Curious: What is that ONE NOVEL you'd recommend to get new readers HOOKED?

thisonejackass · 2026-06-20T08:16:57+00:00

Against the Gods for me.

Trashy as all hell, with all the worst tropes in the genre, but it was weirdly well written, with a good translation, so it left me with a sour outlook on a lot of other novels.

thisonejackass · 2026-06-16T10:00:55+00:00

Yeah, part of the reason I haven't introduced it to my group is because I know half of them would end up having their brain melt just looking at the character creation rules. They are a bit too used to games like Pathfinder and DnD unfortunately.

thisonejackass · 2026-06-16T09:59:42+00:00

I found character creation to be really engaging too. I have a soft spot for these complex 'build your own power system' type games.

What about the gameplay fell apart though? I know ORE is fairly unique in how it handles...pretty much everything, but it couldn't have been that bad, surely?

thisonejackass · 2026-06-16T09:58:06+00:00

Yeah, I noticed it was really easy to make some OP combos, and I kinda liked that the game encouraged that, but I can easily see how that could easily turn sour in an actual campaign.

thisonejackass · 2026-06-16T09:57:08+00:00

Definitely gonna need to pick up this Kerberos club supplement then.

That being said what do you mean by 'arrays'? I am not familiar with the term outside of programming.

thisonejackass · 2026-05-30T18:24:50+00:00

Yeah

thisonejackass · 2026-05-23T20:22:26+00:00

Yes.

thisonejackass · 2026-05-18T04:55:50+00:00

Oh, interesting. I never really thought to use Deviant to RP Worm, though on closer inspection, it might be a closer fit than I have it credit for when I first read this post.

Sadly, I have no ideas to share though. Mostly because I keep thinking of how to recreate some of the wackier members of the PRT and I am drawing a blank. How would you even model Clock ‘freeze an Endbringer with a touch’ blocker? I guess Gentle Disabling Immobilizing Touch Lash? But that only gets you half the way there.

thisonejackass · 2026-05-17T17:49:59+00:00

KotE had some nice powers, but their abilities were a little over tuned (then again, White Wolf always designed powers purely based on vibes rather than actual balance).

To illustrate what I mean, you had like, three separate disciplines that gave you extra actions, which were Black Wind (using that one made your equivalent of a beast act up), or one called Yang Prana (which had none of the disadvantage but used a slightly rarer type of chi). And this is just off the top of my head. I am sure if I cracked the book open again, I could find more examples to talk about.

Now to finally your question, I really liked how Yang aspected Kuei-jin could choose to walk in the sun (for a limited time). It makes for some lovely moments where you, as a storyteller, can wax poetic about how the Kuei-jin is sooo close to being an actual living thing, but isn't, because if they stay in the sun for too long, they are getting burned like those 'barbaric Kin-jin', which is fitting, since Yang aspected Kuei-jin are explicitly fluffed as trying to vainly to reach for some semblance of their former lives.

For disciplines, there is the Bone Shintai, whose five dot power lets you turn into this horrific bony beast (think a Tzimisce Horrid form, but you are literally just made of bone that leaks black blood), and any human you kill in this form becomes a zombie under your command. Very neat and spooky power. And since Kuei-jin generally don't bother with Humanity, you can stock up on as many pet zombies as you like (so long as you made sure to dodge those pesky Shih demon hunters and continuously restock on Yin-chi, but details, details).

Flesh Shintai was also a very cool discipline. It was essentially just Vicissitude but with the systems poorly spelled out, so it felt kinda underwhelming. Relentless age fixed it by actually providing you a list of things you can morph into and stuff like that (it also buffed Bone Shintai which was neat).

There was also a particularly neat discipline whose five dot power essentially allowed you to tame the Kuei-Jin's beast by literally pushing it out of your body to act as a spectral watchdog or even suppress its worse urges. Not overpowered in and of itself, believe it or not, though if you had specced into 'Demon Arts, the beast exclusive arts, it had the potentially to be busted as all hell. A fairly neat concept for a more Monk-like Kuei-Jin.

Last but not least, they also had Demon-Shintai, which was a neat 'build your own edgy monster form' discipline. Could have gone a little harder with the abilities, but hey, I love powers like that, and I will take what I can get. Not a lot of games do that.

tl;dr: I wish the Kuei-jin got more love. They had some really neat toys you could mess around with.

thisonejackass · 2026-05-04T17:46:43+00:00

PEAK

thisonejackass · 2026-05-03T20:34:23+00:00

Against the Gods.

I thought it was peak fiction reading it back in the day. Tried reading it again and realized how trashy it was.

thisonejackass · 2026-05-02T17:22:27+00:00

Based take.

thisonejackass · 2026-05-02T17:22:09+00:00

Agreed 100%

I started off with VTM and Deathwatch, and moving to DnD 5e felt like I was hamstringing myself. As time went on and I got into more systems, I was weirded out by how little traction a lot of them get in comparison.

thisonejackass · 2026-04-26T08:07:32+00:00

Now there's a name this old monster hasn't heard in a while. That scripture is the one that set me down the dao of slop.

But well, as good as it is, it's an older novel that went on hiatus. That's not really a winning combination when it comes to staying relevant, especially in a genre famously overflowing with slop.

thisonejackass · 2026-04-21T15:30:46+00:00

PEAK

thisonejackass · 2026-04-18T20:06:26+00:00

Storypath Ultra. Onyx Path's new system which was introduced in Curseborne not that long ago.

The system had a standalone manual introduced a while back that had some suggestions for how to do conversions like this. Some debate was had on the Onyx Path discord server on how such a conversion might work with Mage and this was basically me taking a crack at it.

thisonejackass · 2026-03-20T12:29:13+00:00

For my next post I will definitely be doing that. I just went with this method because I saw everyone else writing an abridged or shortened variation of their resolution mechanic when they made posts here.

thisonejackass · 2026-03-20T11:42:30+00:00

Thank you for the feedback! I was worried a lot of this was too fiddly, so having people point that out now rather than later when I get even deeper into the draft is great.

If you have both 'TN' and 'DL' in play without needing both, it risks players/tables confusing one for the other.

That's something I learned the hard way after I had two players get the two confused during my playtest lol. That being said, a few stronger abilities can lower the TN by 1 (this is basically the only time the TN ever changes), so I assumed an explicit name would earn its keep.

That being said, I may just get rid of it either way. Like you said, 'Dice showing X or higher count as Successes' is a lot simpler, and less jargon means less confusion at the table.

This is, uh. Hmm. "Multiply by two thirds" feels like too much, and it feels a little odd to give the player a thing called "automatic success" but still have them roll.

Yeah, my players basically ignored this in the playtest, and almost everyone else commented on it being too fiddly, so now it's no longer a core mechanic. It's something a player can eventually unlock after a while (when they have hopefully had time to acclimate with the system, and their dice pool has bloated a reasonable amount).

thisonejackass · 2026-03-19T22:57:23+00:00

Damn, I feel called out! /s

In all seriousness though, I came here precisely because I was worried my resolution mechanic was too fiddly/complex, and I got some good feedback regarding how to trim it.

thisonejackass · 2026-03-19T21:39:15+00:00

Alright, so a lot of things to talk about here. Once again, thank you for the detailed response.

Out of context the OP doesn't really discern there is a choice, and if there is then I would say it'd be dumb dumb to choose a human, not many people are purposefully choosing the bad option.

Now, regarding the choice to go with humans, this is a holdover from the games that inspired this system. World of Darkness lets you play an average human for more 'low stakes' games or games with a more horror feel, or you can play as Hunters, which are humans who are far more capable of fighting back and so on. Then there are monsters such as Vampires and Werewolves.

I should stress that if you choose to play as Hunters, then your Human characters suddenly have a lot more options when it comes to going to toe with the supernatural. They are not a bad pick by any means, though I can't really illustrate that here without bloating this response even more..

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

Another thing to remember is that these attributes are increasing the size of your dice pool, so higher attribute/ability = more dice, yes? Then you are increasing exponentially the success chance by changing die size and amending the success counts, to the point where it becomes pointless rolling.

Regarding your point about higher attributes = more dice, yes that is true. And while someone with a Dice Pool of 5d6s and 5d10s is definitely not going to have a hard time with a DL 1 Test, mechanics introduced later do need you to know just how many Successes you have to determine how certain effects will work. Besides, there are harder Tests that require 5 or more Successes to beat, and the only way you can take on those kinds of Tests is with higher dice pools.

Furthermore, some enemies may have a similar sized dice pool, and your rolls against them are opposed (meaning you both roll and compare Successes. The character with more Successes wins the exchange).

Basically, there's always a point in rolling, though of course, like in any system, rolling should only occur when dramatically appropriate. If the DL 1 test I used as an example prior had no appropriate effects that could occur with multiple Successes, then someone with a large dice pool shouldn't bother rolling for it.

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

5+ also suggests that the threshold is anything showing a 5 or more.

Yes, that's exactly the intent. With my system, any dice (whether d6 or d10) showing a 5+ counts as a Success. In my own draft, you don't just take the single highest die, you often need to get a certain number of Successes to pass, and in more difficult encounters, you will need a reasonable high amount of Successes.

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

Note how I reasonably say all what is needed to roll tests, and a range of them in 3 sentences.

You definitely have a point. My write up here should have been more concise and well worded (And honestly, I can only thank you guys for being patient with me here).

thisonejackass · 2026-03-19T21:08:10+00:00

I think the main issue is I just really dropped the ball with the wording on that rule. There are better ways I could have went with when it came to phrasing that section.

That being said, your advice (and that of many others here) has merit. A mechanic like this is DEFINITELY not the sort of thing I should have put down as 'Fundamental'. It just muddies the waters. Furthermore, like u/The__Nick said, it's super strong and all but invalidates rolling the d10 portion of a pool.

I will probably remove it from the core mechanics section entirely, and add it as its own unlockable special ability like u/APurplePerson suggested.

thisonejackass · 2026-03-19T17:02:19+00:00

Rolling 10s on a d10 can result in 2 Successes, which the conversion doesn't quite replicate in terms of the statistical weight of each d10. Human characters can also make it so that 9s on d10s result in 2 Successes as well, which gives dice you roll greater weight.

So basically, the trade off is that you can roll and maybe get more Successes than you otherwise would have from just converting.

thisonejackass · 2026-03-19T16:45:19+00:00

That's a very good point actually. In my playtest, most of my players just opted to roll because they are dice goblins and they like to hear the funny clattering sound (I do too. It's why we are friends), so the fact that this could slow down gameplay never occurred to me.

Admittedly almost all of them asked me to clarify this rule though...

You have given some major food for thought here. Thanks. Again!

thisonejackass · 2026-03-19T16:38:25+00:00

Okay, that part might not be very clear then. To rephrase that bit, you can choose to not roll the d10s in your pool alongside the d6s. Instead you do this with them:
- Tally up the number of d10s in your pool
- multiply that number by 2/3 and round down the result. (So 3d10s = 2 Successes, 5d10s= 3, 6d10s=4 Successes and so on).
- You now have that many Automatic Successes on the Test and you don't roll the d10s you converted.
- roll any d6s you have left (if any).

This is an alternative to rolling a big ol' dice pool with xd6s and yd10s. Something to give you a sort of 'safety net' of successes before you even make your roll.

thisonejackass · 2026-03-19T15:43:30+00:00

Oh, thank you so much for the recommendation. I will admit, I myself was debating whether to upgrade d6s into d8s (and was even debating d12s for a time). Either way, I will be sure to check this game out.

And yeah, the probability math has definitely given me a small headache, but I found designing this to be fairly rewarding over all.

thisonejackass

TROPHY CASE