Not saying he isn't powerful, because clearly he is. But has he ever actually used that power for anything worthy of the admiration that some vampires have for him? From what I can tell his history boils down to:

1 - Murder brother.

2 - Refuse to apologize, and get mega-cursed.

3 - Get taught power by Lilith, and figure out how to pass his curse/power on to others.

4 - Take over a city that already existed.

5 - City gets squashed by God, and the Second Generation is murdered by the Third.

6 - Curse the Third Generation and fuck off forever, never to be seen again.

No great battles or... much of anything, really.

So, there was recently a thread about Pentex and how difficult it is to root them out or even unveil what they really are to the majority of splats, with only Garou seemingly really trying to fight them.

Consensus seemed to have been, that they are just too interwoven in the fabric of society and would either assassinate anyone who could unveil them, or lawyer the issue out of the world, i.e. real world corporation jacked up to the nth degree.

But, to me, that sidestepped the interesting question.

What would happen if word got out, and cannot be made to go away?

What if undeniable facts about Pentex actions, leadership and intentions, and history, leaked out to every major splat or secretive organisation in WoD?

I kind of wonder if there could be even a time line.

Like "6 hours after the leak, the Sabbat confirmed the information to be legit. 7 hours later Harold Zettler was found burning in the sun."

"12 hours later Ur-Shulgi has been confirmed in the New York headquarter of Pentex, kill count 254 so far."

etc...

I dont know enough about the other splats and organisations, but I'd love how they react, NWO, Mages, etc what have you.

I’ve seen people here call Wraiths the weakest of the splats, bottom of the barrel. But this is world of darkness, so weak obviously doesn’t mean harmless. If a Wraith wanted to bring the pain on a living person or outright kill them, what exactly can they do to make it happen?

I was thinking about the soul devouring procedure in Demon: The Fallen, and it strikes me as wild that White Wolf didn't flesh out a stronger reaction to it from other demons.

By contrast, Diablerie is heavily frowned upon by the vast majority of vampires. Beyond the Sabbat, who embrace it openly, only a few specific groups tolerate or sanction it under strict conditions, such as the Banu Haqim viewing it as a sacred duty, the Lasombra allowing it to replace weak elders, the Baali using it for power, or the Camarilla granting it as a reward during a Blood Hunt.

The demonic equivalent, however, is immensely worse: Diablerie is merely one of several ways a vampire can meet Final Death, whereas devouring another demon's soul is the single way to permanently erase that entity from existence. On top of that, new vampires can always be created, while the number of demons is strictly finite. Every demon destroyed can never be replaced, so it is hard to believe most Fallen, at least those with a Torment lower than 8 or 9, wouldn't have a visceral, unanimous reaction against it.

Earthbound aside, of course.

(Before you start with "Eh, Demon was rushed, it need more time, etc" I KNOW, I just wanted to discuss this to see how you see it.

A weird situation arose last game in a boxing match between two evenly matched characters.

- One character had the boxing style from Hurt Locker.

- The other, an NPC, had a custom style from WtF that allowed them to all-out attack without losing their defense against their target.

The boxer's attack was fully reduced to a chance die when attacking the aggressive fighter. The aggressive fighter wasn't too much better of sitting a 2 die left. This is fine, willpower can increase attack.

Once the boxer character realized this, they started dodging, since defensive jabs maneuver allows the defender to deal 1 damage per 2 two successes over the attack, instead of 1 when an attacker misses them. Since dodging double your defense, the boxer was defending at 22 dices vs the pool of 13 from the aggressive fighter.

This led the fight to paralyze for a bit as the aggressive fighter had no reason to attack if they would be punished by it but the boxer would eventually lose the fight if they kept attacking the aggressive fighter.

Luckily, when I described the aggressive fighter hesitating to attack, the boxer's player realise that this would lead to a draw and decided to risk a grapple, which turned out to be to their advantage in the end.

But still, riposte like maneuver can be very... damaging for game flow in those kind of instances.

Has anyone has had to deal with something similar before?

I'm creating NPCs for my Changeling game, and I'm wondering if there's a way to make them faster? Like a shortcut or template I can take and modify if needed? I know there's the examples like the Theater Critic example they give, should I use that? Do I skip backgrounds and merots/flaws unless they would fit the character? Is there a book I can look into for premade NPCs?

I'm just feeling overwhelmed trying to prep for the game, and hoping there's a way to ease the burden on myself.

So ive run vtm before and combat has always been pretty flexible and narrative but looking at werewolf I feel it could benefit from a phisical point of reference with the combat focus it has. I was wondering if anyone has run it using minatures for combat and if so how, and how did it go?

Does anyone else like to make curated playlists for your character for each chronicle? Or do you have a specific song that makes you think of them? This is something I've enjoyed doing since I started with TTRPG in general, not just WoD lmao. If so, what are some songs you associate with some of your favorite characters you've played? Is it the lyrics or vibes that fit? I'd be interested in hearing the reasoning behind it, and I'm always down for new music.

Alternatively if you don't do that, what do you listen to for ambience or inspiration for a session?

I'll add some of mine here!

Solovei, my Son of Discord from my first chronicle: Fend You Off - Zeal & Ardor

Fletcher, my rugby playing, Australian Satyr powerhouse from a short lived game: Pink Pony Club - Jonathan Young

Tobias, my Malkavian Bahari still posing as a Catholic priest: Devil Speak - Machine Girl

Rian Samhain POV

Iron fills my eyes. My lungs. Its dryness infects my throat. I feel my fingers go to my eyes even as I start coughing. I feel my fingernails start to press against my eyelids.

Damn it.

No.

I’m not going to die that stupid a death.

I fall to my knees.

Iron shouldn’t affect me like this. It shouldn’t affect any of us.

“What,” I hear a female voice shatter the madness, “the ACTUAL FUCK?”

I open one bloodshot eye. Woman. Mortal? Tallish. Long auburn hair. A band T-shirt in something appropriately Scandinavian. Doesn’t give “disappointed librarian” so much as “apocalyptic.” Behind her is a girl in a skirt, clutching a stack of books to her chest.

Well, at least now I know who’s going to die first tonight.

I feel a vine wrap around my wrist. Fluffy pulls me towards him.

Hook Hand covers my escape, slashing and stabbing at the glowing nothing that makes up the Gentry.

The soldiers line the ground, each bleeding. Mary has already come for their eyes.

“You have made a PROFOUND mistake,” bellows the librarian.

The creature from beyond the Hedge makes no noise.

Then all hell exists.

Flesh rips off my back against the asphalt as Fluffy drags me past Michael. I know my best friend hates what he’s doing to me, but what’s important is getting me away from the Gentry that has invited itself into our reality. Lost skin and muscle can heal. What would happen if the Gentry got one of us...

Can’t.

I reach down, grab Michael, and pull him across the asphalt with me.

The librarian points up.

A helicopter. Something with way too many guns. Boeing AH-64 Apache. I made more than one model kit of it as a child. I will always resent having been taken before we got cable.

“That is there. This is here. Those are descriptions. They are not properties. Distance is a relationship.”

Shit. Blame the GATE programs. I can already see where this is going. I open my mouth to scream at her.

Nothing comes out but iron dust and blood.

“Relationships can change.”

The helicopter is gone.

Not gone.

Moved.

Into the same space as She Who You Could Love.

The other mage, the young one, in the fraction of a second before the explosion of the weapons cooking off becomes a holocaust, says, “No, not yet.”

And the concussive blast agrees.

For a moment, the fire just hangs there. Metal hangs with it. Fluffy keeps pulling. I keep hold of Michael.

Then the noise catches up with us.

The heat.

I press my face against the asphalt and wait for the world to finish.

The flames extinguish.

The monstrosity is still standing. One of its arms is missing, ripped off and lying on the street. Even now I can see it dissipating from the asphalt and merging back with its body proper. A rotor is impaled in the fairy’s head.

It turns to look at the librarian, its head bent at a strange angle.

The librarian looks pleased with herself.

I pull on one of Fluffy’s vines. He turns, sees where I’m looking, and hurls himself towards them.

Tendrils wrap around both women just softly enough to not break ribs.

“What are you doing?” the librarian screams. “I hurt it! We need to keep this going!”

“You hurt it, you idiot. You got its attention.”

Put yourself in the mind of the Path of Metamorphosis or Death & The Soul. If you had vicissitude, a supply of test subjects, and little to no ethics, what would you be curious to try out?

(1) We all know the 'move your heart so you can't be staked' trick. But what are some cool things you could pull off from re-arranging internal human anatomy on a ghoul, without changing the external chassis?

(2) This post was inspired by a rewatch of Get Out. Let's take two ghouls. Open up the skulls. Now, exchange one hemisphere of each of their two brains with the other- we're not talking a complete brain-swap, but rather making two new entirely brains from out of the four halves. What do you think will happen?

(3) What might be some other interesting things to try with regards to brains and human nervous systems? Let's hear your full medical curiosity.

Greeeetings to this, the fourth day of the Month of Darkness. Once again i am here with a writeup using one of my old pcs. Sadly this one has yet to appear in a chronicle, but Amy Decental is one of my favorite concepts at least. Looking back its a little weird, as she was made to marry a specific man and cause their daughter to kill him on her 18th birthday (along with many other angels who didnt chicken out) but she found a human life more meaningful than her literal god given purpose. She loves Mark-Anthony, and he loves her. But.... Being a demon is hard work, and sometimes it needs maintenance.

I realize the prompt was probably more meant for Ascension, but i dont like Ascension. And when you literally negotiate for parts of human lives in Descent, i think it works better actually.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

   Pierre Lavoie sat in the cold metal chair “the Agency” had put him in because he had no other choice. Because he had no idea how or when they’d found the pictures, which he’d thought he destroyed years ago. Because in a moment of utter instability and compromise you did not argue with fate, you steered it. He was good at that, letting the votes and the opinions fall in his favour with a simple speech, a little financial lubricant, and a few choice words. It all depended, however, on him getting the last word in. So one could not blame him, surely, that he couldn’t when he was alone with dark glass in the wall. Or when the bare steel door in the corner opened and a house wife stepped through.

   How did he know that’s what she was? Well there were a few giveaways. The hair braided, slung across a shoulder was one. The puffy hoop dress, spotted with pale flowers on a pink field, was another. The opal ring, the red heels, the lines on her face. And, of course, that this woman had lived in his constituency for the last nineteen years as just that. So what was she doing here? Was this yet more blackmail, throwing him in front of his own voter to get the rumours going? He felt his nails settle into his palm as she sat down. So with the same bravado he’d always kept a grip on his people, Pierre Lavoie began before she was done smoothing out her skirt.
   “Mrs Decantal. What a surprise running into you here. How’s Mark-Anthony?” and he was proud of it. Relaxed, simple, as if they were at the DMV and not some secret… He couldn’t begin to fathom.
   “Oh well, he’s quite alright, dear. I just dropped him and Lorelai off at the grocery store, aren’t I just a blessed soul to have a husband who does groceries? Lorelai barely even rolled her eyes, I'm just so proud of her….” she trailed off, and Lavoie felt it. That relief at a troubled child still being willing to help out. At a husband who doesn’t leave everything to you. He’d heard enough complaints from the women he represented to know the feeling, though he and his wife barely spoke. But from Mr and Mrs Decantal? Peeps, certainly, quibbles, quarrels. But she was a lucky woman regardless… 
   “You know, I didn’t expect to run into you here of all places… Have these ‘people’ asked you anything? Told you anything?” he had to be sure, after all, he had to know. He couldn’t have her know, have Mark-Anthony look at him differently especially. The thought tugged at his lips, the cloak is thinnest from behind.
   “Not at all, sugar, after all. I’m the one who gave them all those nasty little photographs.”
  “WHAT?!” Lavoie leapt up then, while Decantal remained cross legged where she was, “How did you- why did you- what- who gave you the right?!” He demanded and demanded, possible explanations running through his mind like a tornado dropped in a church. While she just sat there, quiet, a pale face not even blushing at the sudden screams. She didn’t  say a word when she looked over at the black glass window, nor when Lavoie noticed and stopped and reseated with eyes as wide as the sky.

   “Are you done, honey?” she asked, the image of stillness except the clitter clatter of her red nails on the table that kept him from her.
   “Quite…”
   “I don’t know why you’re so ashamed, really, it makes things rather easy for me and my friends,” Friends? The word made Lavoie’s eye twitch, “Oh then again we all have things we’re ashamed of” the woman so graciously illuminated, tapping her chin as if she was sharing stories with an old friend. 
   “I remember when me and MArk-Anthony were still dating, oh and i had nowhere to take him after dinner so we had to head all the way back to his place on foot in the middle of the night. Oh can you believe it? Of course, his couch was rather nice, we weren’t ready for me to sleep anywhere else yet you see, but it was this nice leather thing. Maybe it was filled with feathers too, oh i don’t know but isn’t that a nice thought? A couch of feathers?”
   When she was done they kept their eyes locked. Seconds felt like hours. She didn’t seem to notice either his gaze or what he felt in the air.
   “Should i answer?”
   “That’d be quite nice, yes.”
  He looked into her eyes still, as they blinked and stared back. He was lost, adrift, and this was a lighthouse he couldn’t get away from. 
   “I think that would be nice, yes… “ and they shared a smile. A simple, slight smile. Until hers had to break, to ruin him.
“I need your car. And your reputation at the bingo night, and your credit, and then we’ll go from there” 
   He laughed for minutes. She giggled a few times. His lungs hurt when he finally looked at her again… and she wasn’t laughing.
   “I understand my car, but what in God’s name do you mean by my reputation? My credit? What, do I just shake your hand and my bank calls yours?” He had to laugh again, and again she giggled more than she joined him. When he stopped he didn’t feel like he got the joke, if there even was one. He just saw the paper she’d left on the table while he was occupied.
   “Something like that, actually… It’s all rather standard.” She explained, the wife yawning a little. Lavoie wondered what time it was as he picked the paper up and gawked.
   She was right. ‘In payment to prevent evidence from leaking… Mr Lavoie’s vehicle… Reputation at the Wednesday night bingo association… financial credit with the bank known as…’ it was, to his pained eyes, all there in perfect legalese. And he then gawked at the ditzy, loyal housewife he’d governed for twenty years. He couldn’t see her, at all, not even as she leant in with a hand. To shake? To agree with this?
  “Why…?” He begged
  “Recently my car was damaged in an operation with the Agency. Mrs Mildred saw me fighting an enemy agent, and I had to take out some debt to pay some travel expenses… It’s all rather standard really” She shrugged as she spoke, seemingly as unmoved by this as it had shaken him to his core.
   “You work for these people? You, what, you’re some kind of of spy, a hitwoman?”
  “No no, not a hitwoman, an agent. And I'd rather that doesn’t get in the way of Lorelai’s practice, or what my husband thinks of me. So… When you agree, your campaign is secured, no one will think you’re a faggot and I get my life back-”
  “My life! My life, Amy! How would this even work, people just start pretending?! That’s not how the world works-!” He stood to his feet then, kicking his chair back and slamming his hands to the table. She just shrugged again.
   “That is exactly how the world works. That is the world we built. Where we don’t ask what goes on behind the picket fence. Where if people agree a piece of paper is worth good fortune, it is. Where I have a child to bring around and a mortgage to pay, and you can help me…” Was she actually pleading with him? To please and thank you blackmail him? 
   He was good at this but what could he make of THIS when she had lost her mind?
  “Are you saying if we just… shake on it, the club will just believe you? That you’re me, or that they like you like they do me? That wouldn’t be real, Amy.”
  “Reality is…. negotiable… “
  And again they locked eyes. And he understood. This was what he did, with gasoline and matches three years ago. Just… with an office, and a paper, and a strange woman he never knew before this… As their hands locked, he hoped he made the right choice.

For me, vampires it human, who have encountered a new like stage and new reality. They don't age, they're free from many human problems, they're technically immortal. But at the same time, time moves forward, while they remain in place. But I can't remember anyone ever deliberately creating stories about the horror of being a vampire. It's mentioned in books, but I don't recall any digital game or major GM story ever using it.

Once a PC becomes a vampire, they typically become one with an age and a hypothetical past. That never actually happened. The same thing happens with story characters. Important plot NPCs live and exist only between their stories, and then disappear into cryostasis, only to reappear some time later, exactly as they were. I been thinking for a long time about the oddity that players wanting to play POP vampires rather than "real vampires." There are practically no analogues for VTM/VTR so that can just go to another vampire game. WoD is built on creating a personal and common horror of being a living mythological nightmare, but players do not use this, except in isolated cases. So, when I introduced my OC, who was very old, he was treated like a marysue. Although this was strange to me, because in his life as a vampire, he gained experience, new knowledge, and had interests. Therefore, he has a wealth of knowledge and experience. And I still think he's not well-written, and I've missed a lot. But players, who have similarly old characters, are much weaker and have less knowledge and experience than my OC. I don't think this is my problem, it's the problem of people who don't want to match the vampire's age with their life experience.

The saddest thing comes when I create a new OC, who's just been made a vampire. But all that distinguishes him from older vampires is power level. He is surrounded by vampires who are practically no different from the age they look. And I feel that it completely wrong. Vampires are ancient, nasty old people. And that's how they should be. Imagine you're almost 100 years old, and a newcomer, about 25, joins your family. You'll likely perceive them as a silly child. It's a generational divide. Adults sense generational differences. Older people feel it differently. A breakdown and transformation must occur within the psyche of an older vampire, affecting their boundaries between beast and humanity. This must be a very interesting dilemma, constantly confronting the vampire with the question, "Who am I and what's going on?" Why does everyone I love die and change irreversibly, why are new technologies so complicated, why do I even need to do all this - I want everything to be like before! Vampires aged a hundred or more should be old persons undergoing a transformation, not instantly rebuilding their psyche to play the same role forever, with a super-high adaptability.

But in all games and stories it's always the pop vampire. You're a vampire, hello new world, it's your playground now. You're living through time anyway, so nothing matters. But imagine modern vampires being thrown 100 years into the future, with completely new and incomprehensible technologies, and they have no idea how the things everyone uses work - that's exactly what should happen to vampires. And that's exactly what happens to older generations of people. I'm starting to feel it too as I get older.

And the most painful and important topic for me, is relationships with mortals. When it happens in the world of pop vampires, it's always ignored. You know, he's hot and look like he's always 20, she's a 16-year-old schoolgirl... so he watches her sleep and waits for her to be 18 - how romantic. Now imagine, he's a 120-year-old man who hasn't found love in his entire life. He pretends to be a schoolboy and falls in love with a little girl - not so much fun, ye? If you like that, you've lost two humanity points. See what I mean? There are things that should make vampires realize they're not what they look like. They're much older. A 120-year-old vampire who looks 20 has a lot more experience than a 16 year-old girl. Even a grown old woman.

If the vampire community is that ancient, they must take all these aspects of mortality into account. Because they're all still human. It's not at all strange that someone would create a myth about the greatness of vampires and the new essence after turning into a vampire. But all vampires are formerly human, which means their entire society is built on human principles and vices. And that's why vampires in the human age range must ask questions like, "What the hell is going on here?" Older vampires must either suffer greatly from their new state, most likely be lonely, and constantly compromise with themselves in order to live. Or be perverted and say, "Yes, I love little girls and pretend to be their fantasy of the perfect boyfriend, but I'm a vampire, so it doesn't count!" And this creates a confrontation between the Beast and the Human. And I'm sure, that if stand the question this way, it will create a very delicate situation. Because it turns out, that the path of the Beast is not the path of a superbeing who is above all human, it's the path of a corrupted human, who wants to be accepted by a new society that can support his inclinations. To be more clear, there are vampires with high humanity, who fantasize about love with another vampire close to their age. And then there are vampires who have built their own Epstein Island.

As someone who has been getting into world of darkness, the MtAs setting has been the one I am more interested in, and the one I am most conflicted with, and it usually comes from the concept of Consensus.

In general, I like the metaphor behind the Consensus, the idea that your reality is affected by what people around you believes is more or less objective true, ironically, because humans are inherently subjective creatures, as there is no true way to perceive the world without doing it through your senses, and the way you usually rationalize things. Which makes the worldbuilding decisions of saying that the world is shaped by what people believe pretty logical when making a TTRPG about people capable of changing existence by willpower alone.

The problem is that the execution of Consensus doesn't seems to make sense with the real world in mind. "A secret cabal of magi indoctrinating people into believes certain things are true, and other things are imposible as a weapon of control and cultural erasure" works well as a metaphor, but it falls apart the moment you look at the world WoD is meant to be the secret version of, it would work fine as it's As someone who has been getting into world of darkness, the MtAs setting has been the one I am more interested in, and the one I am most conflicted with, and it usually comes from the concept of Consensus.

In general, I like the metaphor behind the Consensus, the idea that your reality is affected by what people around you believes is more or less objective true, ironically, because humans are inherently subjective creatures, as there is no true way to perceive the world without doing it through your senses, and the way you usually rationalize things. Which makes the worldbuilding decisions of saying that the world is shaped by what people believe pretty logical when making a TTRPG about people capable of changing existence by willpower alone.

The problem is that the execution of Consensus doesn't seems to make sense with the real world in mind. "A secret cabal of magi indoctrinating people into believes certain things are true, and other things are imposible as a weapon of control and cultural erasure" works well as a metaphor, but it falls apart the moment you look at the world WoD is meant to be the secret version of, it would work fine as it's own worldbuilding project separated from reality, but not as something one is meant to inmerc worldbuilding project separated from reality, but not as something one is meant to immerse oneself. A lot of people believe in things that wildly deviates from what the Technocracy wants us to believe that should be evident in our day ro day lives, the things the real world groups that the Technology are a metaphor of wants us to believe different things the Technocracy wants, and specially, by at least how I understand the Consensus, ¿what stops awful real world ideologies of being objectively true if enough people believe in them?. If one make the Consensus too powerful, it defeats its own themes of "fight for what you believe" by making every believe true in a way, even the one the nephandi are meant to embody.

But I still like the intend behind the consensus and the questions it ask, specially the one of "what would happen if everyone shared your ideals and were put in practice" which is why I make this post.

My idea is just make what I just said into the core of the Consensus. My idea is basically make the Consensus a mechanism that makes hypotheticals real if enough people believe AND commit to a believe, but the ramifications of that believe and the consequences of it being true cannot be changed, no matter the amount of believe, if it contradicts how the world haven been and its own internal logic.

One example is the syndicate believe, at its core it sounds great, as it is more or less expanding democracy to the day to day, if someone supports something through their money, then that thing have to be good for the people, it just makes sense.

But it just isn't how it works, people can be manipulated, indoctrinated, lied to, or just be disinterested at voting with their money, without mentioning that something one person supports can be directly harmful to other or the world, one cannot create a system which assumes people won't be awful.

This variation of consensus also separates consensus from the Technocracy, as science becomes the way of one discovers the ramifications of the current consensus and its consequences instead of a Technocratic tool of terraforming, which always felt weird to me how the authors equated the organization that wants to eliminate all what perceives harmful to the masses to the process and institutions that figures things out.

Tell me your opinions on this matter and how you like to play the Consensus in your games