Follow up: This is classic Vampire.
It is designed to be depressing and rough, and the Hunger dice are mean little bastards, but this is classic Vampire, or at least classic Vampire if written by seasoned professionals for a modern era. It certainly feels more like the very first Vampire more than any book that came after.
I don’t like what they did with Jeanette and Therese, but I still like the nod to them, acknowledging Troika as good creators.
@thatguythere said in Random links:
@thenomain said in Random links:
We get pockets.
You get cookies.
I'll be honest I think pockets are better but cookies really push that issue.
But cookies are a non-issue you can put cookies in pockets they just get a little sqiushed which is alright. Unless you are eating non-soft cookies than you are just a Philistine.
Squished soft cookies are not alright. The average man pants pocket is not suitable as a cookie repository.
Cargo pants are where it’s at.
We get pockets.
You get cookies.
I'll be honest I think pockets are better but cookies really push that issue.
@bobotron said in Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition (VtM 5E):
The Neil Gaiman thing is because they reused some of his stuff from a Vampire tarot, I think?
To quote from RPGNet:
I found the text by looking through my copy of 'The Art of vampire the Masquerade' and comparing it with my copy of V5.
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The text in question is an excerpt of 2-3 paragraphs taken from the multi-page Tarot text collage at the beginning of the art book. It briefly describes a conversation between human and a vampire, talking about similarities and differences between their states of being.
.
The Gaiman vignette ends when the vampire admits she feels sad for her loss of human capacities.
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In the V5 version another two sentences are added. One in which she haughtily denies that vampires can cry and the next one in which the human's internal monologue confirms that he can clearly tell that she is lying.
edit: from earlier in that thread:
According to the Twitter exchange with Gaiman, it appears that they’ve used a piece of Gaiman’s work that was printed in an Art of Vampire book in ‘99, but changed the ending.
.
Interestingly, it appears that the first Gaiman knew of it was when someone brought it to his attention on Twitter. I have no idea what the original agreement was, but according to Gaiman’s site he holds the copyright and it has been published in one of his own collections of stories.
Neh. <-- disappointed, as promised
Okay, reading the PDF. Not going to do an overview on it (unless people really want), but some things stand out.
Light, is too thin. To see this for yourself compare the text on most pages vs. the black-backed text where they shift to Bookmania Regular.Okay okay okay, I'm done, fine.
The book is a book. It's even an RPG. And if I don't see a giant neon sign above the bit or bits that Neil Gaiman wrote I'm going to be disappointed.
@sparks said in How to use Potato MU Client:
@thenomain said in How to use Potato MU Client:
No? Huh. It was when I last tried it. Which is when it was slower than dirt. I’ll check it again and edit this post when I’m at a computer, or more likely a Mac user will reply with more details.
As far as I know, Potato has always been built on Tcl/Tk?
As may be, but it ran in a Python wrapper, which is what I was remembering.
...
...
Welp, it won't run on 10.13.5, so nevermind.
Last update marker:
Date: August 31st, 2015
So there you go. Maybe it can be compiled from source, but I'm not going through that to see how fast it is. It was a distracting tangent anyway.
No? Huh. It was when I last tried it. Which is when it was slower than dirt. I’ll check it again and edit this post when I’m at a computer, or more likely a Mac user will reply with more details.
Still, Potato visibly scrolling doesn’t surprise. Well, didn’t surprise.
Well do note that the core character template is "victim and abuse survivor". I try sincerely not to play that way, but reacting to the threat of being re-captured is the driving motivating force for characters in the game.
Compare this to Mage, where the driving motivating force is to understand mysteries that have no pattern to one another.
CONCERNING THE OGRE
This ability costs a point of Glamour if the Ogre makes the attack on his own behalf and not someone else’s.
You know, this makes a lot more sense if I read it:
This ability costs a point of Glamour unless the Ogre is attacking on someone else's orders.
Sorry, @Derp.
Overview Continues with Fetches and Other Antagonists
Same ol' same ol'. You have a Fetch or you don't, you can kill them or not, but they now have more teeth. They are build like a character with the Fetch supernatural template.
I don't know if they're doing this in other CoD games, but seeing "enemy 'x' is built normally and then you do 'y'" is both nice to see and frustrating. The nice should be obvious: Here's a character with a template. The frustrating is having to build a character. I never have nailed down what makes WoD/CoD characters good, except that the characters listed in the WoD/CoD books are not those built for the very different Mu*es.
Loyalists were introduced in the original Changeling: The Lost, but never really had their day. Here they are much better fleshed out.
Bridge-Burners: Destroy everything connecting Changelings to Arcadia. Yes, their motivation makes them terrorists. Kudos!
Privateers: People who work for the sometimes Gentry, sometimes Goblins, but mostly Huntsmen to give them more freedom and so they don't have to worry about being hunted.
True Loyalists: People who work directly for Arcadia.
Ghosts born in the Hedge, or of the Hedge. Emotions can become Hedge Ghosts, apparently. Sure, why not! Bits of souls caught on the Thorns, too. They are created like normal ghosts, but with Glamour instead of Essence, Anchors instead of Threads.
A lot isn't said outright about them, bits of information hidden within bits of other information. For instance, under an "Injuries" header we have this important bit of information:
Despite appearing to the naked eye and being solid, a Hedge ghost doesn’t have any internal organs to injure.
The real answer is three sections later, under Manifestation: They're always manifest in the Hedge and they can leave but don't care to. More grumbling about making things easy to learn.
The book says outright there is no standard Hobgoblin, and that there is no standard way they're created, thus reversing Equinox Road, which honestly is good to see.
They use a full character sheet too, but with far more lax creation rules and in some cases far more powerful: A Wyrd 3 Hobgoblin can have 7-dot traits. Their creation is very solidly "whatever makes sense", but with a foundation of understanding their limits and abilities.
Hobgoblin Deals are detailed deeper here, too; more than Goblin Contracts raise your "Goblin Debt" stat. Humans can gain this debt, but at 10 dots they are so indebted they become a Hobgoblin themselves. Spooky.
Liza Cantwell,
Age 9, Goblin Queen
“Kneel before the queen!” [dissolves into giggles]
Here's the completely new element. 100% Pure New.
The Gentry, instead of splitting off an aspect of themselves to pull back Changelings, now put an aspect of their will in another creature and send it out.
The Huntsman, leader of a Wild Hunt.
But here's the twist, because I honestly believe this game is trying to make their enemies compelling or at least make some kind of sense:
Huntsmen were Arcadia's original inhabitants.
No music sting needed here; the Huntsmen were going to be this game's Big Bad Antagonist, their Strix or Idigam. Only here's what I think happened: So much else balanced that the Huntsmen are now just an antagonist. They can certainly be a Big Bad, and probably the worst of the bunch, but a lot more is going on in this Changeling.
This is good; one of the largest criticisms of CtL1e it wasn't clear what there was to do. If you don't get that sense from this edition then you and I are reading different books.
I was kind of hoping they would make a big analogy between Firbolg and Fae in this, but they have left it a mystery: The Huntsmen were natives whose big goals were things like "lasso the moon" or "conquer all lands where". Impossible dreams. (Human dreams, is how I'm reading it.)
I don't know why the Gentry need to do this, though there are the occasional hints that the Huntsmen are better with the Hedge than even the Gentry. The take-aways are that Huntsmen's personalities are almost completely subsumed by the Gentry, which is I think a large part of why. The fiction reads better this way. A Huntsman has (rare, dangerous) occasions they can be talked down. They make mistakes. This tells a better story.
Huntsmen are created when a Gentry decides it's time. They use the same Huntsman every time until someone kills it or frees it (also very dangerous), then a new, unknown Huntsman is made.
Bringing a Huntsman into a game for a PC is a game-changer. It would be a Chronicle in its own right, for the same reason that Terminator 2 didn't have a whole lot of downtime.
A Gentry consists of two parts: A Name, and up to five Titles, including zero.
One of those Titles was a Keeper.
Oh, and there's Gentry chargen. I'm going to ping @Ganymede here because I know she's going to groan, wanting Gentry to be truly alien.
Well here's why: One Title is one Contract category. Sword, Crown, etc. That Title can use every Contract from it.
To kill a Title, you must either trick it into an Oath that it breaks (because it swears the Oath on itself) or destroy that symbol in its Arcadian realm. This means any Gentry must be killed up to six times: Once per Title, then kill its Name.
There are other ways, but read the book and let the ideas spark in your head.
That's it. That's my Changeling Overview.
Wait, what? There are more sections?
There's "Other Courts of the World"? There's "Fae-Touched"?!
Chapter Six is about other courts, and it's a good summary. If you don't want to use Seasonal Courts, then don't. Making your own Court Contracts will be a bit challenging to balance, but it's a lot easier than it used to be.
Maybe I'll go into Fae-Touched next post, but they're in an appendix, and that's absolutely where they should be.
All in all, Changeling: The Lost 2nd Edition is worth the read and maybe even worth the play. Complexities from the 1st Edition have been streamlined, gaps have been filled, and the reason to play Changeling has been injected with a big syringe filled with plot ideas.
It suffers the same things that Onyx Path has always had problems with; being reliable teachers. I'm also disappointed in the overall vagueness of the Pledges and I'm not sure how to feel about Contracts.
All in all, though, I'm willing to give this a try, and I'm glad that when they removed something (pledges) they gave more back in its place (dreamwalking). If my favorite character concept is now an Ogre then eh, so be it. I don't feel dictated, and can see paths of stories waiting to be told.
@demiurge said in Dreamwalk MUSH:
@thenomain said in Dreamwalk MUSH:
@demiurge said in Dreamwalk MUSH:
If it's too offensive for Trump to say, then I'm likely going to ban it on obnoxiousness grounds.
Troll will always out itself.
Please don't call me a troll. And please don't call me "it."
After your recent posts, I find it difficult to believe that this is a sincere request.
Calling people trolls and "it" is decidedly dehumanizing, and I sincerely do not appreciate it.
@demiurge said in Dreamwalk MUSH:
Pro-LGBT space marines are, dare I say it, a retarded idea.
You have to live up to the persona you build. The only way out of it is not be the person you don't want people to see. If you don't care, then put me on ignore and so be it, or just don't reply. I'm just one person. People who've ignored my disagreeing with them are better for it.
@kanye-qwest said in Dreamwalk MUSH:
@thenomain said in Dreamwalk MUSH:
@demiurge said in Dreamwalk MUSH:
If it's too offensive for Trump to say, then I'm likely going to ban it on obnoxiousness grounds.
Troll will always out itself.
Yeah, that kind of cements it.
I would like to bounce off this a bit: I know we have a few conservatives on this board who feel overwhelmed by the angry socially liberal view of many of the posters here. We know that this is not you. It doesn't take a sociology degree to see where "I disagree" becomes poisonous, and I honestly find hate from either side to be antisocial and part of the problem.
And that's it. The hate. Framing anyone else's "I disagree" into hate is just as much of a problem, and anyone being afraid to say what's on our mind because that framing (mostly) respectful disagreement as hate-speech is our new normal is the problem.
This is an apolitical statement, unless trying to find cohesion within a community is political.
--
@demiurge said in Dreamwalk MUSH:
@thenomain said in Dreamwalk MUSH:
@demiurge said in Dreamwalk MUSH:
If it's too offensive for Trump to say, then I'm likely going to ban it on obnoxiousness grounds.
Troll will always out itself.
Please don't call me a troll. And please don't call me "it."
After your recent posts, I find it difficult to believe that this is a sincere request.
@demiurge said in Dreamwalk MUSH:
If it's too offensive for Trump to say, then I'm likely going to ban it on obnoxiousness grounds.
Troll will always out itself.
I can verify that Atlantis does scroll over time when I accidentally throw over six hundred lines at myself.
Which happens a lot more than I'd hope.
Potato being built upon Python is probably the problem, there. Text goes through a few different systems before it's rendered, which is probably what's creating the lag.
The lag of Potato on OS X/macOS is horrific, and I am deeply tempted to NOT upgrade to 10.14 Mojave just to keep Atlantis.
--
edit: @Sparks reminds me that 10.4 will still run 32-bit apps, it's 10.5 (San Andres Fault) that won't. Woot.
@auspice said in Dreamwalk MUSH:
It's terrible that this image does not have the best part of the interaction:
"No. Have you?"
Addendum:
@coin said in Dreamwalk MUSH:
@demiurge said in Dreamwalk MUSH:
Pro-LGBT space marines are, dare I say it, a retarded idea.
The fact that you put "dare I say it" there kind of entirely turns me off this entire thing, because it implies that you are indeed aware of the offensiveness and chose to "dare" to offend anyway.
Also, there are badass LBGTQIAK+(XZMPRgoodlordwegetit!) people out there. If they want to be space marines, give them a gun and get the hell out of their way.
(SPHINX!)
@sunnyj said in Dreamwalk MUSH:
@Demiurge Do your thing, or don't, dude. Defending yourself here won't help zilch.
This.
In fact, it usually hurts.
I am happy with no embedded videos, linked or otherwise, especially since a lot of browsers will auto-play if asked.
Links to the source material are good enough. Animated GIFs are bad enough.
I will note for @a-meowley that a few games I coded for have a new width() function that reads a personal &width attribute.
If you want to encourage anyone to use it point them here:
https://github.com/thenomain/Mu--Support-Systems/blob/master/user-definable%20widths.txt
It never caught on but now you know why I coded it.
Can you tell when I have days off?
The intro fluff puts tokens as "the physical representation of eons-old pacts between the material and the fae," and the text is good enough to ease us into the concept of Token-crafting: "Anything that’s spent time in the Hedge or in Arcadia can become a token, though, if it ends up mattering enough to someone."
They are identical to the previous Changeling's tokens (even the name "catch" is kept for some reason; it's changed to "loophole" for contracts), except now there is a drawback that always happens. Always.
Contact with iron destroys a token completely.
Hold on, let me make that a bit more notable:
Contact with iron destroys a token completely.
This is its own paragraph in the book. It couldn't be big enough.
Hedge-Forged Tokens: Leaving an object in the Hedge still works. I like that the object must mean something to you, but it's about as random as you'd expect. There is kind of a system but it's mostly what makes sense for the item's meaning and the place in the Hedge it's been left. That system: 1 dot per Chapter left the item is left in the Hedge.
Oath-Forged Tokens: That is, if you swear an Oath on an object, that object can eventually take on the nature of those Oaths. Remember, Oaths are permanent, and these Tokens require three times the desired dot value, but the bonuses to both the Oaths and the Token are pretty nice. (The book also points out that people who can track bindings can do so through these Tokens. Hint hint, Fate Mages.)
Stolen Tokens: Yup, Tokens made by Gentry. "Whole freeholds have en- dured a Wild Hunt because some Fairest decided to steal her Keeper’s hairbrush on the way out." Because of this, Stolen Tokens are cheaper to buy.
And of course it wouldn't be Changeling if we didn't have the pretty clothes, Hedgespun Items which of course are always active so can always be seen by someone who can see through the Mask, i.e. Other Changelings. Yay. They take the place of the older Hedgespun Rainments as well as Hedgespun Items so they get a little bonus boost per dot, but they are now specifically Tokens and must be created/found/stolen with the Token rules.
Damn, writers, way to make Hedgespun more than player wish fulfillment!
...We are finally done with Chapter Four and that was a bit of a ride. I have to say that for now I am 100%* on board with the changes and can't wait to delve more into...
Oh, er, Chapter Five starts with Fetches. Okay, call me cautiously optimistic.
* Not actually 100% because I'm me, but if I were less anxiety-prone I'd say 100%