What would you fill a Chronicles of Darkness: Iceberg Meme with?

[DontEatRawHagis]

Common Knowledge (Even if not a CofD player:

• Most known games:
  • Vampire the Requiem
  • Mage the Awakening
  • Werewolf the Forsaken
  • Changeling the Lost
  • Hunter the Vigil
• HoloLive Mythbreakers - Most popular Chronicles of Darkness actual play, even if they used the old rules and name World of Darkness.

Uncommon Knowledge (Known by most CofD fans):

• Lesser known games:
  • Demon the Descent
  • Geist the Sin-Eater
  • Promethean the Created
• New World of Darkness - How CofD is a rebranding of the New World of Darkness 2e.
• Two Arcadias - How Arcadia exists in CtL and MtAw, but are different from one another.
• God-Machine - The God-Machine entity.

Rare Knowledge (Known by CofD superfans):

• Least known games:
  • Deviant the Renegades
  • Mummy the Curse
  • Beast the Primordial
• Storytellers' Vault - The DM's Guild, but for CofD.
• Spirits are not Ghosts - The difference between spirits and ghosts.
• Slashers - Serial Killer splat type, reprinted in HtV 2e.
• Immortals - Immortality splat type, reprinted in MtC 2e.

Legend Knowledge:

• Mage Cosmology - How mage tries to explain every game's cosmology.
• "Exarchs did it" - How some MtAw fans will recontextualize things like the God-Machine, Judges, etc... as creations or pseudonyms for the Exarchs.

Forbidden Knowledge (Controversies):

• BtP Abuse - http://theonyxpath.com/about-matt-mcfarland/
• Mages are Colonizers - This was told to me by a MtAw player, where the idea for Mages during the design process was they'd be interlopers in other splat's business, which is why they are overpowered compared to other splats.

Some of this knowledge I've heard second hand, but I'm looking for more things to fill it out.

[KaiserAfini]

I think the bloody fairies problem mentioned in the time travel thread is a particularly interesting one for the legend section. Spirits are not ghosts strikes me as common knowledge, especially if you when taking into account some OWoD assumptions. I think perhaps the God Machine could be seen as common knowledge, since the core book for the CofD was focused on it

[ArcaneArts]

I'm probably not the person to ask about public percpetion of the game, since I don't really hang out in broader RPG communities, but one thing that has gotta be mentioned is that, once you get past the barrier of what exactly Chronicles is and it's relationship to the larger World of Darkness and White Wolf/Onyx Path/Paradox debacle, a lot of the games are actually fairly plain on their sleeves now in 2E. Internally, there's just not a lot of material that's actually hard to grok, and one of the major improvements of 2E is that a lot more information you need to know up front is packed into the cores.

Some of the explanations of why things are the way they are (like why Mummy the Curse wasn't the first Second Edition game as originally planned) are obscure (and also quite frankly not the fanbase's business), but the biggest problem with grokking Chronicles is more the matter of misinformation propogated by second hand understanding of surface reads and insistent homebrewer logic-actually reading the books makes a lot of things plain.

Now actually playing the games points towards an implied hierarchy of how to approach it. One could just start a Dark Era Contagion Shard with multiple alternative rules implementation and a play group that includes both a Hunter and a Beast alongside the extreme edge cases of playable chracters as their first game, but one would have to wonder why you would want to start in the deep end.

[DontEatRawHagis]

I think the bloody fairies problem mentioned in the time travel thread is a particularly interesting one for the legend section.

🤯. I think that falls under Mage Cosmology. But yeah that stuff gets pretty crazy complicated.

Spirits are not ghosts strikes me as common knowledge, especially if you when taking into account some OWoD assumptions. I think perhaps the God Machine could be seen as common knowledge, since the core book for the CofD was focused on it

This one I'll up to the uncommon knowledge because common knowledge is especially for people who've never played CofD, but might have played other games or are familiar with other fiction. And the terms Spirit and Ghost can get muddied a lot if people are used to them being synonyms of each other..

I'm probably not the person to ask about public percpetion of the game, since I don't really hang out in broader RPG communities, but one thing that has gotta be mentioned is that, once you get past the barrier of what exactly Chronicles is and it's relationship to the larger World of Darkness and White Wolf/Onyx Path/Paradox debacle, a lot of the games are actually fairly plain on their sleeves now in 2E. Internally, there's just not a lot of material that's actually hard to grok, and one of the major improvements of 2E is that a lot more information you need to know up front is packed into the cores.

I forgot to add Crossover Compatibility. Good catch.

Some of the explanations of why things are the way they are (like why Mummy the Curse wasn't the first Second Edition game as originally planned) are obscure (and also quite frankly not the fanbase's business), but the biggest problem with grokking Chronicles is more the matter of misinformation propogated by second hand understanding of surface reads and insistent homebrewer logic-actually reading the books makes a lot of things plain.

Some things I don't like bringing up because the game in a bad light. That being said they are part of the history of the game and its important to learn from mistakes I think.

That being said misinformation can be terrible when it comes to readings of material. I think a lot of playtest material people got and their reaction to it led to a lot of drastic changes to things like BtP. Which may have led to a poorer product for it. But at the same time I don't think that's something I could rightfully put on the list as its pretty hard to contextualize other than "Products Change based on Feedback".

[VAMPIRES SUCK!!!!!]

I feel like iceberg memes would fit oWoD more than CofD...

Speaking of gonzo lore, I'm honestly surprised nobody has made any HHYPERBOREA/ VLTIMA THVLE edits of OwoD.

[moonwhisper]

I think perhaps the God Machine could be seen as common knowledge, since the core book for the CofD was focused on it

From my experience, a lot of people who does know about CofD doesn't know about 2nd edition. Which falls under the "New World of Darkness / rebranding " point.
Because the God-Machine only really came out with the GMC update (it was just one of many pieces of fiction in 1st edition), I think it's fair to put it as Uncommon Knowledge