AWoD: Alternate Supernaturals

[Prak]

So, as we all know, Frank takes his projects very seriously, and AWoD's no different. It's great that he listens to us, and that there is discussion about what to include, but Frank had his mind set on what supernaturals to include and has very reasonably explained why he doesn't want to include others.

It's also nice that he's explained conceptual space.

All due respect, fuck conceptual space.

Every person's game is there own, and I know I'm probably going to be changing some stuff when I run AWoD, the thing that comes to mind is the bug leviathans, I like what I suggested, bug traited people who use skin sacks as servitors.

so I'm wondering what changes other people would make, what supernaturals others would include, and what would get bumped, when they run AWoD.

As I said, Bug Leviathans in my game are going to be what I first suggested. I'm also tempted to say to hell with three discreet types of Lycanthropes and make every Lycanthrope "Steve," since I really like the skinchangers book for NWoD.

[CatharzGodfoot]

(^-^)/(((((((●～*

Conceptual space is a very good idea. However, what matters most is the conceptual space of the game you're playing, not where you drew the elements of your game from. Every game should be open to arbitrary modification to support the desires of the gaming group.

The problem is, WoD needs good back stories, and arbitrarily changing the critters living in it severely fucks with that, resulting in a lot of work for anyone who wants to change things around. The only other option is to allow the addition of an arbitrary number of creatures/clans/bloodlines/"conspiracies" (AKA retcons). And once you incorporate an arbitrary number of different creatures/clans/bloodlines/retcons in the base game, it becomes shit just like oWoD.

The ideal with a strongly supported game is to come up with the set of creatures most acceptable to the set of players.

Anyway, I still think it's worth having this thread for brainstorming and keeping things together.

[Prak]

well, what I meant was, "let's have this thread where can throw around our other ideas for stuff we'd like to see, and we would fit them in."

I very much enjoy running kitchen sink style games, but I understand conceptual space and getting everything to mesh, so of course one would have to rewrite some stuff to get an alt. supernatural to mesh well with the world.

[Josh_Kablack]

Well I'd go back to my initial conception of Limbo:The Dark Reflection as the possible result of mankind's atomic hubris and use that to include many post-apocalyptic horror tropes: Killer cyborgs, Androids who thought they were human, radioactive mutants, human-hating AIs and Mad Max biker gangs. This could result in the lycanthropes become gene-splicing Dr. Moreau experiments gone wrong.

Of course in a world with immortals, that sort of start date really does require some major contortions about the nature of time in the different realms.

To make it fit the rest of the setting, and not merely a stand-alone post-apocolyptic game I would probably rewrite the setting history along the lines of:

The industrial revolution nearly won humanity's eternal war against the supernaturals. The Iron Rails and the Scientific Method sealed the physical and mental portals to the Dreamlands; Electrification and Morgan's work with Drosophilia beat back the hungy dark of the Gloom; and Browning's improvements upon Colt's foundation made man not merely equal to the scattered beasties that remained hiding in the shadows.

When they supernaturals tried to organize in a last ditch bid for survival, all of Europe was scoured with iron, fire and poison gas.

Humanity controlled its own destiny for a while. And its destiny was to become a horror as frightening as any it had faced down.

When atom was split and the rain of ruin was unleashed by man upon man, the third world, forgotten since at least the Sermons of Christ. was opened and the horrors of Limbo burst forth. These were not the old horrors of myth and legend, held at bay by ironworking and the science of genetics, instead they were the shiny new horrors of science and progress and they themselves had been wrought from steel and recombinant DNA - for these were the horrors wrought by the hand of man.

The old horrors were largely forgotten in the face of this new threat, but a few stealthy survivors began to undo the locks upon their domains - replacing the Iron Rails with blacktop wrought from the bones of bones and convincing mankind to abandon.....blah blah blah

That's about all I have time for.

[CatharzGodfoot]

AWoD as is is currently conceived seems to make little distinction between magic and technology as far as supernaturals are concerned, treating both as a veneer over something deeper and darker.

This is particularly important in a world that has golems, Frankenstein's monsters, and robots. The degree to which you consider any of them 'science' or 'magic' is partially a matter of when you were born.

A great example of a WoD-type golem is this guy. He's a little like a Frankenstein (surgical addiction), a little like a robot (a clockwork robot), and a little like a golem (because the animation is clearly magical). Would he qualify as coming from the technological Dark Reflection? Probably not, just like any other clockwork robots from before WWII: it didn't yet exist. But if, for the sake of argument, Limbo had been around, would he be powered by it?

[Prak]

I think another thing I'd do is roll together at least two of the mages/promethians/transhumans triangle, since they are really all quite similar.

honestly, at the very least, mages and transhumans should be the same group, in my mind. I could see the following:

Transhumans
The Fallen (Dark Reflection powered people who have left behind their humanity through a deal with fire)
Children of Aether (Wilds powered people with an old school sci fi theme who pursue their goals through wonder and audacity)
The Death Dealers (Gloom powered people who deal with death and the dead a lot, frequently come back because they blew the grim reaper or whatever, and can command spirits)

and honestly, the promethians can get rolled in there as well, because all those equally describe someone who casts magic, is inherently magical, and was patched together. Hell, doing it this way allows you to be all fucking three with no weirdness or problem.

[Josh_Kablack]

AWoD as is is currently conceived seems to make little distinction between magic and technology as far as supernaturals are concerned, treating both as a veneer over something deeper and darker.

Crap, the technology vs magic split is not at all what I meant to imply there. I'd have to rewrite everything if I ever intended to actually run that setting.

[Orion]

The Atomic-themed Limbo works fine if you assume that Limbo used to be a medieval-style demon or fairie realm and we BOMBED THE FUCK OUT OF IT.

Seriously, the magical elements of Limbo can stay, like mirror goblins, but just assume that they're the handful of survivors, with most of the demons and shit having been killed off the by motorcylce mutants and poison robots.

[CatharzGodfoot]

AWoD as is is currently conceived seems to make little distinction between magic and technology as far as supernaturals are concerned, treating both as a veneer over something deeper and darker.

Crap, the technology vs magic split is not at all what I meant to imply there. I'd have to rewrite everything if I ever intended to actually run that setting.

Well, the war against the supernatural is a good story, and creates a very good reason for the masquerade. It reminds me a bit of Thor Meets Captain America, which is a great story. Creating a whole 'World War' scenario with the 'Final Solution' to the 'Supernatural Problem' is a good story. It is, however, highly offensive: as with Thor Meets Captain America, it belittles the horror of the genocides by giving them a rationale. After all, unlike Jews and Gypsies there might actually be a good reason to round up and kill all of the werewolves and vampires.

That's not exactly the direction that you were going in, but whenever you talk about a concerted war against the supernaturals it's going to get into genocide territory. If it's a direction you do want to go into, you can add things in like how various factions of supernaturals tried to use the war to their own benefit. Deep ones are a good candidate for human allies, as they can always hang out beneath the waves if things don't go well for them.

[Grek]

If we are going to have the World Wars be a major plot point, I say do it like this:

Limbo used to be a pretty nice place, back when humanity just discovered fire. It was dangerous, but it was on our side for the most part. It fought off the Gloom and the Wilds and it's various powers helped out humanity by giving us stuff like cooked food, pottery and light.

Around the Bronze and Iron Ages, Limbo started getting worse. Fire started being used to make weapons and armour. Greek-style heros who pillaged cities and raped the womenfolk of any nation within sailing distance are what this Limbo represented. It turned into a violent, bloodstained place full of rape and pillage, but it was still basically the same force that keept Mictilin and Celephais in check. Evil, but useful.

Dark ages hit. The light of civilization in the west gets alot darker. Aquaducts, fire brigades and strong central government go away and people are back to living in shit covered, disease ridden shacks terrified of wild animals outside and praying that their crops don't die this year. Mortality goes way up and people forget what it was even like to live in a prosperous civilization. All they remember is the pillage and rape. Limbo, once almost friendly towards humanity, becomes something that people fear. It becomes a place full of demons and evil spirits.

This Limbo was full of ashes, smoke and hot coals. No atomic super-monsters. The demons in here were the sort that, rather than eating you alive, tricked you into doing things you would rereget, like putting a hatchet through your brother's head after he gets with your girlfriend. It's awful and it's evil, but they aren't incomprehensable like the Wilds or physically imposing like Mictilan. This Limbo was alot like a foul mood. You just wake up one day really pissed off and kick someone's cat. It's still reletivly nice compared to what Limbo turned into over time.

Demons were the dudes behind WWI. The biggest and baddest demons in Limbo are the guys behind the extreme nationalism, closed door politics and extreme tensions in Europe. When WWI happened, all of the gunfire, people dieing in trenches, artillery shells, people bombing cities and general attrocities had a pretty profound effect on Limbo. It became a place of constant fighting and war, instead of a pit where evil spirits brood and plot to make humanity miserable. This Limbo was like a canister of mustard gas. It had all sorts of violent death and wanton destruction in a jar which would burst open if you upset things too much.

WWII begins. Everything that was bad about WWI is even worse now. Concentration camps, people being gassed by the thousands per day, mass graves, human ovens and the complete destruction and degradation of millions of human lives. Horrible wrongs are fought with things just as bad or even worse on the Russian front and with the atomic bomb. Hatreds which would take decades to be soothed flare up in a few years. Limbo becomes what it is today, full of nueclear mutants, poison gases, burning corpses and endless suffering.

[Username17]

All due respect, fuck conceptual space.

You are of course free to do whatever you want, but I don't see how you'd be able to do anything but hack and slash at that point.

A political game requires constant players. You have to have a vague idea of who wants what and what those people people are able to bring to bear in terms of pressure, bribery or force. If you don't know that information, all of your actions have essentially random results in the political arena. If you spray a big purple dot on a building, do you develop a bunch of allies or enemies? Why? Why not?

Or to put it another way, the United Kingdom has complicated political procedures. Here are all the political parties with representation in the national parliament:

• Labour
  Conservative
  Liberal Democrats
  Democratic Unionist
  Scottish National
  Sinn Fein
  Plaid Cymru
  Social Democratic and Labour
  Independent Kidderminster Hospital and Health Concern
  Respect Coalition
  Ulster Unionist

The last bolded three are seriously just one dude each in the House of Commons, while Labour has 350 MPs. But the point is that this is an extremely complex and circussy political system and there are only 11 parties with any representation in the House of Commons at all. But there are a lot of other parties that are trying to break into the big leagues. There is a party called "Idle Toad" who would love to get represented.

But the problem is that if you're talking about the several dozen monsters living in a major city and you're writing up all the Idle Toads, all those bullshit parties aren't bullshit anymore. Every party is someone who can change the weather and rip a bank vault open. The entire setting revolves around continued secrecy, which means that fucking everyone has an unbreakable veto. Anyone could go to the media and rip a bank vault open and spill the beans. If the Miss Great Britain Party or the Money Reform Party don't get their way, all hell breaks loose.

So if you include the One London Party and the Men's Representative Party, the characters can't ever hope to accomplish anything in the political arena nor can they ever hope to understand what the issues even are. The only thing that is left is to decide that you don't like the members of the Publican Party or the Communist Party of Scotland and go stab them in the face.

---

I'm not going to stop you from taking the stuff and running off and making a kitchen sink mess with it where the players run around playing murderous superheroes who fight monsters of the week. You can totally do that. I just don't see what the point of your project is.

-Username17

[Prak]

Frank, I was being a bit tongue in cheek, as I said, of course things would need to get reworked to allow in an alt. supernatural and keep the politics.

The point of this thread is to not muck up the main AWoD thread with this stuff.


....there's also the fact that my main WoD experience comes from werewolf, so... yeah, I'm good with modern hack and slash...

[Grek]

This is likely to turn out to be more like MIB vs. The Monster of the Week in a WoD setting than anything with politics like Frank's version of aWoD. There will be alot more people with MIB mindwipe sticks as part of there basic powers.

The only way you get politics in that sort of setup is if you seperate the groups into "Groups who can blow the Masquerade open beyond anyone's ability to mindwipe away." and "Groups who can't."

[Username17]

Well, you'll want to push Forgetful Mind up to a basic in that case. But the other thing to keep in mind is that once anyone is a Steve, that everyone is. And once everyone is their own thing, no one is anything.

Monsters Inc. does not have more monsters in it than Underworld does. Underworld has two kinds of monster: Vampires and Lycans. Monsters Inc. has only one: Monsters.

Once you take the restrictions off, you are better off just freeforming it. Each player gets some number of Discipline selections and they can tell any crackass story about why they have magic powers that they want. At that point even two people who happen to have the same powers won't feel like they are part of a unified whole with each other because frankly they are not. They are just like Deathstroke and Bullseye - they happen to have similar abilities but they are each unique characters and there is no information to be gleaned from the fact that their abilities overlap.

-Username17

[Koumei]

Of course, there's nothing stopping anyone from having the same number of choices, and just putting different choices in the game and keeping the political and secretive side of things up and running. It's one thing to take "Cops and Robbers" and add every single variety of policeman (including Undercover Cop and Undercover Cop Who Went Bad), and every time of criminal, then add firemen ambulance drivers and national guard, and then include talking spiders and daleks (holy shit, I just described Rifts), but it's quite another to take "Cops and Robbers" and replace "Cops" with "Cowboys" and "Robbers" with "Indians".

And if that was a goal, just booting out ones you didn't want to have and putting new critters inside would allow for whatever.

[Prak]

thanks koumei.

I don't follow you Grek. how the hell does replacing one or two types suddenly turn things into MIB vrs. Monster of the Week? How the hell does making every Lycanthrope Steve make everyone Steve?

[Username17]

How the hell does making every Lycanthrope Steve make everyone Steve?

Because the players play a "supernatural creature."

They can choose to be a Nosferatu, or they can choose to be a Deep One. Or they can choose to be Steve. And that means that they are all Steve. Once you include the "or whatever" option, then any "categories" you have mentioned or will ever mention are just examples that people might want to do. Aside from the fact that only uncreative or hurried players ever take the templates out of the book when build-your-own is available, there's the simple fact that there's no reason to ever think that you're specifically running into a Deep One when that could just as easily be Steve the Unique Fish Man.

When you make a write-your-own-class class, the "official" classes are just examples of classes you might build. And frankly, no one is going to write one of the examples. By allowing build-a-bear you are dropping a neutron bomb on all the prebuilt bears. Nobody plays the sample characters whether they are playing Shadowrun or World of Darkness. Or Dungeons and Dragons even. Anytime you give people the ability to respend their points on something to make themselves a better more unique gothic snowflake they are going to do that. And it is right that they do so.

The only things that "exist" in-world as meaningful categories are the ones that the players can't just fucking rewrite to suit themselves. If you let people write their own covenants they will do so and then the Camarilla and Sabbat will be downgraded to example covenants. If you let people write their own disciplines they will do so and Animalism and Celerity will be downgraded to example disciplines.

Options are not some fucking golden ticket that comes with only shiny goodness and rainbows. They have a cost. The cost is that every potential for change is a loss of consistency. If you make what you are changeable then you have pulled the rug out of any consistency for the word to be.

And if you want to have gothic superheroes running around fighting monsters of the week, that's fine. But don't pretend that words like Nosferatu and Ventrue mean fuck all at that point because they don't.

-Username17

[Koumei]

When you make a write-your-own-class class, the "official" classes are just examples of classes you might build. And frankly, no one is going to write one of the examples. By allowing build-a-bear you are dropping a neutron bomb on all the prebuilt bears.

I found people largely used the basic classes in BESM d20, although the Generic McCleric class did have a fixed BAB, saves etc. so that's not quite the same. Likewise you can include a "Fuck you" tax like 40K did with the vehicle development rules - you could re-build a Chimera/Land Raider/Manta/Genestealer Cult Limousine/Grav Tank identical to the original, and have it cost 1.5 times as much.

But that's not even a good idea.

[Prak]

Oh my fucking god frank... this is like hearing people say "But if we let the [EDITED] marry, then people will want to marry animals!"

By saying "If you're a lycanthrope, you turn into whatever fucking animal you decide at character creation" does not mean "make what ever fucking character you want." It means "Steve's a werewolf, Bob's a werecat, and Susie's a wereraven." and it seriously doesn't fucking matter because their is no inherent society to the lycanthropes. I mean, fuck, the same can be accomplished by giving a mage Form of the Beast, Body Weaponry, and War Form and saying he's a weresnake.

[Username17]

Oh my fucking god frank... this is like hearing people say "But if we let the [EDITED] marry, then people will want to marry animals!"

No.

You justifying marrying animals is like drawing an equivalence between homosexuality and animal marrying. And no, I haven't forgotten that you did that.

The one making insane slippery slope demands is you, and it has always been you in this entire discussion. Now you come at it from a different standpoint than most I'll grant. Very few people have the courage to say that because it's morally acceptable to have your life partner be a man or a woman, a white or a black, that it must therefore be thinkable, even acceptable for a man to fuck a wolf. Very few people have the courage to say that because it is fucking revolting and offensive.

Don't you dare in your fucking life bring up the dog fucking angle, because it does not put your sick ass self in a good light. Fuck you.

-Username17

[Prak]

...Wow frank, get a nice breeze as that comment flew over your head?

That's actual argument people have made against gay marriage, and it's patently ridiculous, while also derailing entire discussions.

Your argument that if you make all the Lycanthropes were-steves then everyone will just use that to play Steve is also ridiculous, and somewhat derails the entire thread.

As you're the one that brought up the dog fucking thread, I never defending it in our world, I hand waved it within the game world due to misunderstandings over how the game world portrays wolves. I was wrong. Ok? Why don't you stop fucking bringing it up?

[Anguirus]

How the hell does making every Lycanthrope Steve make everyone Steve?

Because the players play a "supernatural creature."

They can choose to be a Nosferatu, or they can choose to be a Deep One. Or they can choose to be Steve. And that means that they are all Steve. Once you include the "or whatever" option, then any "categories" you have mentioned or will ever mention are just examples that people might want to do. Aside from the fact that only uncreative or hurried players ever take the templates out of the book when build-your-own is available, there's the simple fact that there's no reason to ever think that you're specifically running into a Deep One when that could just as easily be Steve the Unique Fish Man.

When you make a write-your-own-class class, the "official" classes are just examples of classes you might build. And frankly, no one is going to write one of the examples. By allowing build-a-bear you are dropping a neutron bomb on all the prebuilt bears. Nobody plays the sample characters whether they are playing Shadowrun or World of Darkness. Or Dungeons and Dragons even. Anytime you give people the ability to respend their points on something to make themselves a better more unique gothic snowflake they are going to do that. And it is right that they do so.

The only things that "exist" in-world as meaningful categories are the ones that the players can't just fucking rewrite to suit themselves. If you let people write their own covenants they will do so and then the Camarilla and Sabbat will be downgraded to example covenants. If you let people write their own disciplines they will do so and Animalism and Celerity will be downgraded to example disciplines.

Options are not some fucking golden ticket that comes with only shiny goodness and rainbows. They have a cost. The cost is that every potential for change is a loss of consistency. If you make what you are changeable then you have pulled the rug out of any consistency for the word to be.

And if you want to have gothic superheroes running around fighting monsters of the week, that's fine. But don't pretend that words like Nosferatu and Ventrue mean fuck all at that point because they don't.

-Username17

If we start from the assumption that our PC's are special cases within the monster community then allowing build your own monster rules doesn't degrade the integrity of the game world. Ventrue and Deep One are still meaningful designators and our PC's can know about these communities even if they live outside of them. NPC's might not be able to make heads or tails out of our PC's but who the fuck cares? Its like in Star Wars role playing games when you can play a self aware robot; you are an anomaly and everyone assumes that you are not self aware. Similarly, in D&D you start the game with hero stats; you are an anomaly and everyone (should) assume(s) that you do not have hero stats. That doesn't undermine the world as a whole, you are just unique. If you intend on interacting with monsters and humans a fair bit then being a monster makes you unique enough that the build your own monster rules seems redundant but if you are dealing exclusively with monsters, why would you want to play shitty average monsters?

[CatharzGodfoot]

Making the PCs special cases in the special cases community seems to go against the setting. It might also make interacting with the political systems difficult when the first thing you have to explain to anyone is 'what the fuck are you?' followed by 'why shouldn't we diablerize you to steal your unique power?'.

[TavishArtair]

Bestiality again? Sigh. Anyways.

I think a big problem is that people want some game like InSpectres or whatever where they play, basically, Ghostbusters the series, with monster-of-the-week ad infinitum and it's actually beneficial to have a basically infinite set of monsters to draw from so that the game doesn't get stale because you're just playing monster of the week and dungeon-crawling in an urban setting. As opposed to political gaming where a certain amount of stability in the actors is needed because the scenes are constantly changing. But what people are failing to recognize is that while this game type is supported sometimes in the oWoD, in the end it's fundamentally a different game and if you want to go all the way to the other end of the spectrum and start doing that, you have to write a different game. And because we have this awesome monster pool we can't possibly showcase why not let the players be monsters too. Not a big deal here.

There's halfway occasions like Werewolf the Apocalypse which had some monster-of-the-week against a political backdrop (or political against a monster-of-the-week backdrop) but ultimately those tended to hew closer to the political end of the scheme, by establishing what was more or less as much consistency they possibly could while still hiring freelancers to write random crap every five seconds. If you want to go full-on monster hunting with an infinite monster pool, you at that point are playing totally superheroes and dungeoncrawling, and should just throw out the pretense of being a political game, because you can't, Frank is more or less right in that you lose the supernatural society aspect of the politics that WoD was trying to aim at. So don't mix the two in that way.

[Ice9]

Man, things were going along so nicely, and then boom, flamewar about conceptual space, everyone dies.

Look, conceptual space is like a stew. If you put everything that tastes good in one stew, it will be a mess. But that doesn't mean you have to only keep one stew's worth of ingredients in your kitchen - you can make different stews on different days, each with a reasonable number of ingredients, but not always the same ingredients.

Or to put it in less metaphorical terms, there's plenty of conceptual room for snake leviathans if you kick out the existing bug leviathans, and that's a choice that can be made on a campaign to campaign basis. For that matter, you don't have to maintain parity between types in a given campaign - if you kick out leviathans and prometheans entirely, that gives you more room for alternate were and vampire types. The only reason not to have all the "understudy" monsters in the main thread is that it would make things confusing, so that's why they're here - in a separate thread.