Expanding AWOD

[Maxus]

So, a buddy of mine was experimenting with uploading torrents to Demonoid, and loaded Alternate World of Darkness earlier today. Already got forty downloads, credit is given to Frank (and the rest of the Den) and it's garnering a few comments.

Don't search for aWoD, though. It's under "Alternate World of Darkness"

[Lokathor]

Very cool, but that's a much older version of the PDF. It doesn't include all the essays or later edits.

Try here for a newer version: https://sites.google.com/site/awodpdf2/home/AWoD.pdf

[Maxus]

Very cool, but that's a much older version of the PDF. It doesn't include all the essays or later edits.

Try here for a newer version: https://sites.google.com/site/awodpdf2/home/AWoD.pdf

I know. I pointed this out to him. I'll upload the new one soon--he rightly pointed out that interest in this one is perking along. So if you wait until interest dies down a bit, you'll get the old crowd who'll be interested in some extra material/an updated PDF, and people who hadn't seen it before.

[Username17]

So I get deafening silence from TriTac. Which is probably to be expected. They are a rinky dink operation and Nightlife has been in development hell for 19 years and probably isn't coming out.

So if that is going to go ahead, it seems like what has to be done is to go full unique IP. Although Lokathor's suggestions of using names right out of the SRD like Hide in Plain Sight and Shadow Walk is awesome and hilarious. So that should probably be done a few times.

But sure, the title needs a full overhaul. Anything "World of Darkness" is right out of course, and "Nightlife" is taken. My instinct is to go with something which is mythological and not particularly taken that refers to there being a bunch of monsters. Something like Echidna. Which is the mythological mother of all monsters and is basically Not Protected. But if anyone else has a name they want used, I'm open to hearing suggestions.

-Username17

[angelfromanotherpin]

Not a fan of Echidna. I think we want something that evokes night-time, danger, and sex.

• 'Bump In The Night,' almost works for me. It's taken by someone's free RPG, but they might let us use it, or be unable to claim damages since it's free.

• Some sort of Latin thing: Nocte Monstorum (?) or similar.

• 'The Hungry Shadows'

I'm just 'storming here.

[Orion]

The most interesting aspect of the flavor text is all the discussion of immortality and what it does to a psyche and a society, that, and loneliness. So how about a title alluding to the longevity issue, like "No Exit" or "Eternity"

[hyzmarca]

Is Monsters taken? It's short, sweet, and to the point. And its generic enough to reflect the multitude of potential play styles. And its non-pretentious.

[Username17]

Is Monsters taken? It's short, sweet, and to the point. And its generic enough to reflect the multitude of potential play styles. And its non-pretentious.

"Monster", "Monster 2", "Vs Monsters", "Monster Den", and "Monster's Den" are taken. "Monsters" is also the name of a low budget movie from last year. A lack of pretentiousness may not be desirable. Vampires pretty much attract the pretentious crowd. It is what they do.

The most interesting aspect of the flavor text is all the discussion of immortality and what it does to a psyche and a society, that, and loneliness. So how about a title alluding to the longevity issue, like "No Exit"

That's certainly an interesting take.

'The Hungry Shadows'

For IP stripping purposes, nothing should have "world", "shadow", "darkness" or "run".

-Username17

[hyzmarca]

For IP stripping purposes, nothing should have "world", "shadow", "darkness" or "run".

-Username17

In that case, you can always call it Golden Years.

[Orion]

I think "Tiamat" is more recognizable than Echidna.

[Hieronymous Rex]

In interest of making it easy to search for and refer to, I think that a game's name should not...

• Be a single, non-made up word (e.g. Monster).
• Be a common phrase (e.g. No Exit).
• Share an acronym with another well known thing (e.g. D&D, M&M, etc.).

Echidna could be changed to Children of Echidna or even Brood of Echidna. If we want to run screaming away from "X of Y", it could also be Echidna's Brood.

For terms within the book:

• Masquerade: Pact of Coversion, Shadow Proclamation , The Treaty Unknown (that is the treaty made with humans that only supernaturals know about).
• Camarilla: The Exalted Assembly (possibly with a Masonic aesthetic).
• Carthian Movement: The Metamorphic Crusade ("crusade" has a religious or metaphysical connotation; may want to add a Hegelian aesthetic).
• Black Spiral Dancers: Consorts of Eris (the sexual connotation is intentional)
• Circle of the Crone: Alleanza Strega (this is probably poor Italian)
• Glass Walkers: Unmerited Fraternity (as in "unmerited favor", a Calvinist reference)
• Order Tremere: Lexicanum Obscura (probably terrible Latin).
• Pentex: Meriphan Corporation (this is an entirely spurious word).
• Ventrue: Peuple Fixe ("The Fixed People", a reference to the term "idée fixe"; may be bad French).
• Children of Ether: Disciples of Daedalus.

[Blasted]

Merely putting the word 'Echidna' in the title is going to bring ideas of monotremes, rather than monsters.

I like 'The hungry shadows', although it includes 'shadows'.
Opening the thesaurus gives options like:
'Monstrous Nights'
'Fiends of suburbia'
'Lout at large' - don't trust thesauruses.

[fectin]

So, if this is a replacement/substitute for WoD, you need to hit the same marks that WoD does. Per an earlier (over the top but accurate) example of Franks, that means hot goth tail. I think that knocks "Echidna" out of the running right away.
You need something evocative of emo poets. "Ennui"or "Shadowed Legends" or "Twilight Lovers" or "Painful Memories" or "Echoes" or whatever.
Edit: or something with some latin, like "nocturne"

[Blasted]

"Ennui"or "Shadowed Legends" or "Twilight Lovers" or "Painful Memories" or "Echoes" or whatever.
Edit: or something with some latin, like "nocturne"

TBH, they sound like romance novels.

[Ganbare Gincun]

Question: will you be implementing any of the combat/rule changes from alt.War into the aWoD?

[fectin]

"Ennui"or "Shadowed Legends" or "Twilight Lovers" or "Painful Memories" or "Echoes" or whatever.
Edit: or something with some latin, like "nocturne"

TBH, they sound like romance novels.

Yes, they do. Now think hard about "Vampire: The Masquerade".

[CatharzGodfoot]

Creatures of the Night seems pretty straightforward. Or if you want to get cheeky, Luminary: The Awakening.

[Winnah]

Intempesta Nox

without the bad latin

Dead of Night

[Judging__Eagle]

Monsters: Out of the Den and Lair

[Midnight_v]

Children of Ether: Disciples of Daedalus.

Very good actually. . . less alliteration would sound better.
but "...of Daedalus" has a good sound to it.
I find it odd that they were weak vs water but so far they're my favorites.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Dead of Night

I think that naming it The Dead of Night is a great idea, for undisclosed reasons.

[Username17]

Question: will you be implementing any of the combat/rule changes from alt.War into the aWoD?

Probably some of them, yeah. No reason to leave design concepts to waste.

Dead of Night works.

As far as getting a different name for Masquerade, I like "The Vow of Silence", or simply "The Vow". The Sabbat equivalent can name all their stuff "Vows", and they came on the scene when the supernatural creatures were changing over from the heroic age plan of "The Tradition of Misdirection" (where you totally copped to being magic, but didn't tell anyone what weaknesses you actually had) to one of Silence (where you didn't admit to being magical at all). So since the new plan came in with the new organization that called their big rules "Vows", the general name for it is "The Vow".

-Username17

[Winnah]

Vow seems pretty good because of the associated words.

Terms like neonate can be replaced with Plight or Pledge for some cults.

Consecration for active enforcement of the Masquerade. Desecration for a breach.

Tinkering the exact lexicon specific groups may use should be fairly easy once the basic terms are established.

[Username17]

Thing I notice looking through the text files. World of Darkness has a neat property where it is both the name of the game and the name of the world to be used as a comparison point with our own. So you can have sentences like "People living in the World of Darkness blah blah blah." "Dead of Night" does not have that property. So while the occasional piece of poetic license is fine, I am going to need a new term to refer to the world with.

So "The inability to get a call out of a building or town isn't unusual, that kind of thing happens a lot in the Dead of Night." is camp, but OK. "Keep this in mind when you're planning your nights in the Dead of Night." is horse shit. Find and replace ain't going to cut it.

So anyway, is referring to it as the "waking world" (as opposed to the other worlds that are "nightmare worlds") or "day world" (as opposed to the other worlds that are "night worlds") too fucking campy?

-Username17

[Hicks]

The following titles are based on the PCs and powerful being actual booga-booga monsters.

The Domains of Terror
The Domains of Horror
The Lands of Terror
The Lands of Horror

and my Favorite:

The Realms of Horror