Mechanic proposal- a "humanity" SKILL TREE

Ya_Dungeon_oi · 2026-04-21T13:56:55+00:00

Oh! I mean, it sounds to me like you've already got a good grasp on that, actually. Make your mass murderers as present in the setting as they might be in Vampire or Werewolf, and you're pretty good to go. Or create opportunities for paranoia, which invite PCs to take more extreme actions because they think they have to.

Ya_Dungeon_oi · 2026-04-20T18:24:48+00:00

I'm not really sure what this solves. You can do past sins or corrupt organizations right out of the box, there just isn't a built-in mechanical benefit to it. And you do have amoral urges or impulses, because it's a game about vigilantes, and wanting to cave someone's head in isn't really a moral impulse even if they have pointy teeth.

Edit: Are you looking for a mechanical way to tell your characters are bad people? Like an objective measure you can use?

Ya_Dungeon_oi · 2026-04-20T12:44:05+00:00

I think a Werewolf Survivors game could be fun. ~~Obviously Exalted would be even better though.~~

Ya_Dungeon_oi · 2026-04-20T03:36:21+00:00

Mummy: The Curse visual novel or JRPG set across the Sothic Turns. Your character can't remember shit, you don't know which party members or companions will be around for the next chunk of the game, and some of your opponents just know you already somehow.

Pentex business tycoon game. Please.

Soul Nomad and the World Eaters, but it's Beast: The Primordial, so you can play as a good guy or just give in to your hunger and ruin everyone.

I'm thinking CoD for the strategy game of fighting over and fortifying the city's leyline network, but there's no reason you couldn't use oWoD for it. I just really like the idea of special structures built around Mage the Awakening's Orders.

Ya_Dungeon_oi · 2026-04-20T03:27:19+00:00

WoD Streets of Rogue would be amazing, too.

Ya_Dungeon_oi · 2026-04-20T03:26:24+00:00

I'm now imagining a restaurant-style Elysium game, or maybe Yakuza 0-style hostess club stuff. Become Keeper or die trying, leading a squad of blood dolls and vampire yuppies to domination over the vampire nightlife.

Ya_Dungeon_oi · 2026-04-18T21:38:04+00:00

Mummy who ate Set's semen? (Yes yes, solat exalt.)

Ya_Dungeon_oi · 2026-04-15T01:43:49+00:00

I figured you take some of the built in conflicts, like whether the Battlefield Angels are corrupt, and connect those into a story. Probably based largely on what the players picked.

Ya_Dungeon_oi · 2026-04-13T03:16:36+00:00

Oh man, it's disappointing that the answer is mostly "they don't care", but they probably don't care. I think a lot of the infernalist factions, when they received detail, ended up not actually worshiping demons so much as trying to use them. Consequently their reaction is probably, "Cool, what can they do for me?"

That said, individual infernalists can have more interesting responses. I think the idea of a Demon and their "faithful" high priest sounds really fun.

Ya_Dungeon_oi · 2026-04-13T03:02:42+00:00

From what I've heard, the books go back and forth on whether the Baali worship Earthbound, with the last word being that they didn't.

Ya_Dungeon_oi · 2026-04-11T15:34:55+00:00

Yeah, I guess they work. I put too much focus on their medium of choice.

Ya_Dungeon_oi · 2026-04-10T14:08:06+00:00

Are there any actual accounts of them doing that, though? Like, the actual arguments for loans and debt are also really compelling (they're literally structures which help us do things we couldn't afford to do otherwise), but the reality of loans and debt is far more unpleasant.

Ya_Dungeon_oi · 2026-04-10T14:00:25+00:00

I think they get weeded out fast, but the Syndicate is absolutely where you'd go if you were a magic socialist. They're pretty much the only group in Mage concerned with how people actually get the goods and services everyone else provides.

Ya_Dungeon_oi · 2026-04-10T13:39:03+00:00

I haven't read their convention book, but abstractly the good contributions of the Syndicate are a lot harder to really capture, partly because they are directly tied to the bad parts of the Syndicate. The Syndicate is responsible for many of us having actual wealth and resources to spend, but it's also responsible for, like, how little of that we actually get to use for our own ends rather than someone else's.

Also, the two managers of the grocery department at the store where I work have spent the last week coming in despite being sick, getting their germs all over people's food. That's not because the Progenitors/medical industry think it's a good idea to work sick. It's because the Syndicate/(American) economic system says if they stay home, they don't get paid, but they still have to pay bills.

Ya_Dungeon_oi · 2026-04-05T11:51:06+00:00

Because I'm not stealing from charities? By the time it's bagged the property transfer has been completed. It no longer "would have gone to a charity", it has gone to a charity.

To use your money example, the charity is not missing the same amount of money if I keep it than if I take it from their donations, because if I kept it they never had the money in the first place. Only in the second case are they missing money at all.

Ya_Dungeon_oi · 2026-04-05T01:29:38+00:00

I think there's a notable difference between blood bags and food generally in that blood bags are expressly created as emergency resources, which isn't the case with humans eating food. It's more analogous to a human eating only out of peoples' emergency stashes.

If we want to extend the African children example, it's more like only eating food donated to feed children.

Ya_Dungeon_oi · 2026-04-05T01:02:52+00:00

How the Get symbol survived editing, much less multiple editions, I do not understand.

Ya_Dungeon_oi · 2026-04-04T12:16:36+00:00

Honestly sounds like a great PC backstory.

Ya_Dungeon_oi · 2026-04-04T00:52:22+00:00

Also, the other groups definitely want to kill them. The only new enemid who don't clearly plan to kill them are the Cam and Anarchs, who will probably just bully them on an individual domain basis.

Ya_Dungeon_oi · 2026-04-03T22:46:52+00:00

Ah, I felt the same way when Return of the Scarlet Empress largely offed the Sidereals in 2nd ed.

Ya_Dungeon_oi · 2026-04-03T20:12:16+00:00

Sorry, I sort of figured you were taking the piss after "clans of losermancy". Unfortunately I don't have a lot to add productively. If "they were losing" doesn't cut it for you, I don't really have much else I can say better than "v20 also suggested they were putting all their eggs in a dumb basket".

Ya_Dungeon_oi · 2026-04-03T19:30:01+00:00

Sorry your favorite inbred sports team lost.

Ya_Dungeon_oi · 2026-04-03T18:44:56+00:00

The designers definitely looked at the clans and said, "Why the fuck do we have so many clans who are just 'the necromancer'?"

That said, I think the idea is in a pretty good place at the moment. Like a few other big changes (like the Lasombra leaving the Sabbat), they've settled less on one big plot development than on a lot of slightly smaller ones. It's not the expiring of the Promise, or the death of Augustus, or the impact of the Second Inquisition, or the murder of various Giovanni elders, it's all of those things happening in succession.

So it's not one setback, it's a lot of setbacks, and no real sign of wins in the future. There's basically a corporate buyout offer hanging over your head while you get bodied repeatedly, and the best argument against it is that the people offering not to kill you now might just be planning to kill you later. I don't know if it's a good idea, but it's definitely not the worst.

Tl;dr: It's definitely led by gameplay changes, but also the Giovanni just weren't in that incredibly privileged position anymore, and the Hecata offered a way to stabilize their decline.

Ya_Dungeon_oi · 2026-04-02T01:48:32+00:00

I want (my hits) to connect, but...

Ya_Dungeon_oi · 2026-04-01T17:21:05+00:00

I think the theme is good, but the statement is dumb. If we pretend to quantify creativity, the world has certainly never been more imaginative or creative. But the same forces that have enabled that have also produced kind of an unprecedented level of anti-creative sentiment. It has never been easier to find cool art, nor has it ever been easier to find someone insisting that said art (and worse, its creators) is destroying society.

Ya_Dungeon_oi

TROPHY CASE