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[AnubisXy]

Well depending on how cool an awesome the Infernal was maybe the Unconquered Sun would go, "Oh holy shit, I can't believe I just bumped into you here of all places! Seriously, I'm a huge fan! Look, I don't want to come off as rude or anything, but could I bother you for your autograph? Maybe even a selfie? Seriously, you're the best. I can't wait to see the look on Luna's face when I tell her about this!"

[AnubisXy]

Thing is, there is no "universal" mythology for the World of Darkness. Each game has their own mythology and background. Sometimes there is overlap but a lot of the time there isn't. Making one the "true" history means trying to fit a bunch of square pegs into round holes. And trying to Frankenstein them all together is kind of like trying to attach Legos to Lincoln Logs - if you whittle enough away you might be able to get something functional, but it's going to take a lot of work and you're going to lose some stuff in the process.

[AnubisXy]

Which classes?

[AnubisXy]

I mean if you read the final section of the original Hunter: the Reckoning book it's pretty clearly talking about Exalted. And Exalted, as it was first envisioned, was players playing during the Second Age. In fact in the original design the players were going to be playing the Dragon Blooded (the Wan Xian), and it was later when the new developer took over that the focus was shifted to playing Solars and the game began focusing more on being its own thing than a part of the past history of the World of Darkness.

Further shortly before the game came out and for some time afterwards...

[AnubisXy]

Again, I don't see what's stopping people who are playing Vampire: The Masquerade from playing vampires. If you want to run a Canite game set in China, you can. There are Canites in China and nothing stops you from playing those guys (assuming the ST wants to run a campaign set there). Of course the theme and mood of playing a Canite in China is going to be different from the theme and mood of a game set in Germany, but that would be fairly different from one set in Washington D.C. or in India or in Cameroon or in the jungles of the Brazilian rainforest, or in Europe during the Inquistion or in...

[AnubisXy]

I mean you can absolutely play a Tremere in Asia. In fact there's even a big old Tremere Chantry in Hong Kong. There are Wu Zao and members of other clans all across Asia. The only thing is, Cainites in Asia are explicitly not at the top of the food chain. They have to keep a lower profile because they're not the dominant faction like they are in other parts of the world and importantly they lack the treaties and links to other supernatural factions (like the Hengeyokai) that the Wan Kuei have forged over the millennia due to their united enmity against the Yama Kings.

That's a big...

[AnubisXy]

One of the issues with Kindred of the Ebony Kingdom were the complaints about "vampires in funny hats" and the accusations of white appropriation of African mythology - "Your myths about vampiric creatures were really just white people's vampires the whole time." Personally I think it would have been better if they had been more of their own thing rather than what we ended up with. That's also my issue with deleting the Wan Kuei and instead having them appropriated by the descendents of Caine....

[AnubisXy]

Again though outside of the One Thousand Hells we don't really have a place where the souls of people in other parts of the world who committed sins while alive end up going to after they die. The closest thing in the rest of the setting is the general Underworld (which is universal and exists in Asia as well), but whether you're a saint or a sinner has no baring on whether you end up there or not.

And that's kind of an important aspect for the Wan Kuei. Unlike Kindred who just happen to end up as vampires, some through absolutely no fault of their own, pretty much every Wan Kuei...

[AnubisXy]

Personally for me at least, the primary draw to the Wan Kuei was their supernatural, spiritual aspect. The idea that these were people who, in life, had committed sins that were enough to cause them to fall into hell, but were also badass enough that they managed to escape and claw their way back to the living world. Their relationship with the Yama Kings (who considered them little more than escaped slaves) was also something I tended to find fairly interesting.

That's something that you lose if you simply convert them over to Kindred. At the very least if you were going to go that...

[AnubisXy]

In theory if you had access to hundreds of billions of souls and an unlimited supply of the magical materials you might be able to make tens of thousands of Exalted (assuming you don't need anything else such as some level of Autochthon's intervention) but that seems well outside the current scope of the setting to the point that it's sort of getting into individual homebrew setting.

[AnubisXy]

Personally, I tend to view the "load-out" mechanic as more of a disadvantage than an advantage. I mean, sure they can swap their Charms out so one day they can be loaded out with social Charms and the next day they can be loaded out with combat Charms, but a Solar doesn't have to worry about that. After they spend exp to learn a Charm they just always have access to that Charm. They're loaded out with their combat Charms and social Charms and craft Charms and every other Charm they've learned every single day of the week. Meanwhile (at least in 2nd edition) the Alchemical spends slightly...

[AnubisXy]

Oh I see what you were talking about now. I've never found it to be an issue since the 5 different paths are fairly broad and get even more so once you throw in things like their Direction, Sect and where a particular Wan Kuei comes from or what era they hailed from.

A South facing Devil Tiger who's part of the Brilliant Coals sect and lives in Thailand is going to be very different from a West facing Devil Tiger who's part of the Electric Money Wickedness Club and lives in Tokyo. While both might have a broad general agreement on ideas like pain or the punishment of sinners or what...

[AnubisXy]

I don't know that this was an issue? At least I don't think powers were ever linked to Paths and I don't think Paths ever got any sort of boost to powers. Certainly Bone Flowers were more likely to practice Yin Prana than Yang Prana (for example), but that's because, due to the nature of Bone Flower teachings, they were more likely to focus on Yin aspected powers than Yang ones and probably have larger Yin pools than Yang pools. Not because they got any sort of bonus to Yin Prana....

[AnubisXy]

In general, I think the Technocracy is okay with religion as a tool to control people, but when it comes to people who honestly believe in that sort of thing, it's another story entirely. The Technocracy believes that humans (or at least the Technocracy) are in charge of their own destiny. To say that there is a God or some sort of entity or power that controls the fate of humans and the universe is to take that power out of the hands of humanity and give it to some supernatural force, which basically goes against everything the Technocracy stands for.

More specifically, when it...

[AnubisXy]

I think a good deal of that was simply the result of wanting to make them more workable as a player character faction, since I don't know that very many players would want play as characters who are facist, racists who engage in eugenics, genocide and slavery (I know I wouldn't).

And to be fair, you saw similar shifts in other gamelines where they started trying to refocus previous villain factions in an attempt to make them a bit more heroic and player friendly like the Sabbat (we're fighting for freedom!) or the Baali (we commit evil to keep greater evils asleep!). There were a...

[AnubisXy]

Maybe another War for the Throne type game?

[AnubisXy]

I'm old enough to remember the Satanic scare in the 80s, and the argument some groups were making the argument that Dungeons & Dragon's depictions of demons was endorsing satanism, and more than that, actually encouraged children to engage in satanic activities. So when somebody suggests that simple depiction = endorsement or encouragement, I just respond with a .

What matters is how the group, or activity or whatever is depicted. Is it depicted in a positive light, or a negative light? When looking at a particular author or company, is the subject matter something that...

[AnubisXy]

Oh, I think they absolutely would give a bald face lie to vampires, if they had something to get out of it. In this case, I'm not sure they would?

I mean, what would they have to get out of saying, "There are no antediluvians, there are no Clan founders, the Clans just sprung up, fully formed like Athena sprung forth from the mind of Zeus," rather than, "Yeah, there were presumably Clan founders. They weren't blood gods, they weren't mythical antediluvians, honestly, they weren't shit. They were just vampires, quite a few of them have been killed and the rest are gone...

[AnubisXy]

It's worth keeping in mind that the term "Antediluvian" carries a lot of in-setting baggage; ancient, all powerful blood gods who engage in a massive millennia long war with one another and who will rise up to devour their progeny. Between things like the Book of Nod, stories of Enoch and Caine, the Sabbat, etc, there are certain concepts that tend to be intrinsic to the Antediluvian and I believe those concepts are more what the Camarilla denies.

When the Camarilla says that, "the Antediluvians don't exist" I believe it's more that the Antediluvians you hear about...