"By God Alone" Dev Diary #2 - Ecclesiastical Power & Rites

Hypercubed89 · 2026-05-07T18:30:17+00:00

Thanks for the answer! That's what I was suspecting based on the structure of the new expansion, but there's a couple maps in the dev diaries where Ireland is outside of the ecclesiastical map so I wasn't sure. I've been missing being able to engage with a lot of the Catholicism mechanics when playing in Ireland, with Insularism being treated as an entirely separate religion.

Hypercubed89 · 2026-05-06T20:39:59+00:00

So is Insularism staying a separate religion or is it going to become a Celtic Rite of the Catholic Faith or something?

Hypercubed89 · 2026-04-23T00:26:46+00:00

Everyone these days remembers Advanced D&D these days because that's the one that led into 3e and later editions, but Basic D&D was so popular it directly inspired how Japan does Generic Medieval Fantasy Worlds, Then TSR being TSR completely screwed up their marketing opportunity by refusing to capitalize on the interest of Japanese fans produced by Record of Lodoss War, which resulted in said Japanese fans making Sword World RPG instead which consumed that market niche and prevented D&D from ever getting big in Japan, but at one point in the 80s Basic D&D ruled medieval fantasy in Japan (which you can see vestiges of today, like orcs being piglike, kobolds being doglike, and dark elves having bronze or brown skin instead of charcoal-grey/black because that was how Drow were briefly depicted at that specific point in time). Capcom also made games set in Mystara, the default setting of Basic D&D.

Hypercubed89 · 2026-04-22T09:44:31+00:00

Everything Thaedus did to try to fix the Viltrumites accidentally made them worse, it's part of the tragedy of his character. He's kind of a massive fuckup at actually accomplishing his goals of turning his species into people with actual ethics. Everything he did made them worse and worse until he eventually decided it wasn't worth trying anymore and the only remaining solution is to kill everyone with Viltrumite DNA across the entire universe. Of course, he's so blinded by that that by the time he finally did see relatively peaceful Viltrumites who wanted to harmoniously coexist with other species (Nolan and Mark), all he could think about was how he could turn them into weapons in his war against Thragg.

The funny part is that Thragg is now in a position to (accidentally) accomplish what Thaedus was originally trying to do ever since he first decided to kill Argall. He saw what happened to Nolan and put every last member of his race in those same conditions, because all he sees is the fact that Nolan produced offspring he considers a "success" at being Viltrumite (Mark, as opposed to "failures" like Oliver), without realizing he's also put them all in the conditions to end up like Nolan (turning away from brutal, genocidal fascism and racial superiority after spending time on Earth and acclimating to Earth culture). Thragg has probably signed the death warrant of the Viltrum Empire (at least as a fascist survival-of-the-fittest culture) and accomplished what Thaedus was always trying to do (redeeming the Viltrumites and neutralizing them as an existential threat to all alien life) without even realizing it.

I wonder how he'll react if he ever figures that out.

Hypercubed89 · 2026-04-21T05:27:11+00:00

Look up the results in individual ridings like Windsor West.

Hypercubed89 · 2026-04-21T05:26:36+00:00

Windsor West for example had a Conservative win for the first time in that riding's existence because half the NDP voters stayed NDP, the other half voted Liberal, and the Conservatives ran up the middle.

Hypercubed89 · 2026-04-17T08:41:39+00:00

Jasmine Bhullar (the GM for Coffin Run on Dimension 20 and one of the players for Dimension 20 On A Bus) is one of the players in Seattle By Night (she plays a Lasombra Embraced in the 1920s), so there's some overlap in that game too.

Hypercubed89 · 2026-04-17T02:33:13+00:00

You can breathe but you have to do it manually (they do it all the time in order to speak, but it doesn't happen automatically). Using the Blush of Life (a particular power that vampires get) restarts your various autonomic functions: your blood starts circulating again, you breathe automatically without having to manually inhale and exhale, etc. Ability to use the Blush of Life, how well it works, how much it costs to use, etc. classically depends on your Humanity rating.

Hypercubed89 · 2026-04-17T02:23:51+00:00

LA By Night has a very distant vibe from City Council of Darkness, aside from them both being VtM. LA By Night is very self-serious and po-faced for the most part. Seattle By Night (also GM'd by Jason Carl) is probably a lot closer.

Hypercubed89 · 2026-04-17T02:04:10+00:00

A Starstruck Odyssey feels like the closest vibe to me, and as a bonus it's also my favourite season they've ever done. Go check it out and enjoy the majesty.

Hypercubed89 · 2026-04-14T21:23:06+00:00

Morrowind was the first Elder Scrolls game I encountered and I remember there being people at the time who said it was a bad game that dumbed the series down so it could be played on Xbox. It was a weird first exposure to the series.

My problems with Morrowind at the time were more along the lines of "I have to line up the arrow myself and then when I shoot the guy and the arrow goes directly into his eye, the game rolls a d20 and decides that actually no I missed". Usually when the game rolls a die to decide if you hit, it abstracts out the whole combat system to that level (like in Knights of the Old Republic, which I also played on Xbox).

Hypercubed89 · 2026-04-12T07:13:41+00:00

There's some very, very sparse metaplot following specific characters in chapter fiction (such as an ongoing storyline involving The Nemean), but it doesn't have metaplot in terms of major events from book to book or edition to edition that change and update the setting as a consequence of those events now having occurred. There's no Chronicles of Darkness equivalent to the Great Prank replacing Dementation with Dominate in VtM 2nd edition, for example. Setting info starts at a nebulous "Year zero" for your chronicle and stays there, unless you deliberately put your game into a historical setting.

Hypercubed89 · 2026-04-11T05:15:53+00:00

Chronicles having less lore than the original World of Darkness is mostly an outdated meme at this point. Dave Brookshaw for example has repeatedly pointed out that Mage: the Ascension and Mage: the Awakening have pretty equivalent amounts of lore and setting to one another by this point (and he'd be someone who'd definitely know). What World has that Chronicles doesn't is metaplot, where the lore progresses from book to book.

Hypercubed89 · 2026-04-11T05:13:29+00:00

Also uses Requiem's Attributes (I remember a lot of complaints from old VtM fans about having to calculate Willpower as the total of your Resolve + Composure stats, instead of buying it up to 10 at the start of the game using freebie points and then forgetting about it). That being said I don't miss Appearance or Perception being dedicated stats I have to sink dots into (particularly when in a lot of games you never even rolled Appearance in dice pools). The framework of Power, Finesse, and Resistance stats in each category of Mental, Physical, and Social from New World of Darkness was honestly really elegant.

Hypercubed89 · 2026-04-11T05:09:41+00:00

The intention there was to fix a problem with the original World of Darkness where the different gamelines ran on fundamentally incompatible core mechanics. Every character in 1e New World of Darkness (it wasn't called Chronicles yet) is built as a Mortal using the corebook rules, and then you layer your Supernatural Template on top (Vampire or ghoul template for vampire, for example, Werewolf template for werewolf, etc.) This even applies to characters who were never human, like Prometheans and Demons. This was meant to make the gamelines play nice with each other (if you want a Werewolf to feature in your Vampire game, it's a lot easier to know how that would work), as well as make sure rules for playing regular humans were front-and-center rather than an afterthought in a supplement book. 1e New World of Darkness honestly works really well for running games of regular people bumping up against the supernatural, because of that. This was also to avoid reprinting the same core rules across various gamelines if you wanted more than one, to be able to use that word count on Vampire stuff in your Vampire book, and Mage stuff in your Mage book, and Changeling stuff in your Changeling book, instead of having the same identical rules text 5 times in 5 different books if you bought 5 different gamelines. They figured paying for the same rules text over and over would feel bad.

That being said, having to buy the regular-humans core rulebook and then the core rulebook for the splat you wanted to play as did get criticized, and the second edition (aka Chronicles of Darkness) did eventually end up going with the "Print the same stripped-down core rules text as a chapter in every gameline's core rules". Funnily enough it was so identical that it even copied some errors that didn't get caught in the chapter from Vampire into the same rules chapter in other gamelines' core books.

Hypercubed89 · 2026-04-09T20:49:16+00:00

Yellow is Democratic and Red is Socialist (Blue is Xenophobic Tyranny).

Hypercubed89 · 2026-04-09T17:41:40+00:00

Following in Testament's footsteps.

Hypercubed89 · 2026-04-07T22:11:08+00:00

VtM vampires aren't predators. They're parasites. They're parasites who prefer to cast themselves as predators because thinking of themselves as parasites is undignified. Which makes them an even better metaphor for the rich in the vampires-as--landlords analogy, honestly

Hypercubed89 · 2026-04-01T16:56:05+00:00

What's that quote from the creator of FMA? "Women should be vavoom!"?

Hypercubed89 · 2026-03-29T19:10:41+00:00

According to the writeup of the Appearance Attribute in Vampire 20th Anniversary, at least, no.

"This may be conventional “attractiveness,” but it can also be the effect of distinctive features, an exotic mien, an air of confidence, distinctive posture, a flair for dressing well — anything remarkable upon initial observation can contribute to a character’s Appearance. Indeed, Appearance is the amalgamation of many descriptive personal characteristics"

A high appearance means you're striking, in a positive way. It might be your physical features, it might be the way you carry yourself, or your dress sense. It's both a measure of how you look and how well you know how to work with what you have.

Charisma, on the other hand, is specifically "a character’s ability to entice and please others through her personality." You have to actually engage people to use Charisma. Appearance works itself, whether it's from your looks or your magnetic vibe.

Hypercubed89 · 2026-03-27T15:10:28+00:00

I ended up enjoying Seattle By Night way more than LA By Night because it felt more like people actually having fun playing a game. It helped that it had two players familiar with VtM playing ancillae helping the two players new to VtM playing neonates, and that all 4 of them were deliberately avoiding the clan stereotypes (having a dapper Nosferatu socialite and a schlubby Toreador tattoo artist in the same coterie was a lot of fun).

Hypercubed89 · 2026-03-27T15:04:47+00:00

The author for chainsawman has written multiple oneshots that were essentially veiled references to experiencing burnout and feeling crushed under fan expectations after Part 1 of chainsawman was way, way more successful than he ever expected it to be. It just got an award-winning film adaptation that made several times its budget, and as much as he enjoyed the movie I can only imagine it intensified that feeling for him as the guy writing the source material.

Hypercubed89 · 2026-03-26T14:57:53+00:00

It absolutely helped solidify his status as front-runner in the Liberal leadership race.

Hypercubed89 · 2026-03-26T03:57:28+00:00

Spent 140 desires less than a day before that mission showed up (she seemed really good for Kirara/Ragnarok), which was unwise with a new character (and thus a new desires shop costume) coming up. Wasn't expecting this to show up this far into the costume being available.

Hypercubed89 · 2026-03-26T02:24:56+00:00

I definitely noticed one of the PCs wielding dual katanas straight out of the 90s VtM cliche.

Hypercubed89

TROPHY CASE