The State of the Chronicles of Darkness

ThatOneDude · May 1, 2016, 3:53 PM

I've been reading "The Fallen World Chronicle Anthology" (fiction based on 2e Mage) and its pretty cool. I'm excited for the release. Hopefully we'll get something stood up to play mage in relatively short order.

One thing I've noticed about "people" who don't understand or know mage is they seem to focus on the high end / high XP side of things. They cry about game breaking powers and such while ignoring the other splats and their ability to "break games" at high xp as well. But low level mage is a blast to play. You can playing that unexperienced mage that is no longer a novice and out doing his thing, itching to call his mentor for an assist but knowing the answer will be something along the lines of, "I know you'll be able to figure it out".

I think if more people gave it a chance, and if more STs were a little more creative people would come to love the sphere.

HorrorHound · May 1, 2016, 5:54 PM

@ThatOneDude

Nah.

Arkandel · May 2, 2016, 1:06 PM

@ThatOneDude said in The State of the Chronicles of Darkness:

One thing I've noticed about "people" who don't understand or know mage is they seem to focus on the high end / high XP side of things. They cry about game breaking powers and such while ignoring the other splats and their ability to "break games" at high xp as well. But low level mage is a blast to play. You can playing that unexperienced mage that is no longer a novice and out doing his thing, itching to call his mentor for an assist but knowing the answer will be something along the lines of, "I know you'll be able to figure it out".

I think if more people gave it a chance, and if more STs were a little more creative people would come to love the sphere.

I always loved Mage. Two of my all-time favorite characters were willworkers.

My problem with the sphere has always the type of players it attracts, by which I mean people who don't roleplay. Be it folks who sit on channels and theorycraft their way out of theme - trying to 'solve' the setting instead of participating in it - or those who come to PrPs armed with spells instead of poses, I've never seen it happen in other spheres to anywhere near the same extent.

Otherwise I have a great fondness for Mage, both as a player and a ST. There's much stuff you can do.

tragedyjones · May 10, 2016, 4:50 PM

Well, it pains me to say it, but tomororw, The Pack releases on DTRPG. This will make it so that Werewolf: the Forsaken 2nd Edition gets a supplement before Vampire the Requiem 2nd Edition.

What the shit world.

Coin · May 10, 2016, 4:52 PM

@tragedyjones said in The State of the Chronicles of Darkness:

Well, it pains me to say it, but tomororw, The Pack releases on DTRPG. This will make it so that Werewolf: the Forsaken 2nd Edition gets a supplement before Vampire the Requiem 2nd Edition.

What the shit world.

Fucking crazy.

Rick Sanchez · May 10, 2016, 4:56 PM

@Arkandel Thing is, Mage allowed you to do a lot of things that were probably not the best idea. Like scrutiny. You can give basically everyone you meet the hairy eyeball to determine if they're a supernatural or not. The amount of time it takes -- about three seconds -- is negligible. If you aren't doing this, you're stupid. But if you acted on this, they called it "icon twinking" or whatever, when in reality it's just "good habits."

The game was just full of common sense solutions to all kinds of problems that totally broke theme. You didn't even have to be that creative about it. I mean, all the splats had some of that going on, but Mage was the worst about it.

Coin · May 10, 2016, 5:04 PM

@Rick-Sanchez said in The State of the Chronicles of Darkness:

@Arkandel Thing is, Mage allowed you to do a lot of things that were probably not the best idea. Like scrutiny. You can give basically everyone you meet the hairy eyeball to determine if they're a supernatural or not. The amount of time it takes -- about three seconds -- is negligible. If you aren't doing this, you're stupid. But if you acted on this, they called it "icon twinking" or whatever, when in reality it's just "good habits."

Inaccurate. Scrutiny takes a long time. You can glance at someone with mage Sight and if they have some weird shit going on on the surface, sure; but as far as actually scrutinizing them, it took a lot longer. It's just that people don't read the book and also think you can someone get away with staring at someone for a full minute without the person going "hey, what do you want?"

tragedyjones · May 10, 2016, 5:09 PM

@Coin said in The State of the Chronicles of Darkness:

@Rick-Sanchez said in The State of the Chronicles of Darkness:

@Arkandel Thing is, Mage allowed you to do a lot of things that were probably not the best idea. Like scrutiny. You can give basically everyone you meet the hairy eyeball to determine if they're a supernatural or not. The amount of time it takes -- about three seconds -- is negligible. If you aren't doing this, you're stupid. But if you acted on this, they called it "icon twinking" or whatever, when in reality it's just "good habits."

Inaccurate. Scrutiny takes a long time. You can glance at someone with mage Sight and if they have some weird shit going on on the surface, sure; but as far as actually scrutinizing them, it took a lot longer. It's just that people don't read the book and also think you can someone get away with staring at someone for a full minute without the person going "hey, what do you want?"

Is that 1E or 2E rules? Because I haven't read 1E in years and 2E in ever.

Arkandel · May 10, 2016, 5:13 PM

@Coin said in The State of the Chronicles of Darkness:

Inaccurate. Scrutiny takes a long time. You can glance at someone with mage Sight and if they have some weird shit going on on the surface, sure; but as far as actually scrutinizing them, it took a lot longer. It's just that people don't read the book and also think you can someone get away with staring at someone for a full minute without the person going "hey, what do you want?"

Scrutiny? That's nothing!

Certain players were endowed with PC vision, allowing them to distinguish between the millions of random NPCs in major metropolitan areas (who'd never get stared at either for three seconds or sixty) and the special few who, despite being strangers, merited a hard staredown for being actual PCs all on the merit of some superficial excuse - maybe they 'made a weird comment' (because there are no oddballs around in cities) or 'dressed funny' (unthinkable), but they got examined by the convenient power that let you know things about them.

Now that's a power.

Coin · May 10, 2016, 5:21 PM

@Arkandel said in The State of the Chronicles of Darkness:

@Coin said in The State of the Chronicles of Darkness:

Inaccurate. Scrutiny takes a long time. You can glance at someone with mage Sight and if they have some weird shit going on on the surface, sure; but as far as actually scrutinizing them, it took a lot longer. It's just that people don't read the book and also think you can someone get away with staring at someone for a full minute without the person going "hey, what do you want?"

Scrutiny? That's nothing!

Certain players were endowed with PC vision, allowing them to distinguish between the millions of random NPCs in major metropolitan areas (who'd never get stared at either for three seconds or sixty) and the special few who, despite being strangers, merited a hard staredown for being actual PCs all on the merit of some superficial excuse - maybe they 'made a weird comment' (because there are no oddballs around in cities) or 'dressed funny' (unthinkable), but they got examined by the convenient power that let you know things about them.

Now that's a power.

Best way to get something under a Mage's radar is have your NPC act totally normal while other PCs get all their attention.

Rick Sanchez · May 10, 2016, 5:23 PM

@Coin said in The State of the Chronicles of Darkness:

@Rick-Sanchez said in The State of the Chronicles of Darkness:

@Arkandel Thing is, Mage allowed you to do a lot of things that were probably not the best idea. Like scrutiny. You can give basically everyone you meet the hairy eyeball to determine if they're a supernatural or not. The amount of time it takes -- about three seconds -- is negligible. If you aren't doing this, you're stupid. But if you acted on this, they called it "icon twinking" or whatever, when in reality it's just "good habits."

Inaccurate. Scrutiny takes a long time. You can glance at someone with mage Sight and if they have some weird shit going on on the surface, sure; but as far as actually scrutinizing them, it took a lot longer. It's just that people don't read the book and also think you can someone get away with staring at someone for a full minute without the person going "hey, what do you want?"

The book explicitly states that this is a form of "scrutiny." It takes one success to notice something is up. It's "Extended" but 1 roll = 1 turn = 3 seconds.

In conclusion, you can tell someone is supernatural in some capacity in one turn. It's highly impractical to not do this if you plan on spending more than one minute interacting with this person.

Coin · May 10, 2016, 5:28 PM

@Rick-Sanchez said in The State of the Chronicles of Darkness:

@Coin said in The State of the Chronicles of Darkness:

@Rick-Sanchez said in The State of the Chronicles of Darkness:

@Arkandel Thing is, Mage allowed you to do a lot of things that were probably not the best idea. Like scrutiny. You can give basically everyone you meet the hairy eyeball to determine if they're a supernatural or not. The amount of time it takes -- about three seconds -- is negligible. If you aren't doing this, you're stupid. But if you acted on this, they called it "icon twinking" or whatever, when in reality it's just "good habits."

Inaccurate. Scrutiny takes a long time. You can glance at someone with mage Sight and if they have some weird shit going on on the surface, sure; but as far as actually scrutinizing them, it took a lot longer. It's just that people don't read the book and also think you can someone get away with staring at someone for a full minute without the person going "hey, what do you want?"

The book explicitly states that this is a form of "scrutiny." It takes one success to notice something is up. It's "Extended" but 1 roll = 1 turn = 3 seconds.

In conclusion, you can tell someone is supernatural in some capacity in one turn. It's highly impractical to not do this if you plan on spending more than one minute interacting with this person.

Granted.

Of course, it's only practical if you're going to cast the spell every scene you ever interact with anyone--which means you're going to be either cloaking the spell or risking someone else going 'hey, what's that?'.

Or you have Mage Sight up as one of your permanent spells, which always seemed like a waste to me...

So really, practicality is subjective.

Rick Sanchez · May 10, 2016, 5:35 PM

@Coin A Mage knowing if something supernatural is up with someone, even if it's ambiguous exactly what, is very valuable. It would be comparable to being a cop who can see "CRIMIINAL" tattooed on criminals' foreheads if he squints his eyes at them. I imagine any smart cop would be squinting at everybody he meets, perhaps even not while on duty.

Coin · May 10, 2016, 5:36 PM

@Rick-Sanchez said in The State of the Chronicles of Darkness:

@Coin A Mage knowing if something supernatural is up with someone, even if it's ambiguous exactly what, is very valuable. It would be comparable to being a cop who can see "CRIMIINAL" tattooed on criminals' foreheads if he squints his eyes at them. I imagine any smart cop would be squinting at everybody he meets, perhaps even not while on duty.

Liker I said, it's subjective. Some Mages got a shit ton to do already without being distracted by every little thing. I know my Mage on TR would never have had Mage Sight up constantly--that shit was annoying and he had other crap to concentrate on.

Rick Sanchez · May 10, 2016, 5:40 PM

@Coin I mean, I guess you could argue that cops have no particular interest in knowing whether or not they're dealing with criminals, but I think it's a reach.

At the very least, players getting uppity about this are plainly in the wrong. It's not OOC to use cheap, useful abilities regularly. It's not "metagaming."

"I do this with everybody" is a pretty legitimate excuse for something that takes three seconds. If I could do this, I might do it on the checkout line at the grocery store while I'm in line. Considering the outright paranoia that is justified in all of WoD, but especially Mage, an argument could be made that this would be the default behavior.

Arkandel · May 10, 2016, 6:12 PM

@Rick-Sanchez My view of Mage Sight has always been Dresden-esque; you could keep using it but it's just not a good idea, because there are certain things you can't unsee.

Plus come on, you're driving, or making out, or watching a movie... do you really wanna be looking at weird shit around the clock? Even if one PC is obsessive enough that he/she would I hardly think it'd be a common choice.

Rick Sanchez · May 10, 2016, 6:13 PM

@Arkandel Well, like I said, the bar for scrutiny is spending more than a minute with someone. So yes. I would scrutinize my date, probably before the making out part.

Ganymede · May 10, 2016, 6:29 PM

@Rick-Sanchez said in The State of the Chronicles of Darkness:

Well, like I said, the bar for scrutiny is spending more than a minute with someone. So yes. I would scrutinize my date, probably before the making out part.

I prefer to deny the past rather than accept the present.

Rick Sanchez · May 10, 2016, 6:54 PM

@Ganymede said in The State of the Chronicles of Darkness:

@Rick-Sanchez said in The State of the Chronicles of Darkness:

Well, like I said, the bar for scrutiny is spending more than a minute with someone. So yes. I would scrutinize my date, probably before the making out part.

I prefer to deny the past rather than accept the present.

#ShitLawyersSay

Ganymede · May 10, 2016, 7:08 PM

@Rick-Sanchez said in The State of the Chronicles of Darkness:

I prefer to deny the past rather than accept the present.

#ShitLawyersSay

More like #GoodAdviceForBadHookups