Posts made by Killer Klown

Modification of an old beef stew recipe. It works best in a cast iron Dutch oven; but if you don't have one do all your cooking in a cast iron skillet, then transfer the bits into a stew pot after deglazing the pan with the beer. You can substitute beef or chicken chunks if you don't feel like eating Bambi.

Ingredients
4 slices bacon, cut into small pieces
2 1/2 pounds boneless venison, cut into 1 to 2-inch pieces
1 teaspoon salt, or more to taste
freshly ground black pepper to taste
2 onions, coarsely chopped
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 (14.9 ounce) can dark beer (such as Guinness)
1/4 cup tomato paste
4 sprigs fresh thyme
3 carrots, cut into 1-inch pieces
2 stalks celery, cut into 1-inch pieces
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, or to taste
2 1/2 cups chicken stock, or as needed to cover
4 cups mashed potatoes (optional)

Directions
Cook and stir bacon in a heavy Dutch oven over medium-high heat until bacon is browned and crisp, 3 to 4 minutes. Turn off heat and transfer bacon to layered paper towels, reserving bacon fat in the pot.

Season venison cubes generously with 1 teaspoon salt and black pepper to taste. Turn heat to high under Dutch oven and sear beef pieces in the hot fat on both sides until browned, about 5 minutes. Remove meat and place in large bowl with bacon. Turn heat down to medium; cook and stir onions in the retained fat until lightly browned, 5 to 8 minutes; season with a large pinch of salt.

Cook garlic with onions until soft, about 1 minute; pour beer into pot and stir with a wooden spoon, scraping up and dissolving any browned bits of food into the liquid. Add meat/bacon mixture (or transfer everything to a stew pot if you're not cooking in a Dutch oven). Stir in tomato paste, thyme sprigs, carrots, celery, sugar, 1/2 teaspoon black pepper, and enough chicken broth to cover.

Bring stew to a gentle simmer, stirring to combine; reduce heat to low and cover pot. Simmer stew until meat is fork-tender, about 2 hours. Stir stew occasionally and skim fat or foam if desired.

Remove cover and raise heat to medium-high. Bring stew to a low boil and cook until stew has slightly thickened, 15 to 20 minutes. Remove and discard thyme sprigs and adjust salt and pepper to taste.

Arrange mashed potatoes in a ring in a serving bowl; ladle stew into the center of the potatoes.

Speaking as a long, long, long-time Star Wars geek; I've found it much easier to run games in the now-called 'Legends' setting over the years. Even before the House of Mouse took over, one issue you inevitably have trying to run something in the movie timeline is keeping things 'canon'. You can say that you're diverging however you want, but at the end of the day people expect certain things to be true and tend to go into situations with those expectations and preconceptions in tact.

Setting things in, say, the Old Republic or the Legacy Era leaves things far more open. There are a few tentpole events (Mandalorian Wars, Yuuzhan Vong invasions, etc) but, beyond that you can fill in the blanks however the hell you want. There's also far more variety in character types available - though now that I think about that, it may be a detriment in a MU settings. Still, the Legends series - especially the WEG material - did offer a lot more backstory than was presented in the visual media. (Mandalorians? Warrior culture based around competing clans. Awesome. Mandalorians in Legends? Warrior culture descended from a race that evolved natively on Coruscant and were ultimately kicked out by encroaching humans, blame the Jedi for their displacement and have a long-standing hatred of them, and a distrust of force-users in general. More awesome.)

Ultimately, it really boils down to how deep you want to dive down this particuliar rabbit hole. It's pretty well distributed that when Timothy Zhan was writing Heir to the Empire, he asked Lucasarts for some reference material - and they sent him a box of the WEG books. They're that detailed an in depth, and pretty much made the Expanded Universe on their own; but while that's great for a tabletop or story-writing session, it's probably not all that feasable to include everything in a MU.

If someone wants to play a Hoojib Jedi, just say no though. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.

I have not said anything about the 'intent' of rules at Reno. I mentioned it in passing alone - what I said came directly from the book. You were the one who brought up the rule/hr on Reno - I used that in my commentary, but I never once made any statement as to the 'intent' on that specific game - at least in regards to the Wolf Blood Tells transferring or not transferring. My initial comment on Reno's HR with regards to Dead Wolves was the HR'ing the Bloodline. It had nothing at all to do with any HR's involving Wolfbloods as Wolfbloods.

Frankly; I don't care about what rules you wrote, why you wrote them or the sanity thereof. My commentary was - and should be - related to Dead Wolves in specific; which did, at least at first, have to do with the topic at hand. Any further commentary on Tells, et cetera, was directed to you after you pushed it off the rails.

As to what the 'community' believes - that's immaterial. What I quoted was from the book itself; and even that's irrelevant to the topic I was commenting on (See, Dead Wolves and issues in translating them to 2e).

Frankly; I don't care about what rules you wrote, why you wrote them or the sanity thereof. (If you bothered reading above, I even said I agreed with your reasons and the rule itself; so I have no idea where this 'rules lawyering you over rules you wrote' is coming from) My commentary was - and should be - related to Dead Wolves in specific; which did, at least at first, have to do with the topic at hand. Any further commentary on Tells, et cetera, was directed to you after you pushed it off the rails.

@surreality
One, I said 'the main reason it didn't work on Reno', not 'then main reason Reno created the HR'; meaning that letting WB's keep their Tells if they went to any other splat would have been far too overpowered with the way Reno was handling Tells and multiples thereof. It has nothing to do with stating why the HR requiring them to lose the Tell was in place (Which, for the record, I agree with your reasoning on in a general sense - it's my entire point behind not liking Dead Wolves. WB's shouldn't be treated differently after a becoming - any becoming -just by virtue of the fact that they're WBs. It's not fair to other M+s)

Two, the Merit says - specifically - that it grants a Second Tell. It does not in any way say that it can be taken multiple times; ergo there's no real clarification needed. WB's get one Tell normally, with the merit they get two.

'The character develops a second Tell, chosen from those available to Wolf-Blooded.'

And what's more, the text of the merit seems to indicate that so-called 'Spontaneous' Wolfbloods don't even get two; though as a ST I'd rule that as unduely harsh for the same reasons as above - WB's shouldn't be treated differently than any other M+ template, whether it be to their benefit or detriment.

Three; replacing DW's may be the case - and that's all well and good if people want to keep the Tell rule as written; but my issue was the idea of trying to convert or upgrade Dead Wolves as existing.

Yeah, that rule is a bit peculiar too - and the main reason it didn't work on Reno was because they let WB buy multiple Tells <Really you're supposed to only get one - maybe two with an additional merit>. As such, a WB transitioning to another splat might be able to keep their 'original' tell by that rule but they would lose any bought through merits <as per Sanctity of merits>.
It still doesn't mean they should get an entire Bloodline/whatever to themselves - even if they were allowed to keep the Tell.

To my knowledge they never addressed it at all. Reno tried to HR convert it, but it was never really effective. There was certainly no official support on it. Wolfbloods just changed significantly from 1e to 2e, though; they became a full blown Mortal+ minor template. It was analogous to letting a psychic or thaumaturge get something special or become a unique kind of Vampire that nothing else had access to with a number of vestiges of their previous template when they get embraced just because they were psychic or thaumaturge.

They're fine in 1e - they just don't work thematically or mechanically given the 2e Werewolf rules, though.
Plus even in 1e they didn't really follow the rules, in that a WB getting embraced really shouldn't be any different than any other Mortal or Mortal+ getting embraced. There's really nothing special about them that the Embrace would latch on to - especially since Dead Wolves got benefits with regards to spirits and pack joining that even WB's didn't.

For the most part you can re-create most of the existing bloodlines. I do like the way Khaibit did it, in that their 'powers' are in fact devotions, and you get a static boon and bane as part of the bloodline - but otherwise your clan discs and whatnot remain as is.
One thing I will suggest though - for gods sake, do not try and mangle Dead Wolves into the mix. Those were problematic to begin with, and with the way Werewolf/Wolfbloods work now (Where WB's are a full blown Mortal+ Template with their own range of powers and abilities; rather than just a x-dot merit you stick on your sheet); and the entire shakeup about Totems and who/how access is given to them it really, really doesn't work.

Spelling and grammar. Typos are fine and easily overlooked, but I grew up in the days when diagramming sentences was actually required, and language has a science all its own. I don't care so much about proper breaking of paragraphs, or if you used a colon instead of a semicolon - but punctuation, capitalization and making the tense and voice of your statements agree with themselves isn't too much to ask in my book.

Detail, detail, detail. I have been accused of posing in George R.R. Martin levels of detail as far back as the opening days of Haunted Memories (In fact, it was Sullivan's comment to me to that effect that got me interested in GRRM to begin with. Yes, I do care about how well done the carrots were and if the capon was killed too old or roasted too long, thank you very much). We're playing in an environment where the only canvas we have is words, and as such the words need to paint a picture. This can be done with sufficient application of adjectives or adverbs, or it could be done as simply as a short meta-statement adjoining a pose. Vis a vis:
Sam looks at Max with the same sort of expression that he might have were she currently in the process of growing a second head.
It doesn't require much excess verbage, but still gets the point across that someone is looking at someone else strangely. A lot of context gets conveyed in expression and body language, and lacking that there needs to be something to indicate if the person's reaction/demeanor is positive, negative, perplexed or what have you. Something needs to indicate if an object in question is new, old, well used or well cared for. At the same time, a pose should be long enough to say what it needs to say; but it need not be longer. If all someone is doing is lurking in the background, wrapped in a burlap sack and making occasional sniffing noises that can easily and fairly be conveyed in a sentence or two.

Cinnamon toast (dense, thick sliced bread, usually - Jamaican hardo bread is the best for this)
Tater Tots
Ramen

I usually have a theme; a phrase, quote, song, poem or something similiar. That generally throws out a concept, personality and occasionally an appearance - if not mood. Once I get that I start fiddling with mechanics - what sphere, what groups and subgroups, etc.

Already did it.
Rank 4 Get of Fenris Ahroun, picked up Gift of the Spriggan, fought giant Wyrm things kaiju-style across the landscape.
Admittedly, this was less 'me quitting' and 'the game's shutting down, do whatever the fuck you want', but...

This was also the character who, when confronted by a Tar Baby getting stuck to his claws, proceeded to use said Tar Baby to beat another Tar Baby to death - thereby forcing the ST to come up with, on the fly, what the damage rating of using another living being as a weapon would be.

Good times.

In truth, the Hunger mechanic feels like what they kept trying (and failing) to do with Paradox in Mage. It's an over-arching thing that affects everything you do, and becomes more threatening the more often you use your supernatural abilities. It's not a sliding scale or a meter, given that the hunger dice replace dice in your pool rather than being rolled separately or being added/subtracted from pool numbers. It's something that's always in the background, always a threat, and grows more intense the more often you call on your supernatural nature while,at the same time, not being limited to affecting just supernatural things.

Same. I also liked the proposed way they were going to handle generation - in that it provides a bonus to the mechanic of how often you can safely Rouse the Blood, but a penalty to the amount of blood you 'regain' through feeding. Having your Clan Weaknesses play in to your psychology the way they do, as opposed to just being an outside mechanic, was also pretty cool.

Sabbat can be a lot of fun - their focus, theme and organization was generally more interesting than Cammies
That said, with regards to your 'other stuff out there' bit, that actually was the way the oWoD games handled things. If you remember the old 2e/Revised books they tended to have examples of other supernaturals that, while similiar, weren't actually using the rules set of the fully realized other splat. For example, they had sample werewolves that were listed with equivalencies in terms of having disciplines, et cetera - rather than muddle around with the individual gifts and whatnot. I'd suggest going this route rather than try and incorporate the full sphere mechanics - for one, it keeps all your systems standardized <Easier to remember that that enemy Werewolf over there has the equivilant of Potence 4, Fortitude 3 and Celerity 2 when in Crinos form rather than try to remember what all the form mods, gifts, special rules, etc, etc are> and two, it makes things go a lot faster when it comes down to combat - less fiddly bits to organize on the ST's side.

nWoD Changing Breeds is one of the most broken systems out there - between not following the standardized rules on Powerstats <IE, allowing you to get stats higher than 5 with a powerstat below 5>, the crazy ass shotgun effect of powers <Throw a bunch out there, don't care what goes with what>, the two different power systems, and the ability to build whatever the fuck you want so long as your ST is just as screwed in the head as you are. Also, for some reason they have renown - which does absolutely nothing for them; yet they still manage to do Werewolf better than Werewolves in so far as being able to just buy gifts irrespective of their renown traits.

Also, bestiality is a thing. No, really; it's actually in the book.

I tend to prefer oWoD CB for the theme and story - they're like Garou, but different and have different roles. The v20 stuff has much better rules and some more interesting crunch material <While getting rid of a good bit of the useless or unplayable crap>

@krmbm Eep! Lazy Dazy?

@Paris - Thanks I re-created a Corvian there, but I've just been lacking for inspiration OOC

@VulgarKitten - No, I still have my bit there; I just haven't really logged in/played there in... months. Many months. The place and people are great, but I sort of lost my place and haven't really found a group or way to get re-involved again; so I've just been kind of floundering.

Yeah, it was a lot of years. Elrick was probably the most (in)famous of the characters - Medic, somewhat ascerbic and brutally efficient (Like, he wouldn't bother with anasthesia because it would take too much to affect a Singers metabolism, and he was more likely to cut a heavily damaged limb off off than try and repair it; because they would just regrow it anyway). I was also known for particuliarly viscerial Adaptation scenes - largely because I was RL on the premed track when I started the character.

Solian was this kind of technoprimative sort; communicated half in sign language, half in vocalization <because his native language was part somatic>. Berem was the leader of Kalgoorlie, after the person who built the planet left it and asked me to take over. Evan was a little tunnelrat cuttertech who liked to tinker with things and usually was found hiding under the desk.