolves are much more powerful than PC vampires, the upper end of their power scales are very different - even before you get to the likes of the Antediluvians (who don't have stats), elder vampires are much more powerful than Rank 6 werewolves. Compare the stats for a top-end ...
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The werewolves are likely to win almost every battle, but the vampires would likely win any full scale war.
Overall they aren't likely to care too much about each other. The vampires have every incentive to ignore the werewolves as long as the werewolves don't directly cause them major problems. The werewolves on the other hand do have some reason to want ...
28
Despite the many similarities, they are different games with different systems and settings.
nWoD is a reimagined oWoD. The relationship between the two is much like that between 1970s Battlestar Galactica and 2000s Battlestar Galactica. Some core concepts have been kept, others have been significantly altered while reusing names, and some elements are ...
27
As a rule of thumb, assume that there is one vampire for every 100,000
mortals. (...) The cities could certainly hold more Kindred, but there
are legitimate fears of discovery. (...) Despite this, however, there are currently far too many Kindred for the mortal population to support; the ranks of the anarchs have swelled to unprecendented proportions.
– ...
26
As a "mathy" person, Entropy is my favorite Sphere. Entropy, at its core, is the manipulation of probability. By increasing or decreasing the likelihood of an event occurring, the mage can twist reality into getting what they want. And because you're just changing chance, from the outside, you're just incredibly lucky, and so most effects will be ...
25
Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition.
The sourcebook explicitly tells that there is no "fixed" canon history, you can play as you want to (the Avatar Storm didn't happen etc.), but it does contain a set of events and circumstances that it considers "the base assumption". They give some background to the world until the publication of the book in ...
24
UPDATE (2014-07-25): He confirmed!!!
Mark Rein·Hagen himself confirmed that this is a "pretty cool summary" of his strategies. Thanks Mark!
Nothing unusual (which is good!)
From The Gentleman Gamer interview with Mark Rein·Hagen and The Gentleman Gamer Interviews Justin Achilli, developer of Vampire: The Masquerade, it is clear that White Wolf have always ...
24
Because they can't eat anything else.
A vampire's (effective) generation has a significant effect on their power level in a variety of ways. This includes the maximum amount of vitae they can hold, the amount of vitae they can spend in a single round, and the maximum value their attributes can reach.
Lower (more powerful) generation has a drawback, however: ...
24
The leadership scenario is sometimes inevitable depending on the players you have. It's natural for more experienced players to fall into a leadership role because they have more experience and newer players (or sometimes experienced players who don't want to take charge) aren't comfortable making big decisions and the party lacks direction. Overall it's ...
24
As Guybrush McKenzie’s fine answer notes, Wikipedia claims these are alchemical symbols depicted in Symbols, Signs, and Signets by Ernst Lehrer, 1950. However, I haven’t been able to find a copy of this book to double-check that, and I don’t think anyone at Wikipedia has either: they don’t cite the book itself but rather this forum post. However, our own @...
23
Explicitly so.
As said on page 16 of the 20th Anniversary rules:
Once a vampire is Embraced, her looks are frozen in time. Her skin will be unnaturally cold to the touch and become paler as she ages, but she will look the same in a thousand years as she does on the night of her Embrace.
In fact, there's even a Tremere Thaumaturgy ritual (Rebirth of ...
22
Why do you have to "handle" this?
The player has agency. You can give him information that says that facing an antediluvian is a bad idea. You can telegraph all kinds of ways that should the antediluvian awaken, they're screwed.
It seems to me that high ambitions and poor judgement make for a very interesting chronicle.
Let the player have his agency.
...
21
Numbers, for one thing.
There's about a tenth as many werewolves as there are vampires, and those are divided among thirteen tribes. (One estimate sets the number of Glass Walkers and Bone Gnawers combined at less than 3,000 worldwide.) Plus, it's easier to make a vampire than it is to raise a werewolf to adulthood.
Also, we live in a (supernatural) ...
20
Disclaimer: not sure, but I'll find this funny ^^
On TVTropes under the Table Top section examples we find this
In Mage: The Ascension this is a popular method of stopping a bullet,
since it is entirely coincidental if done properly (and thus incurs no
Paradox) - as long as an observer cannot be fully certain the mage
didn't have a Bible or ...
20
I'm going to copy from another answer of mine regarding changes between Revised and the 20th Anniversary edition.
Potence and Celerity have been significantly altered. Each now adds a passive bonus (at no vitae cost) to their governing physical attribute; you add your dots as extra dice in pools using Strength and Dexterity, respectively. In addition, ...
20
Generally speaking, yes, but there are some exceptions
Hair, beard and other features return each dawn to the state they were when the Embrace. If a vampire cut his hair or shave himself, the next night will awake with the same appearance as the previous nights.
There are, though, some exceptions:
Vampires turn paler as the grow old, except Assamites that ...
20
Stunt Dice
This comes from Exalted. Give them a bonus of +1 to +3 dice when they're:
Trying things that they haven't done before
Describing their actions with flair and flavor
Do not give the bonus for actions that they repeat over and over, or that are conventional approaches to the problem. Feel out how many dice to give by how impressive the ...
20
Wraith was challenging to run, and didn’t offer the same social rewards as Vampire, Werewolf, or Mage.
As an "oldbie" of the era, Wraith was my jam. I remember going and acquiring it the day it came out (along with R. Talsorian Games' Castle Falkenstein) and reading it straight through, cover to cover, until the sky got dark. I was connected to the ...
19
What's missing here is an application of paradigm. Every mage believes with absolute clarity and certainty that the world works in accordance with the laws of magick as described by their tradition (or, in the case of orphans, the stuff that the School of Hard Knocks has taught them) — that application of will is how spells are cast and magick gets done. ...
19
Only material I know that deals with this theme is The Hunters Hunted ©1992 by White Wolf.
There is newer edition of it. I don't own it, don't have access to it, so what follows is based on the old one. But it is THE book about killing supernaturals (especially vampires) using mortal means.
Page 28 describes The Heavy Firepower Method, only hunt method ...
19
Vampire the Masquerade rulebook on Committing Diablerie (p. 225) states the following:
A vampire seeking to commit diablerie must drain all the blood from his Kindred victim. Following this act, the vampire must continue to suck, for (according to Kindred legend) the very soul is withdrawn from the victim's body and taken into the diablerist's. The effort ...
19
Yes, Having the level in a discipline allows you all the powers of that level or under, so at level 4 in a discipline you have the powers listed under 1,2,3 & 4. Evidence for this case in abscence of 'rules as written' (which I'm sure exist somewhere):
In the world of darkness systems where this isn't true (hunter, for example), it's made abundantly ...
19
Don't show more than you have to
Unless you have a very good reason not to, keep appearances of the various supernatural creatures very rare. For example, in a VtM game you have, by default, an excellent reason to have lots of vampire NPCs because the PCs are vampires and the setting encourages them to find each other and interact. However, there is no ...
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