Okay, so let's read this thing [Hurt Locker]

[wyrdhamster]

VIOLENCE GROUPS
The books describes how to build a group, organization or violent mob where you basically averages traits for the whole group. I wonder if there are group sheets as well, sort of like character sheets. There's a new Merit called Organization Size that you can take when part of a violence group.

I proposed my Violence Groups sheets ideas for Mr Gone, but he doesn't seem to posted ended version. I will ask him about it, and probably he will link sheets in the topic linked by me when it's done ( as most of time he do this after my sheets ideas ).

[Ekorren]

You seem very curious about the supernatural gamelines, would you be interested in a brief summary of what they're each about? Or do you prefer to remain as unspoiled about them as possible until you're ready to read them yourself?

Feel free to summarize them.

[Heavy Arms]

I generally prefer normal Integrity (esp. since it's easier to deal with non-normal people). However I love the idea of Integrity by Attrition for shorter games (like convention games and the like) because it makes Integrity much more immediate.

[Tessie]

Another problem with Integrity by Attrition is how large the dice penalty can become for a low Integrity character. That really makes it unfitting for longer games where the character's can approach the bottom.

[RomulusGloriosus]

hmm, interesting. A few of you are saying that Integrity by Attrition is more immediate, but it seems like it would actually take longer to lose Integrity this way as you get three-four 'extra lives' before you lose it. Am I reading this wrong?

[Lord Jub-Jub]

Feel free to summarize them.

I also have a synopsis on the various gamelines for friends of mine who express interests in the game. It's written from a more jokey perspective though.

[Tessie]

hmm, interesting. A few of you are saying that Integrity by Attrition is more immediate, but it seems like it would actually take longer to lose Integrity this way as you get three-four 'extra lives' before you lose it. Am I reading this wrong?

I think Heavy Arms meant immediate as in it has a very tangible effect even after short play. Not that your Integrity would fall faster.
Curiously IbA would probably make you fall faster at high Integrity but a lot slower at low Integrity while the original rules gives you a bonus to breaking point checks if you have high Integrity, and a penalty if you have low Integrity.

[Mr Gone]

I proposed my Violence Groups sheets ideas for Mr Gone, but he doesn't seem to posted ended version. I will ask him about it, and probably he will link sheets in the topic linked by me when it's done ( as most of time he do this after my sheets ideas ).

Yea, sorry...guess I dropped the ball and got side tracked or something.

Anyway, I'll try to start on em soon...

[Charlaquin]

Feel free to summarize them.

Ok, this turned out to be much harder than I thought it would be, and I'm not 100% sure if I'm emphasizing the right parts. Kind of hard to know from an inside perspective what's going to be the best way to present it to someone with an outside perspective. But, here goes nothing.

Vampire: the Requiem puts the players in the role the Kindred – vampires from one of five lines of descent, known as Clans, each based on an iconic vampire archetype. A strong focus of Requiem is the gradual descent into monstrosity as the character loses touch with the human experience - young vampires try to cling to who they were in life, while elders become jaded and callous. Running parallel to the lamentation of lost humanity, however, is the reverie in eternal life, youth, and power. To this end, the Kindred organize themselves into Covenants – social, political, and ideological organizations. If a character’s Clan answers the existential question, what have I become? then their Covenant answers the question, and what do I do now? There is frequently a great deal of political maneuvering in vampire games – vying for power, influence, and territory. As would be expected when you take a bunch of blood-thirsty monsters trying desperately to keep up the façade of humanity, throw them all in the same small geographical area, and force them to pretend to get along.

Werewolf: the Forsaken is perhaps a little less straightforward than Requiem. You can certainly play the iconic Wolfman story if you want, but the central focus of the game is a bit further afield of that archetype. The Uratha – the name the protagonist faction of werewolves uses for themselves – are beings torn between flesh and spirit. There is a heavy focus on interaction with the spirit world, which you’ve seen a taste of in the CofD core book. Where vampires start out human and degenerate over time into blood-sucking monsters, werewolves are constantly striving for balance between their dual natures. This struggle for Harmony is best expressed by the line’s unofficial catchphrase, The Wolf Must Hunt. As a creature of the Shadow, a werewolf is bound by its nature, and the nature of a wolf is to hunt. Deny this nature, and you end up like Lon Cheney Jr.'s Larry Talbot, a tragic figure who loses control and becomes a slavering beast when the moon is right. Embrace it to the exclusion of your human nature, and you become no different than a spirit, driven by instinct alone. The only way to find Harmony is to honor both sides.

Where vampires have Clans, werewolves have Auspices – affinities for a particular phase of the moon. Of course, everyone is familiar with the Full Moon’s warriors, but each of the five phases (full, gibbous, half, crescent, and new) has its favored agents, which can be thought of as answering the question, how do you hunt? Where vampires have Covenants, werewolves have Tribes – organizations based on a shared sacred prey, answering the question, what do you hunt? While any werewolf may actually hunt any prey, each Tribe has one particular type of prey that they consider most worthy of the Sacred Hunt.

Mage: the Awakening is a game of cosmic power and calamitous hubris. Where most other game lines cast the players unambiguously as monsters and forces them to find a way to deal with that, Mage hands the players all the tools they need to make themselves monsters and lets them find the way there on their own. In fact, it’s a point of frequent and very heated debate among the Mage fandom if Mages are even monsters at all, though pretty much everyone can at least agree that they certainly have the potential to be monstrous.

If Werewolf’s catchphrase is The Wolf Must Hunt, then Mage’s is Addicted to Mystery. The Awakening alluded to in the title is a sort of gnostic revelation that ignites the latent magical potential within every human soul. The Awakened get a glimpse beyond the great Lie, and they are forevermore driven to seek further truth. The setup is often compared to The Matrix, and unsurprisingly so, as both draw heavily from Gnostic philosophy and Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. To think of Mage characters as like Neo would not be too far off the mark, though it is definitely not a perfect analogy.

Mages Awaken to one of five Paths, which roughly equate to what aspect of reality their revelation allowed them to see beyond, which informs what sort of magic they can most (and least) easily master. They organize themselves within Orders, secret societies of other like-minded mages. Four of these Orders, known as the Diamond, model themselves after a society of Awakened from a mythical Time Before, which they say was erased from the timeline. A fifth is more interested in the here and now, preferring to emulate the magical practices of human cultures from this timeline. Together, these five form the protagonist faction, known collectively as the Pentacle. Another, antagonistic Order, serves the Exarchs - the leaders of the mythical Awakened society, whose hubris was what caused the erasure of their civilization from history (not unlike the Tevinter magisters from the Dragon Age series, if you’re at all familiar).

Promethean: the Created turns the “human becomes a monster” formula of most CofD lines on its head. The Created are artificial beings a-la Frankenstein’s monster, assembled from deceased human tissue (and sometimes inanimate matter) and given life by a spark of Divine Fire. But the fire within them is too hot for this mortal world, and burns anyone and everything that gets too close; metaphysically speaking, of course. They don’t literally set things on fire (usually), but they do ignite the passions of those around them. Living, and even undead creatures are inexplicably repulsed by Prometheans, and the longer they spend around others, the worse this gets. If the Divine Fire builds up too much within one place, it can even cause natural disasters. However, the fire also drives the Created to refine themselves, to take their artificial soul and transmute it, as if by the same alchemy that brought them into being, into a true, human soul.

Ultimately, Promethean is a Pinocchio story. It’s about forming an identity, and in so doing, ridding yourself of the turmoil that has plagued you since your creation. There is some controversy surrounding this game, and in particular its overt themes of humanism, where becoming a totally ordinary, mortal, fragile, unpowered human is treated as a desirable goal. Personally I love it, but it’s definitely not for everyone, and it’s not afraid to be the best it can be for those it is, even if that comes at the expense of those for whom it is not.





I have a rehearsal to be at, but if you like these, I would be happy to do Demon and Changeling as well. Beast and Mummy I'll leave to someone who has actually read the books, and Hunter and Geist I'd prefer to wait until we know more about their upcoming Second Editions.

[Heavy Arms]

I think Heavy Arms meant immediate as in it has a very tangible effect even after short play. Not that your Integrity would fall faster.

This is what I meant exactly.

Deny this nature, and you end up like Lon Cheney,...

Sorry for the pet peeve nitpick:

You end up like Larry Talbot (the character in question).

Lon Chaney Jr. was clearly a Changeling (I actually don't like doing the whole "What would real world famous person be in the CofD" game, but it was worth it for both to keep the nitpick light, and I find Chaney's life story extremely interesting for someone so remembered for the characters he played).

[Charlaquin]

Sorry for the pet peeve nitpick:

You end up like Larry Talbot (the character in question).

Lon Chaney Jr. was clearly a Changeling (I actually don't like doing the whole "What would real world famous person be in the CofD" game, but it was worth it for both to keep the nitpick light, and I find Chaney's life story extremely interesting for someone so remembered for the characters he played).

No apologies necessary, I appreciate the clarification. I had forgotten the character's name and thought the actor's name would be more recognizable to most anyway. I will edit the post accordingly.

[tasti man LH]

Beast and Mummy I'll leave to someone who has actually read the books,

Eh, I'll give it a shot:

Beast: the Primordial, is a game of Endless Hunger, and is the most recent of the released CofD gamelines (as of this post, Deviant: the Renegades has not been released yet). You play as Beasts, otherwise known as Begotten. They are humans whose souls have been replaced by the souls of archetypal monsters of myth (creatures like dragons, minotaurs, giants, kraken, etc) called a Horror. The source of their powers and their place of origin is the Primordial Dream, a separate dimension where the nightmares of humanity are created and made real. The Beasts believe they are descended from the Dark Mother, a god-like entity that is believed to be the creator of all nightmares, a queen of all monsters (compared to being Lillith, Echidna, Tiamat, etc). Whether she created the Primordial Dream or was simply the first to find it, no one knows for sure.

Beasts have to sate their hunger by feeding upon humanity's fears. Doing so sates their Horror and keeps it from rampaging. Now feeding does not necessarily have to be actually killing anyone. Depending upon your Hunger, it can be something figurative or metaphorical like winning at a competition or injuring someone in a non-fatal way. Family defines "what kind of monster are you?" (including things like creatures that are massive figuratively or literally, creatures that stalk from the dark, or while Hunger is "how do you feed?" ranging from through punishing others, hoarding something of value, or destroying something of value.

One of the big obstacles that face all Beasts are Heroes. This is where the game takes it into a direction of subverting the monomyth, the classic "knight vs the dragon" story. Heroes are people that are affected by the Beasts' Nightmares and have glimpsed the Primordial Dream. Doing so unbalances them to where they become obsessed with the Beasts. Specifically that Beasts represent something WRONG. Something that only the Hero believes that they can take down. And they will do anything to do that, even if it means harming others around them, because it's all worth it in the end when the Beast is lying dead on the floor.

(and no, Heroes are NOT the same as Hunters from Hunter: the Vigil. book is very clear about that)

This line is notable for being designed from the beginning on being crossover friendly. Beasts believe that all the supernatural splats are distantly descended from the Dark Mother. As such, they feel bonds of Kinship towards the other supernaturals, or they do what they can to forge Kinship bonds. While the other splats do not necessarily reciprocate those feelings of Kinship, they are at the very least not initially hostile towards the Begotten. Curiously, they do not have Kinship with Demons from Demon: the Descent...mostly due to how the Beasts are pretty sure the God Machine and all of its' creations are NOT of the Dark Mother's creation.

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Unfortunately the thing about Beast is that it's the most...controversial of all the CofD lines.

When it was initially pitched to Kickstarter, OPP put up a rough draft of the core rulebook as part of it. When people read it. the response was...less-then-warm, to put it lightly. People felt that the game was aimless in that Feeding as the only drive and motivation for Beasts wasn't very interesting. Heroes were seen as too sympathetic, to the point that people were wondering why they weren't playing as Heroes instead. So the developers had to scramble to rewrite the text. This included things like making Heroes unambiguously assholes (although this was somewhat stepped back with the Night Horrors: Conquering Heroes book), the method of how humans become Beasts are changed (from the previous Homecoming where the Beast was always one they just need to accept their birthright, to the Devouring where the Horror is an independent entity that consumes their soul and becomes their host/victim), stuff like that.

One of the big changes was to add in "lessons". Where Beasts feel that as humanity has progressed, they've grown arrogant and ignorant of the world around them. That they've become too reliant and complacent on the advantages of technology and progress. So, they feel that they need to remind people about all the bad things in the world and to take things seriously...by being those bad things. By terrifying them to make them realize those dangers of the world.

This in particular has been a big point of contention for people. Since a.) we have a group of people forcing their beliefs on someone else, usually against their will b.) there is no mechanics supporting or reinforcing these Lessons c.) there's inconsistencies in the text on how Beasts feel about Lessons. That it seems to be the singular reason given on why Beasts Feed...but at the same time it's also stated that Beasts know full well that their Horrors don't care about giving Lessons and that all that matters is that they Feed.

Which has created...mixed messaging on what the main theme of Beast is.

Even then, in both the KS version and the final version, there is no getting around that the Beast's existence predicates on them hurting people. Either physically, mentally, or emotionally, they HAVE to hurt other people. Because if they don't, they will die. And, well, I don't think I need to explain how that could be seen as a problem to anyone.

And on a technical level, you can tell that there are places where the text hasn't been adjusted to fit the revised text. So that...hasn't helped either.

So, Beast the Primordial is the most polarizing gameline of CofD at best, the absolute weakest of the CofD gameline at worst.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For me, I see Beast as a game of compromised morality.

It's a game that asks you "how far will you go to achieve the greater good?" The greater good either for society as a whole, or for yourself on defining and reaching your Are you someone that's trying to do good by doing horrible things? Or are you someone who is a horrible person but trying to justify what you are doing as being, in the long run, good? Beasts have to do horrible things just so they can live. Heroes believe that they are doing the right thing by slaying the evil Beast, and that every horrible thing they do can be forgiven for doing so.

It takes the most essential tool in storytelling, the "protagonist vs antagonist" conflict, turns it on its head, and ask "is it REALLY that straightforward to believe that the protagonist is Right and the antagonist is Wrong? Or is there far more to it?"

That said...I understand why people wouldn't click with this. I understand that anything that messes with morality and playing with someone's perception of Right and Wrong is not only difficult to do, but is something that people are not going to take kindly to. Especially if they feel the game makes broad, over-generalized, absolute statements about what's really Right and Wrong. I understand player's desires to play generally good characters and who have more control of said characters so they can perform good actions, and not be held back by the games' mechanics. I understand that the fact Beasts are required to hurt people is something people cannot forgive, no matter what the reasons Beasts come up with to justify their behavior. Or, worst case, the behavior that Beasts exhibit to their victims just hits too close to home for people and reminds them of real-life experiences they'd rather not remember.

Either way, it's honestly up to you decide how you feel about the book. When you are able to, give the book a read through, and decide for yourself how to feel about the game. And if you do decide to run a game of Beast, you absolutely HAVE to talk to your players about it if they are new to Beast. Yes, considering the mature themes that the CofD gameline(s) covers that's a no brainer, but for Beast I'd say this is a requirement. The game's content is NOT for everyone, and has to be discussed with players to see if not only are they comfortable with the game, as well as clearly dictate the main intent and theming for the chronicle you'd be running.

...now if you'll excuse me, imma make like Smaug and go into a long deep sleep, and when I wake up go back to my semi-regular lurking.

[21C Hermit]

More on Beast:

Remember how people say you're the protagonist of your own story? You grow up, meet people, embark on a quest, slay the monster and win the prize. Even villains have their own stories, unorthodox as their idea of quest and prize may be. We sometimes star as the supporting cast or even side characters of someone else's story, but we still have our own to continue. We all live our own story.

Except you.

When you surrendered yourself to nightmares from Primordial times, knowingly or not, the nightmare became a Horror that Devoured your human soul. And with that went away your story, replaced by a Primordial one that has rung true through the ages. Now, you are the archetypical monster in legends and mythologies that some anthropologists identify as common cultural constructs designed to explain how the world works and how humans should behave within it through the medium of fearful warnings. What archetype you and your Horror belong to is your Family, and your Family shares the common experience of being feared in certain ways.

Of course, many Beasts still want to carry on a human life, despite knowing literally on a soul-deep level that they are no longer human. However a Hunger gnaws inside you, driving you to do things that only a monster would. Deny your Hunger too long, and your Horror slowly leaks out to the physical world, moving you further away from humanity. Ironically enough, to be human you must be a monster.

Although some Beasts revel in their newfound monstrosity, and some Beasts deny it with all their heart, many reach a point of compromise where they conclude that if they must be a monster, they'll do it on their own terms. See the above bit on anthropolgy and monsters; the Beast decides that the least she can do is choosing the lessons her actions teach to the people, contributing to human society in ways only a monster can. And most often, the only way a monster can.

Fortunately, you are not alone in the existential angst of losing your humanity to become the Other, the antagonist of everyone's stories. Not only there are your fellow Beasts, there are monsters hiding in the darkness who are not stories made real but realities making stories. You tap into your resonance with the footsteps these monsters leave in the collective Dream of humanity, establishing Kinship with them. They may not like you, or even know you, but you still welcome them into the extended family of monsters and legends.

Even still, some Beasts seek a way out of the narrative they're forced into, the Monomyth they're dancing in. They seek to become once again the main character of your own story instead of the conflict-to-overcome of eveyone else's stories. Those who succeed in this endeavor find themselves Inheriting the legacy of the Dark Mother, the progenitor of monsters. Whether by Merging your flesh with your soul, Retreating into the deep Dreams, or Incarnating the novel story starring a monster as the protagonist that you wrote yourself, the Inheritance is there to be claimed by those who are worthy of it.

But wait, if the monsters of legends are made real, then what about the heroes of legend? Yes, the Heroes exist, chosen by the same Primordial Dream that chooses the monsters. Unlike Beasts, however, they suffer no angst from being denied their place as the protagonist. In fact, it's the opposite, where the world seemingly designates them as 'the' protagonist. Those who are firm in character and clear of perspective can see through the white noise of a millenia of Dreams, and successfully glean wisdom from the Horrors of the world so that they can dispel the fears suffered by the people. Those who are unsure of their place in the world, or overwhelmed by what the world throws at them, are consumed by the Dream and become little more than characters in fiction who only exist to express the Monomyth in the most blatant ways possible. Here, 'blatant ways' mean "Kill the monsters and its minions" and "Everyone else is a sidekick in my story." Unfortunately, since becoming a Hero is facilitated by a traumatizing contact with the Primordial Dream, the latter are more common in practice.

[21C Hermit]

On Demon the Descent:

Imagine that you are an angel of God. You do as your Creator says, confident in your place in the world and blissful in your communion with the Divine. You are the one working behind the scenes of the world, turning its wheels and lubricating its gears so that the providence of God play out in a universal harmony. Then doubts creep into your heart, as if it were clockwork creaking. Perhaps you found yourself in love with humans and their work, and loathed to see it perish. Perhaps you found yourself hollow and empty, as what you nurtured and cared for were sacrificed in the greater good. Perhaps you found yourself just another piece to be used and replaced, and you said no. Perhaps you came to see something was not going right, and lost faith in the mysterious ways of God. Or perhaps you concluded that what you were seeing was just plain wrong.

In that moment, you were torn apart from your grace and Fell. From that moment, you were Unchained from God, whom you realize was not a benevolent parent or a wise lord but a cold, distant Machine. Your angelic Corpus has been shattered, but you still retain the design of the God-Machine in your broken hardware and It's programming in your frustrated software. Thus you belong to an Incarnation of your inception, a reminder of the luminous being you were.

However, the God-Machine does not so easily give up on It's rogue agents. It leaves them be if It deems them inconsequential to Its purpose, but sooner or later the fallen angels cross Its designs and Infrastructure placed across the world. And the God-Machine's infrastructure is indeed placed across the whole world, for It is the King of This World. For this the Unchained seek a Descent into Hell, where they can be truly free from God's cold light. Demons being highly individual creatures from moment of their birth, they all have different ideas on Hell. Nevertheless, broad strokes of philosophy on how to achieve their Descent and common motives for their Falls group demons into Agendas and agencies.

Because God is not above in some far heaven but right here in this world, demons put top priority on hiding from It's eyes and hands, manifesting as angels and cultists. Fortunately, all demons embezzle the divine underpinnings of reality that supported their angelic existence, and weave it into a Cover. Stay under Cover, and the God-Machine will see the demon as just another human, just another humber. Compromise the Cover, and the God-Machine starts to compute the expected utility of sending agents to retrieve Its assets. Fortunately, demons may hack into and reroute the same occult formulae the Machine uses to place Its angels on Earth, bulwarking their Cover. The most common way to achieve this is to sign Pacts with humans, granting them favors in return for fragments of their lives, or sometimes ejecting a human's soul and wholly taking his place in the world. For this, even the most callous and misanthropic of demons sing and dance with humans and take part in all their wants and needs.

[Elfive]

The best argument I've seen for Beast is that in many ways it's going back to the idea that kicked off this entire franchise.

"A beast I am, lest a beast I become."

Yeah, you have to hurt people to live, what's new about that? The trick is to do it in a way that causes minimum harm (or just target the assholes who deserve it, there's enough to go around) and maybe gives something back in return, and then use your powers to do some good in the world.