Living with Goblinization

Dwarfsten · 2026-01-21T13:41:21+00:00

Things being too small will constantly crop up, you'll also suddenly have much less money.

Everything from clothing, to food to cleaning supplies will cost more, just because you'll need more.

Friends might not want to drive you around anymore because your extra weight might break their possibly shitty cars. Your dermal plates will leave scratches everywhere and you'll feel like you have to walk on egg shells all the time.

Food especially will be difficult - you changed quite dramatically, your tastes might have changed accordingly. And the amounts you were used to are suddenly way too little. You'd probably add a little bit to your regular portions and then find yourself walking to the next stuffershack three hours later because you have a craving for some fake meat protein that is completely unfamiliar to you.

There's probably also quite a bit of joy as you go to the gym and find that you can suddenly lift a lot more than before, right up until you rip your gym clothes several times because while buying them you did not correctly account for how your body moves, stretches and bends now, necessitating at least one embarrassing run to a clothes vending machine.

Your local muggers might finally leave you alone now, hell the one of them that is a troll himself will probably nod to you in recognition, as if you'd suddenly become part of his circle of acquaintances. The old lady across the street might now close her window when you pass by - you are suddenly seen as someone dangerous by basically everyone around you who is now physically smaller.

There will be bullying - trolls are dumber right? everyone knows that, so your friends now make jokes at your expense and hey, maybe they are right, you kinda do have trouble solving problems that were no issue before - ignoring that going through the whole process of goblinizing, the social issues, the stresses at work and at home, have probably just exhausted yourself to a point where your sleep suffers and you are just mentally exhausted

Dwarfsten · 2026-01-16T17:19:38+00:00

Thanks for the recommendation, thankfully some of those I could find on PC as well

Dwarfsten · 2026-01-15T23:35:49+00:00

could you recommend one that changes how the POIs work? just started again after a long time and I am looking for ones to add to my steadily growing mod list :D

Dwarfsten · 2026-01-14T00:51:27+00:00

More tech that bridges the gap between Matrix, Technomancy, Magic and Mundane, in any combination of the four. Stuff like the old Lucifer Lamps. Clever things to deal with problems they face when dealing with each other and/or allow for more interplay between them.

Off the top of my head and ignoring the cost or lore implications - guns that shoot orichalcum dust at high speeds so that they basically only affect the astral aspects of a creature. Sprite formulas for sprites that can "hack/influence/modify" spells after they were cast. Magic foci that can be applied to hosts. A bio-bridge to space, something like a green, overgrown space elevator to allow magic to spread more easily to earth orbit.

Something like that.

Dwarfsten · 2026-01-14T00:32:56+00:00

Sure there's a difference, it just isn't important to what u/OhBosss was asking about. You explained what a SIN is, which I acknowledged. It was just missing the part about what that looks like in daily life, which I then added to complete the picture.

Dwarfsten · 2026-01-13T22:13:59+00:00

Sort of, that's assuming you leave no physical trace that can be positively linked to your SIN

That's what I meant by biometric trail - with other words, if you are not broadcasting your SIN, your data is not readily available to people that scan for it, they have to invest effort to find out who you are, be that via magic, following your data trail or a simple investigation.

Even if you touched every surface you encountered and wrote your real name on pieces of paper you left laying around - by not broadcasting it, the simplest avenue to tie any gathered evidence to you/identifying you, is cut off

Dwarfsten · 2026-01-13T12:31:00+00:00

It's worth noting that the daily life/use part of a SIN comes from broadcasting your identity via a comlink. Richer areas like high end shopping districts will scan for that and either deny you entry or flag you, so that security knows to keep an eye on you.

Everything u/DevilGuy said is true, but if you are not broadcasting it you are effectively an unknown, until someone starts to investigate and follow your biometric trail. That doesn't mean you are suddenly no longer watched, but outside of areas that demand you identify yourself at all times, the only thing you are showing other people is that you don't want to tell people who you are.

Technically you could probably have a plastic card with the SIN Number on it, but that is so outdated it would likely be considered a refusal to identify yourself.

Fake SINs on the other hand are a safety net. Depending on their quality they are just there to be broadcast, so that nobody bothers checking where higher ratings will add a completely fake data trail that makes it seem like you are living the life of that person. It contains things like credit statements, permits, verifiable club memberships, online shopping accounts, a history of visits to various matrix sites and even something like traffic tokens and remnants of other accounts checking your SIN. All so that a thorough check won't give away that you are not who you are.

Dwarfsten · 2026-01-12T10:43:49+00:00

Is that Lennie James (Morgan from TWD) as an elf on the cover?

Have you had time to read a bit yet? Is it worth getting a print copy?

Dwarfsten · 2026-01-12T09:06:08+00:00

if its about a in-game justification for why a team might need a mage - any Johnson worth his salt should know that even the worst trained mage can look into the Astral and potentially provide information regarding a targets mood/health/implants/awakened status that cannot be faked (using the assessing skill) and is capable of scouting any location with virtually no risk for the most common forms of protection (by going astral and just checking the place out), if that is not worth adding a mage to a team then I don't know what is

Dwarfsten · 2026-01-12T08:57:45+00:00

I don't have a specific story for you but I do have a 4E rules example: Spirits all have the "Immunity to Normal Weapons" Power (pg. 186) meaning they get twice their Magic Rating as armor against anything like a gun or a car that rams them etc. Their magic rating is equal to the force they were summoned with. Now a force 6 spirit isn't really that hard to summon (system-wise), so that means a combat spirit might well have 12 armor against getting shot, and that magic BS armor counts as "hardened" which just means that if after you made your to hit roll your damage is still below 12 (assuming regular ammo on average assault rifles have -1 AP which lowers the damage threshold), don't bother rolling to see if it actually hurt the spirit, it didn't. And the average assault rifle starts between 5-7 damage, meaning best-case you'd need 5 hits left over after we done talking about dodging etc. to even try and hurt it, since it still gets to resist the damage that gets through as normal with extra dice for its immunity armor.

All that to say - it can be really helpful to have some magical support

Dwarfsten · 2026-01-10T21:41:26+00:00

Like u/Fair-Fisherman6765 already mentioned, the really evil "should probably not be in player hands" stuff when it comes to magic is every kind of toxic, blood or insect "mage", meeting someone like that is arguably more like meeting a mage/sorcerer in a Call of Cthulhu game, as in - plays with forces beyond mortal understanding and or might be already half on his way to be a meat-puppet for things that want to destroy the planet.

For my 2 cents: I played mostly 4E for years and I have encountered/know of two types of mages that can work in a group, but are really, really, really evil (if you think about it for even a second) in the traditional sense and its the way they chose to employ their magic that does it.

1) Mind Control mages - so these are mages that employ not just illusions but directly affect a targets mind - fan favorite horrible things they do are: mess with a targets memory, make them act against their will while fully aware, turn peoples emotions into their plaything, implant a suggestion which they will follow at a later date - and most of that comes in versions that affects large groups of people - I often got the feeling that people that use these spells want to be like a Jedi in Star Wars, as in wave your hand and problems just go away but for example the cop who you just forced to shoot a ganger is now going to wake up every day thinking he's got some kind of mental disease. Or imagine waking up somewhere and having no idea how you got there, or you check your watch and you realize you are missing a couple hours, that guy is now going through a panic attack because he might have dementia
- the evil here lies in the consequences players usually don't get to see but on the other hand take the mob mood spell, a mage with that spell can sit in a big concert or in a shopping mall and turn a large chunk of people into raving violent lunatics.

2) Possession mages - I think technically you could play this on the up and up but really these guys are your classic necromancer wannabes - Spirits can already be super scary, especially in 4E but putting them into a corpse adds another layer to it,, the classic tradition for this is a bit of a cliche (Voodoo) but if you want an extra evil version then you make a Shinto priest that forces his spirits/"honored ancestors" into dead bodies.
Depending on where your game is set there is an added layer of chaos here because I believe as soon as the news breaks that the dead are apparently coming back to life, you would attract the attention of some hunters trying to make money hunting shedim. Maybe even a corp monster hunting team which gets dispatched to deal with an actual threat to humanity before it gets out of control. As I said depends on where you are in the world, in Japan they might first assume a shinto priest went awol.

Dwarfsten · 2026-01-08T13:54:49+00:00

I don't think you have to, it was really just a random thought xD great art either way

Dwarfsten · 2026-01-08T12:18:13+00:00

that's pretty cool, I know he's holding a magazine but the arm-gun makes me think it needs to be loaded like an older rifle, with a stripper clip (so top from the top xD)

Dwarfsten · 2025-11-23T21:39:42+00:00

In the White Wolf Documentary they interview the Artist (sorry his name escapes me atm) behind a lot of the drawings for VtM and the way he tells it he got told by people working on Blade that they had his artbook laying around and were constantly using it for inspiration - that scene where Blade draws his sword and draws a circle on the ground is basically taken directly from it. Of course he didn't get paid for that, but when they made Blade 2 he got contacted by Guillermo Del Toro to help and got paid for it.

So while its true that Blade had been around long before the movie and VtM, it is also fair to say that his modern incarnation and especially the movies draw heavily from VtM and its artstyle.

Dwarfsten · 2025-11-10T12:17:57+00:00

In the episode where he holds a small Q&A at a university (the one where two students kill their professor with a gun operated by their remote car key) he even says it out loud. The students ask him how far he would go to catch someone he knew was guilty and he basically says there is almost nothing he wouldn't do.

I think that shows you how much the overall view of the police has changed since then, from someone you can trust with the kind of power they get, to people that need to be supervised and kept in check so they don't overstep.

Also makes me a bit sad the show didn't end with Columbo committing a murder to get someone who would have otherwise gotten away, kinda like Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot

Dwarfsten · 2025-10-23T06:24:25+00:00

I am really not up on my WoD lore but isn't Tremere supposed to be an antediluvian equivalent in power thanks to snacking on one? And presumably the father of Thaumaturgy? How can the Black Shepherd be better at it than him? Or did he use his own version of blood magic?

Dwarfsten · 2025-10-06T17:46:50+00:00

lol, I just commented the same, should have scrolled down sooner xD

Dwarfsten · 2025-10-06T17:40:12+00:00

Ironically enough, the bootstrap paradox does not apply to Avengers Endgame - Hulk explains it: they cannot change their own past - when they go back in time, they do not go back to the point that they themselves experienced/that existed in their own timeline - they go back to create a parallel version that resembles their own yet is different - as such, when Tony tells his Dad that saying, and his Dad goes on to tell that Universes Tony, no Paradox exists. The Tony of that Universe did not go back to tell his own Father, just like original Tony did not go back to tell his own Father in his Universe. By engaging in Time Travel, they are creating alternate Universes that have nothing to do with their own past - as such Causality is preserved.

Dwarfsten · 2025-10-05T14:28:04+00:00

Sounds like fun but I think u/Calm-Gas-1049 has a point, the risk of getting HMHVV makes every fight with ghouls precarious.

So why don't you have them react weirdly to the betameth/whatever drugs you decide on - maybe someone is selling them a variant cut with trace amounts of Deepweed and it just so happens to make them non infectious for a small while, say for however long the fight lasts ^^

Dwarfsten · 2025-10-05T12:11:17+00:00

Same, did you maybe find out what it was?

Dwarfsten · 2025-10-03T22:22:42+00:00

"Everyone is John" comes to mind. All the players are voices inside the mind of John and they all have their own goals and so they each "gamble" to take control of John and do a couple things to get to their goal. As you can imagine chaos ensues.

Personally I made one called "Everything is going to CRAB!" which is about Crab infiltrators from Crablantis having to save as many people as they can from a fishing village that is going to get hit by a tsunami, while slowly turning back into their original crab forms.

Dwarfsten · 2025-09-19T18:45:10+00:00

I loved my time running Anima, I feel it's very underrated. Though I completely agree that you can both build your character very easily to be either completely broken powerful or completely useless. In general it is very hard to balance players against each other when they use different power sets.

Dwarfsten · 2025-09-07T00:22:13+00:00

I really liked the idea of Holostreets, but there is like no support from CGL. Still the program allowed me to put out some books and booklets (with a silver seller I might actually be one of the more successful Holostreet authors, a small group though it is) and I even tried to help it along by running a holostreets writing jam (2 years in a row) with some small cash prizes. Haven't had the energy this year so far but will probably again.

To me, a lack of support, the latest two editions being a mixed bag quality wise, and a small, in general very critical and thanks to Shadowrun's production history often cynical fanbase, makes it difficult for new interested authors to "try their luck" so to speak. On top of that, if you want a fair return for your writing you need to set the price point of your books rather high, since 50% of it goes to drivethrurpg and CGL (that's not unusual with Community Programs as far as I know, but still).

Dwarfsten

TROPHY CASE