aWoD: Continued

[Username17]

AWOD has come a long way. And by that I mean it is playable and people actually play it. This is the discussion thread, where people ask for feature creep, suggest things for clarifications, and draw attention to typographical errors. The entire piece can be found elsewhere on this site Here as a continuous document.

The project is also being periodically updated into a pdf, which is being hosted on Google Code, Here.

As yet, there is no art, but if someone has some idea of how to get some, that would be great.

Some people have made character sheets for other players to use. There is a version Here and another version Here.

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So I think we had some sort of rift open up and swallow the last thread, so let's take off where we left off. First off, what aWoD is:

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AWoD: Alternate World of Darkness

A Complete Overhaul of World of Darkness material using many SR4 rules.

The World of Darkness is Overcrowded
You can't have been Rasputin, our guys were Rasputin!

Let's face it: the World of Darkness is cluttered. oWoD has way too many secret groups and supernaturals, and the nWoD is no better. With each group having their own sub-groups and politics and multiple groups of antagonist supernaturals it gets explosively, exponentially more complicated with the addition of every book, and no one knows how it works. That's not good for a political game. The players need to know at least enough of what's going on that they can advance agendas and make plans – otherwise there aren't any political maneuverings; it all devolves rapidly into hack-n-slash or just plain slash.

The concept is that you are a classic Universal Studios Monster and you engage in narrative driven dramatic role playing of both horror and intrigue. This is essentially impossible when there are too many world running conspiracies to keep track of or when people are going all Dragon Ball Z on things right next to you.

So we're paring things down. A lot. We don't have, need, or even want a bajillion clans of vampires, or fifteen tribes of werewolves. There should be few enough flavors of things that all the players can remember what the differences between them are. Ideally, people should be able to play whatever supernatural guys they want, sort of like the League of Extraordinary Gentleman; but in practice you have to put explicit limitations on what is part of the story or things get all weird. Like with Martian invasions and stuff. A story that doesn't have specific exclusions does not truly have any specific inclusions. It's not really a story at all at that point, it's a mess.

It is important to note that you can't take everything from myth and legend and cram it into a story. I'm not saying that your story will be completely incoherent, although of course it will be. I'm saying that you are literally incapable of doing that. The Vampire Book is an encyclopedia of just vampire lore from various cultures and it is literally over nine hundred pages long. And we're not talking about character backgrounds or rules text or any of the other crap that we know eats up word count like you wouldn't believe. We're talking about just a bare list of facts by mythical origin. So it is imperative not only that you acknowledge that you're going to have to cut things down to a manageable amount, but also that you establish specifically what is off limits and what's fair game.

People in Horror: Extras and Luminaries
“Do not run upstairs! There is no exit upstairs!”

Remember that in horror movies there are a lot of people who serve no real purpose save to be eaten by the monsters. We call them Extras even if they happen to get some lines. These people may be strong, or smart, or beautiful, but ultimately they are doomed. If they get bitten by a zombie they will turn into one of the shambling hordes that our heroes must eventually chop through with a chain saw. They will not get cured and will not turn into leaders of the walking dead. Game mechanically, these people have no Edge score. If they turn into a supernatural creature of some kind they will become a Spawn. These hapless victims will not become the next Dracula, they will always be the horde vampires in From Dusk til Dawn. They will not become Shelly Winters or Sheila, they will join the hordes of deadites and get cleaved through with fire.

On the other side of the coin, there are people in the horror genre who rise to the occasion. Whether they are introduced as bad ass adventurers like Van Helsing or Rick O'Connell, or are “normal people” who rise to the occasion like Meg Penny or Ash, these people have a certain spark of bad assery in them regardless of what they happen to be doing. They are Luminaries, and they have Edge. If they become Supernaturals they become the real deal. They may turn evil but they will still have lines and character development.

This is why characters will occasionally fight their way through a horde of zombies (who are of course all ex-humans) just to try to get a cure for one woman who happens to have been turned into a zombie. It isn't that they've completely lost perspective, it's that the transformation into a monster is a one way trip for absolutely everyone except a reasonably small number of luminaries. You actually can “save” Alice, Shelly, or Sheila if they get transformed into the living dead. There's literally nothing you can do for the rest of the people except shoot them in the face.

The Four Worlds
“Things are crawling in all over the place these days.”

A very common trope in horror is the inclusion of additional worlds that are full of terror and danger. This is very useful, since of course having an extra world around allows you to fit things into the narrative that would be otherwise very difficult to fit into the Earth. Demon armies, forgotten cities, and strange and deadly plants can be piled to the sky and beyond without otherwise upsetting the world provided that they were never in the world in the first place. Furthermore, the idea that monsters can come in sideways is by itself a wonderfully useful notion for the horror genre, because it severely undermines the concept of safety in a fortress or locked room.

That being said, it is also true that there are a lot of alternate worlds to be had in various stories. Too many alternate worlds to be anything vaguely approaching something workable. And so it is that as a compromise we have cut things down to three alternate realities:

• Limbo: The Dark Reflection The best rendition of the Dark Reflection is probably in Silent Hill. It's a world very much like our own but scoured with demonic powers. Ash falls from the sky like rain and everything looks abandoned or scorched. Demons prowl the Dark Reflection.
• Mictlan: The Gloom The best rendition of the Gloom is of course in Nightwatch, which even calls the place that. It's a cold and oppressive world where darkness presses insistently upon the light and heat of travelers. Powers of death leak in from every crevice and extinguish fires and the lives of small animals. Blood hungering insects and ghosts scour the Gloom.
• Maya: The Dreamlands Think of a combination of the deadly dreamworlds of Nightmare on Elm Street and the fantastic realms of Narnia. This is where dreams and fairies go, but since this is the World of Darkness the dreams are often as not inspired by Freddy and the fairies are more likely to be Warwick Davis than Tumnus.

Each of these worlds have two levels. One can go to the first level where interaction with the mortal realm is still possible, and one can go to the deeper level where it is not. In short, like in Silent Hill it is possible to straddle the worlds where you can still open and close the door of your house and see what's on the stove but demons from the Dark Reflection can attack you. It's also possible to be all the way in the Dark Reflection, where things are a terrifying hellscape and nothing makes any sense.

Basic Attributes: Physical, Mental, and Social

• Physical Attributes:
• Strength: Strength determines how physically strong and tough you are.
• Agility: Agility is a combination of precision and speed.
  Mental Attributes
• Intuition: Intuition is a combination of empathic and physical perception.
• Logic: Logic is a combination of scientific know-how and logical intelligence.
  Social Attributes
• Charisma: Charisma is one's ability to convince and ingratiate.
• Willpower: Willpower is a combination of determination and domination.

• Why no Body or Reaction? Those familiar with the SR4 system will be quick to note that the attributes of Body and Reaction have been omitted. That is not an accident. Those attributes are used by almost no skills and primarily exist to add extra granularity to combat. Combat is hopefully not the point of most World of Darkness games, and in any case the granularity of “normal humans” in combat isn't even especially desirable. Folding Body into Strength and Reaction into Agility makes for a simpler system while losing relatively little. After all, granularity is being added back into the system with the physical disciplines that are in the hands of many player characters.

Special Attributes: Edge, Power, and Potency

Edge in AWoD is structurally similar to Edge in SR4. You can spend it to reroll dice that fail or to purchase a number of dice equal to your Edge attribute to improve any test. Edge refreshes between sessions.

Power in AWoD is a parallel attribute similar to Edge. Rather than being spent on any test, Power is spent to activate specific supernatural abilities that a character might have. Power by itself doesn't do anything and does not refresh. Characters will have things to do with their Power and ways to refresh it if they are a supernatural creature.

• For example: Genevra is a vampire with the discipline of Celerity. As a vampire, she can spend Power points to increase her Strength for a scene. In addition, she can spend a Power point to take extra actions during a scene with her Celerity discipline. Because she is a vampire, she can refresh her power points by drinking blood from other people through their necks.

Potency When a character's powers increase they may get a special attribute called Potency. This works similarly to SR4 Initiation Grades or nWoD Blood Potency, save that Grade is added to the limits of every attribute, basic and special (including Power).

The Playable Types

The Universal Monsters have a lot of stuff in there which is not really appropriate. Sure, Lon Chaney is full of awesome and I have no problem watching his movies, but neither the Phantom of the Opera nor the Hunchback of Notre Dame is especially supernatural. They are both just really creepy guys. On the other end of the spectrum, the existence of space aliens really harms the whole eldritch intrigue thing. So while This Island Earth is a good movie and part of the official pantheon, the Metalunans and Zagons are not going to be part of this. At all.

Which leaves Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, Gillman, the Mummy, and the Wolfman – who all appear in the classic The Monster Squad, and the Evil Wizard, the Invisible Man and the Mole Man who don't. It is of note however that Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, the Wolfman, and the Invisible Man all appear in the equally mandatory movie Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein, and there is of course Evil Wizard and Mummy in the substantially less mandatory Abbot and Costello Meet the Mummy. It seems clear that life would go on without Mole Men; but what heck?

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So where we left off was discussing what exactly the playable types were going to be. Most of them were fairly set:

• Vampires
  An eternity of melancholy and betrayal is, after all, an eternity.
  The Vampire is a rockstar of the living dead. They drink blood, live forever, and look great in black. Vampires are emotionally attenuated individuals who have to consume metaphorical life in the form of actual human blood. They are parasites whose very existence is a powerful metaphor for the consumptive and conflict-torn nature of the world.
  Exemplars: Dracula. Did we mention Dracula? I mean sure, we can talk about the vampires from Blade or Buffy, and we will even. But all Vampire mythos in the modern world always comes back to Dracula, because he is that awesome.

Now the type lists for these guys are pretty confined. We got Ventrue, who are pretty much Dracula, and we have Nosferatu who are pretty much Nosferatu - from the movie Nosferatu. Our third group was the Daeva, who are based on more modern vampire stuff like Darkstalkers, Underworld, and Bloody Roar. But the thing is that those vampires are actually throwbacks to the Central American Onaqui. So the Daeva may as well get a bunch of Aztec stuff. The whole vampire bat thing is American, since that's where real vampire bats come from. So there's a lot of room for vampire stuff with central american themes.

• Prometheans
  Once created, a work has a life of its own.
  A Promethean is an artificial person. Created by unwise science, magic, or both, each Promethean is a race of one. They have no peers and no possibility of children. Every Promethean is created knowing that their entire people dies with them. It is a lonely and frightening existence.
  Exemplars: Frankenstein's Monster, Rotwang's Robot, Loew's Golem

These guys are self explanatory. There are Androids based on Limbo powers and Metropolis (and other modernist science fiction), there are corpse men held together with Mictlan powers based on Frankenstein, and there are statues animated by dreams based on Hebrew folklore.

• Lycanthropes
  Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night...
  may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright
  A Lycanthrope is someone who is cursed to transform into a rampaging beast when the moon is full or they get excited. There is plenty of mythological basis for shapeshifters who are born with the ability to turn into animals or who have attained the magic powers to do so to protect mankind, but they aren't normally figures from horror stories, and have no place in the World of Darkness.
  Being a Lycanthrope means that you are a danger to people you love and the furniture around you. You can unleash the beast to rip things to pieces, but lycanthropy is a curse and it is not generally very fun.
  Exemplars: John Talbot, Irena Dubrovna, Yuki Sohma

So we have the Get of Fenris based on Dreamlands rage and Northern European Mythos. We have the Plagues of the Nezumi who are based on demonic Dark Reflection magic and East Asian folklore. We have the Bagheera, who are a cross between the South Asian weretigers and the South American Jaguar Warriors who are based on Gloom magic.

• Witches
  Bubble Bubble.
  Witches are people who have learned Magic. In a horror setting, magic is in almost all cases bad. The genre is pretty light on Glinda the Goods and Merlins. Magicians are generally vindictive cackling gypsies, satanic sorcerers, mysterious strangers, and a myriad of other titles both hackneyed and terrifying. They spend a lot more time sacrificing people to gods ancient and evil and a lot less time preparing good children to go to the ball than magicians in other genres.
  
  Magic that humans can use comes from three sources in the World of Darkness. There is the magic of Death, which is evil. There is Devil magic, which is evil. And finally there is the twisted sorceries of the Fairies, and that's evil as well. It's not that you can't do good as a magician, you totally can. It's just that the magic itself is evil and using it is dangerous even if you are the virtuous Chandu. The horror movies of the 30s didn't distinguish particularly between people from India and China (both were in “The East”), and we hearken to that slightly by leaving all traditions of magic as variations of the basic three. While a character may well be a voodoo death magician or an Aztec or Egyptian death magician, the magical set is all the same. Death magic is death magic whether you call upon bones with Chinese runes or African chants.
  
  An important thing to realize is that The Mummy is actually a Witch. That's just how they do immortality. Sometimes it's an immortality where you do evil magic and you look like a normal person (see the 1933 or 1999 The Mummy) and sometimes you look like a crazy corpse in special bandages (like in Bubba Hotep). It really depends. Either way, if you want to be a leftover from Egypt or Aztlan you are a Witch (or a Vampire of course). However, and this is important, the Mummies from the middle Mummy movies such as The Mummy's Ghost and... sigh... The Mummy's Curse where the Mummy lurches around and smashes things – that Mummy is a Promethean instead, so pick a schtick and go with it.
  Exemplars: Imhotep, Roxor, Hjalmar Poelzig, Chandu

So this is where things get difficult. The Gloom magic people are probably gong to be African serpent themed and be called the Khaibit. The Dark Reflection infernalism magic people are going to be fire themed and probably be called either the Baali or the Nephandus. And the Dreamlands magicians are going to be? I don't really know. Void Engineers is a possibility, as are the plant controlling Athaqui or even the bluntly obvious Dream Speakers or Verbana from old Mage.

• Transhuman
  Just a scientific experiment. To do something no other man in the world had done.
  Humans do not, in general, have supernatural powers. However, in the horror genre there are a number of people who experience an event which changes them irrevocably into something different. Something more. These people generally go stark raving mad, and in not very long. The certainty that they are no longer human causes them to lose sight of human priorities, human morality. While they have become something more, they are also something less.
  
  The transformational event can be scientific or magical. Or a bit of both. A Transhuman always has an “origin story” which is to some degree unique. The Invisible Man took scientific chemicals. Anck Su Namun simply woke up one day and realized that she is the reincarnation of an Egyptian princess. Ayesha stepped into the mystical flame of life. Whatever the event was, it was the last thing that he or she did as a human, and the reality of that fact is as destructive to the self as the subsequent revelations of the magical world and the horrors which inhabit it.
  
  Exemplars: The Invisible Man, Mr. Hyde, Anck Su Namun, Ayesha

The groups are The Fallen (Limbo, mostly East Asian influenced) who get exposed to magical radiation from an event or artifact and are then magical beings; The Returned (Gloom, mostly South Asian influenced) who are reincarnates; and The Children of Aether (Maya, modernist sci fi) who have big dreams and kooky scientific theories.

• Leviathan
  His face was fish-like.
  Supposedly in pre-Sumerian times there was a great mother of monsters. Her name was Tiamat. Or Vritra. It's not really that important what her name was, because she was killed by a powerful human sorcerer about 4000 BCE. And most of her monstrous brood is gone as well, but not all of it. Some of them interbred with humans and hid their lineage in the darkest corners of the world. They hid from the world of men for millennia, some lurking in darkness and plotting revenge and others merely living their own lives – the ancient conflict long forgotten.
  
  But that's not really possible now. Things are modern, and there is nowhere to hide. Those who carry the taint of Tiamat's spawn in their ancestry or are cursed with the taint during their lives are both hunted and feared. They are destructive, and eating their flesh can make you live forever. Of course, eating their flesh makes you like them, and puts you into the same danger. But hey, immortality.
  
  In the World of Darkness these creatures often hang out at the edges of society – places which while nominally explored aren't actually watched very carefully.
  Exemplars: The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Mole Man, Robert Olmstead, Moth Man

Again, here's where we have some iffishness. We're pretty settled on Deep Ones (Limbo, Greek) and Troglodytes (Mictlan, African). But the third group is some kind of insect people. Are we talking Ant people? Be people? Mantis ladies? Beetlefolk? Spiderpeople? Locustpeople?

Are our bug people skin bags full of bugs like the Worm that Walks or are they giant bugs that take the forms of humans like Metamorphosis and Meet the Applegates? Or humans with bug traits like Genestealers and Spiderman? And what part of the world are we hearkening our bug folk too? No easy answers there.

-Username17

[Falgund]

For the Bug people, we have to remember they should be powered by dreams if we don't want to change the power source of the other Leviathan.
I'd say something with powers linked to native american dream catchers, maybe half-spiders women that use illusions in order to approch their prey and lay eggs inside their body (giving us the black widow femme fatale), or human made of butterflies/butterflies larvae.
(Why butterflies: See http://www.bugbios.com/ced4/mythology.html )

[Koumei]

My choice for the third leviathan (as long as we have things that could be star spawn or could be walking dinosaurs or could be Sahuagin - and we do, the first type) would be either spider themed (hybrids are cool, but so are skin bags filled with spiders like the scariest piñata ever) or mantis ladies, or even Queen Q Bee.

Although genestealers ARE pretty sweet.

[Judging__Eagle]

How about.... scorpion people? from... the New World? or Australia?

Let's make them shapeshifters//illusionists; humans with bug-like traits is too much like Lycanthropes imo.

They're bugs that reform their chitinous shell and use pheremones to make humans accept them.

On a security video camera they still look blurry, but with a hi-def still camera they look utterly horrifying, or look like they have a skin condition.

They are the most insidious of all the Leviathans, as their pheremones allow them to blend in with the most ease. However they breed with the most difficulty among humans.

They could seriously be rich (hundreds of years of investing in Rothschild dahlink), and with a big family and a husband or wife, and adopted children, but actual children are hard for them to have with their spouses, or boyfriend/girlfriends, or the dozens of humans that they try to get it on with in hopes that one time the deed finally produces offspring.

Also, this backstory doesn't mean that they have to look like any one type of insect. Maybe they look like any insect?


[Leviathan]

But of course I love you, I want to have your children, don't I?

In ancient times, before the rise of fish onto water were the Insect people of Sh'th-Krrtl-bragh. Giant insects of prodigious intelligence and power, they controlled their lesser bretheren and used them as either breeding stock, slave labour, or cattle.

This was done via their prodigious control of their phermaones to make other creatures believe that what they are doing is in their own interest.

When the first fish came onto land, the Sh'th-Krrtl-bragh realized that here was a new opportunity for even more gigantic bodies. They controlled as many of the precursor amphibianoids and did all that they could to not only control and feed on them, but also to breed with them.

With the first failed attempts, they instead focused on trying to ensure the success of the first air-breathing amphibian, guiding the flippered fish back and forth from water and land to ensure that their delicate gills did not dry out too early.

An entire breeding program was conducted along the shores of the world continent to ensure the success of this new found cattle. Dragonfly Nymphs refused to engo their final metaporhosis in order to better corral and safeguard their charges, Spiders developed special webbings that could create large underwater bubbles to act as fences and observation stations, flying insects kept watch on weather patterns, and water skimming insects acted as observers.

Eventually the project succeeded, and beyond the wildest dreams of the Sh'th-Krrtl-bragh empire. They had succeeded in nuturing amphibious life from previously land-walking aquatic life. Soon after this, it was discovered that one of the new creatures had been mated with by one of its handlers, and its offspring had successfully created new life, strange life. It looked somewhat like its amphibian parent, but had the insectile mind and pheremone control that its insect parent had.

The empire was literally a-buzz. they had found not only a new species to breed with, but one that would allow them to develop larger brains, and larger bodies.

As time passed the empire of insects guided the newly evolving amphibians and later reptiles to conquer and dominate the rest of Pangea, giving their empire firm control of all of the planet's landmass. They existed for millions of years and eventually had bred with nearly every type of creature on the planet, from the largest sauropod, down to the tiniest mammal. It was this thoroughness that allowed them to survive the death of nearly their entire species.

With each great extinction event, the Sh'th-Krrtl-bragh tried to foster life, and new breeding stock, until eventually they began able be members of the hominid species.

However, the major extinction events that eliminated the dinosaurs, and wiped out most humans down to only a few dozens of thousands, also wiped out the majority of the Sh'th-Krrtl-bragh empire. The remaining members focused more on personal goals, gaining power and influence, and trying to foster a new generation of offspring.

Now, the 'empire' is barely more than a few hundred creatures living among humans. Breeding was never an easy prospect for the species, and coupled with human breeding mores, breeding is even more difficult. However, the remnants do what they can.

Their larger bodies, and powerful brains allow them to control their biological functions such that they hardly age and are prodigiously powerful compared to the humans that they live among. They do not look human, or at least, not perfectly human, however their use of pheremones allows humans to accept them as exotic looking members of their own species.


They're Jeanstealers, since they look human, but nooot, quite. I didn't actually want that, but it's the only logical course of action.

Also, this was entirely pulled out of my ass right now. Whatch'a think?

These guys are fucking creepy insect-minded critters, but they also want their breeding stock to be fucking awesome, smart and powerful. Since it means that the next generation will also get those powers. So they actually have deep incentives in the continued freedom of humans from other supernaturals.

Reasons that the insect people don't breed with each other: you get weaker results. Stupider, uglier, and weaker creatures are the results of breeding with your own kind. Half the average stats of the parents. Which is ok if you need drones in a jungle/desert/icey/mountain fortress, but is useless if you want to live in a city with humans that could help you form awesome babees.


Edit: Powered by dreams.... it could work, they're a pretty far-minded species that wants to try and breed with the best creatures they can find. So they... actually, I'm not sure what is being specifically meant when people say "dreams" as a power source, so tying it to these creatures is not exactly easy. :/

[violence in the media]

Hmm, a race of insect people that's been guiding evolution for millions of years? That is certainly a horrifying thought: we're the products of selective breeding by bug-people. Is there any way for a human/luminary to turn into a bug-person, or is this an all or nothing deal? You were either born a bug-person, or you aren't one?

[Username17]

Remember that whatever it is that the third group is called, it is going to be spoken by players. So a name like Athaqui or Kheperu is workable, because people can say that. But a name like Sh'th-Krrtl-bragh is not workable because people frankly can't.

You make a strong argument for not having a transformation sequence from human to bug (like in Meet the Applegates) as indeed that would really step on the toes of the lycanthropes. Which pretty much leaves us with either being humans who are gradually eaten out by bugs that live inside them and control them or humans who gradually gain bug traits as they age.

Either way they need to be able to be born to human families and only find out as they reach adulthood that they are a throwback to the ancient insectile ways and have crazy magic powers. This is even if a lot of them are born from eggs laid by their mantid mothers (or whatever). This is required because one of the major World of Darkness things is living as a human and then becoming transformed or awakening to the fact that you aren't human (and perhaps never were). So Androids need to be capable of not knowing that they aren't normal humans and then only discovering it later on. Leviathan need to be able to happen in human lineages. Lycanthropes, Vampires, Mages, and Transhumans all have it easy because they actually have a transformational event that turns them from a human luminary to a supernatural. But even though a Leviathan and a Promethean are technically born with their status - they need to be able to think otherwise and spend time in a human highschool so that they can keep up with the plot.

-Username17

[Starmaker]

Oh fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck... That awesome quote about hands covered in blood went down the drain before I copypasted it.

[Username17]

Not everything perished. For example, we have this fine piece by Josh:

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Limbo: The Dark Reflection
“You can go to hell!”
“We can't. Not alone...”

A long time ago, some people fucked up really bad and parts of the human world started to fall into the fires of The Dark Reflection. Nobody's quite sure exactly when or what - some say that it was the cinders of the atomic fires of Oklo, while others say it is the ancient truth contained in the myth of Prometheus and the Scriptural references to Gehenna; some that men merely merely opened the doorway into the world of ashes; others say that it was men that started the unquenchable fire that begat The Dark Reflection.

Practically everything found in Limbo was first wrought by humans, and then destroyed by fire. Everywhere in the Dark Reflection there are always remnants of human habitation, and everywhere in the dark reflection, there are always smoke and ashes. Yet it is exceedingly rare to encounter men still living nor open flames still burning. The ground is littered with sooty broken glass: smashed bottles, shattered windows, and shards of obsidian lie on every surface. The dusty surfaces seem dull, and rarely cast a reflection. When they do, they seem more of a window back to the mortal realm, a cruel reminder of where the onlooker is and where they could be.

The Dark Reflection is home to what the unenlightened would call demons, ifrit and shinma. All of them endeavor merely to survive long enough to escape. Survival is a brutal matter of scavenging amongst the cinders and preying upon the weaker residents. Escape is more difficult, never more than a temporary respite: for each of the dwellers of The Dark Reflection carry the seed of the unquenchable fire within them, and any who escape are doomed to one day start a blaze which will drag another piece of the human world back into The Dark Reflection.

Getting to the Dark Reflection

Natural passage in and out of the Dark Reflection is almost always through fires or mirrored surfaces, and it is the latter possibility that gives it its name. Sometimes when something is burned, a rend between the mortal world and the Dark Reflection is left in its place. This is most likely to happen when the burnt thing in question was a source of security such as the wall of a family home or school, or a child's blanket. Once a character has been to the Dark Reflection even once, these portals appear far more commonly in their presence for the rest of their lives. Those who have been to the Dark Reflection often find themselves avoiding mirrors for fear that they will find the profane staring back at them.

Sorcerous means to enter and escape the Dark Reflection are mostly found in the Path of Mirrors. Leaving the Dark Reflection is difficult for magical creatures. Whether traveling by sorcery or through a gateway, moving from the Deep to the Shallow or from the Shallow to the Mortal World requires one to make a make a Resistance Test (Social if attempting to traverse a summoning, Mental if attempting to pass through a mirror gate, or Physical if attempting to navigate a burnt rend in space) with a Threshold equal to their own Potency. If returning to a known place, the storyteller may award a bonus of 1-5 dice to the escape attempt depending upon how familiar one is with the location. Summoning rituals and special gate preparations can add additional bonus dice in addition to allowing for an Escape Test at all. This can render the Dark Reflection a near inescapable prison for the very powerful. For example, The King With Three Shadows has a Potency of 10 and suffers from a name binding that further raises his escape threshold to 15.

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-Username17

[Judging__Eagle]

Hmm, oh, you find out that you're not human, at puberty.

When everyone else is finding out about hormones, acne, the opposite gender, hair growing out of where hair didn't grow, and other changes; you find out that your skin is starting crack, and peel, and expose the chitinous undercarapace that makes up your body.

Maybe spines or anntennae come out of your body as well; and you realize that you hear best when you have your stomach exposed ((which suddenly makes bare mid-drift shirts a lot more creepy, since they could be worn so that a Brooder can hear better)), or you can breathe out of holes along your back.

.... Like a metamorphosis! Dang, I figured out how it would make sense from a "bug" angle too.

You're born "looking" like whatever your non-Brood parent looks like; and eventually you will undergo a metamorphosis into a more Brood-like creature.

For names.... yeah. They call themselves "The Brooders"; mostly b/c they try to create broods, and they brood when they don't successfully create offspring, or plan on how to take over the world again.

Or, sometimes they do successfully create offspring, but they don't realize it until 20 years pass, or 40, or whatever.

Sometimes a Brood doesn't realize what they are until their human body dies, and then the only thing left is their inner, insectile, form.

So, some Brood look like a old dead guy being worn by a bug; some look like teenaagers. Humans are not really bothered by either of them, and don't mind making out with them either.

Making them horrifically creepy to other supernaturals that still have somewhat human ideas, because a very inhuman thing is able to be closer to humans than you ever can be. While a Brood is never going to think like a human, no matter how long they've been living with them. They end up thinking of humans as pawns or bags of genetic data to create new Brood, or as people that they want to be around, but can never reveal their true selves to.

So, a Brooder member of a Coterie may have a stable marriage, or a boyfriend or a string of friends with benefits; but they know that deep down, they can never tell those people what they really are.

While they can reveal to other supernaturals what they are, they can't breed with them and expect to have offspring, since mixing supernatural powers results in abominations or mutated stillborns.

The general idea is that turning into a Supernatural is a bad thing, and not easy to do, right?

Lycanthropes involve assault

Vampires involve near-death with the chance of dying

Prometheans are one-shot deals that are rejected by most of humanity

Witches involve giving up your humanity to gain magic

Transhumans invovle being changed from human to something else with non-human powers

Leviathans involve not being human ever, and realizing it over time, or eating the flesh of a Leviathan and turning into one.


The Brooders

I cannot say our true name to you. Suffice it to say, in your tongue, it means "The Brooders"

The original name of the Brooders has been lost, both by themselves, and through the vagrancies of living and taking on the form of creatures that cannont pronounce the words.

Among themselves, Brooders seem to speak in shrieks or their own pheremone-based language; often giving them the nicknames of "Shriekers" or "Smellies" by creatures such as Lycanthropes who can detect the noises and smells that the Brooders often use among themselves, however even Lycanthropes cannot identify what certain sounds or smells truly mean aside from perhaps specific and strong emotions such as anger, fear, lust or sorrow.

[Orion]

Re: Leviathan. Why are Fishmen aligned with the Dark Reflection?

I can kind of see where you're going in that their raping ways tie them thematically to the Dark Reflection's theme of abuse and degradation; they fit right in in a world defined by the concentration camp and the atom bomb.

But they definitely don't match the aesthetic of the dark reflection: fires and ash and bleak eternities of empty fields just aren't their thing. I mean, I guess maybe the Dark Reflection also has endless oilspills and lagoons of red tide-laden, radioactive waters, but still.

Also, consider Cthulhu. I know Cthulhu himself won't literally be making an appearance, but I assume some thematic resonance is desired. Fundamentally Cthulhu just doesn't belong in the Dark Reflection. He's not a product of humanity, and he doesn't showcase or represent our worst sides. He doesn't live to corrupt or control us, and he doesn't hate us. He's totally inhuman and belongs in one of the worlds which is inhuman.

Specifically, Cthulhu and, I would argue, the fishmen generally, belong in the dreamland/wilds. The Wilds are *alien* and terrifying, like fishmen, not uncomfortably familiar and terrifying, like the Dark Reflection. The Fishmen represent an acquisitive, animalistic savagery. We ar ethier livestock and playthings. And Great Cthulhu, or whatever beings they serve or worship, are essentially the same thign as Faerie Lords -- incomprehensible, capricious powers.

This frees up the insectiles to be dark reflection-aspected. Going in with the proposals that they be better at "passing" and mroe closely connected to humans, I think that the insectiles should have incredibly elaborate and senselessly cruel social structures which parody the worst aspects of human nature. Confronting them should force you to reflect on the worst of human tribalism, hierarchy, pettiness, spite, and vanity. They should have human dupe on the bottom of their social structure who learn more about the truth as they advance through the ranks until they got hollowed out and turned into semi-mindless worm-that-walks servants to the metamorphic insectile overlords.
---

Also, I question your realm assignment for Prometheans. If Golems are based on Hebrew folklore, shouldn't they be powered by spirits of the Dark Reflection, not by fey powers of the Wild? This puts androids over in the wilds. This has the advantage (or disadvantage) of lining up with Transhuman assignments, making the "magic" supernaturals Limbo based and the Science! ones Maya based.

[Prak]

Remember that whatever it is that the third group is called, it is going to be spoken by players. So a name like Athaqui or Kheperu is workable, because people can say that. But a name like Sh'th-Krrtl-bragh is not workable because people frankly can't.

You make a strong argument for not having a transformation sequence from human to bug (like in Meet the Applegates) as indeed that would really step on the toes of the lycanthropes.

plus we've already got at least vamps and mages stepping on those toes...

Which pretty much leaves us with either being humans who are gradually eaten out by bugs that live inside them and control them or humans who gradually gain bug traits as they age.

what about humans who gradually gain bug traits with bug pinatas as servitors? I could see the bugfolk doing the whole "insert a parasite into someone's brain to control them" and the bug just keeps reproducing and eating until the servant is just bugs in a suit.

But even though a Leviathan and a Promethean are technically born with their status - they need to be able to think otherwise and spend time in a human highschool so that they can keep up with the plot.

That's actually fairly easy with promethians... androids can have memories programmed into them which could provide the same "Wtf?" moments, frankies can just have hazy memories from their past lives, which gives them all the more confusion since the likely hood of being composed of only one corpse is slim to nill. Golems, I don't know.

[Orion]

[

what about humans who gradually gain bug traits with bug pinatas as servitors? I could see the bugfolk doing the whole "insert a parasite into someone's brain to control them" and the bug just keeps reproducing and eating until the servant is just bugs in a suit.

Great minds think alike

[CatharzGodfoot]

Here's a bit of a synthesis of some of the above ideas: the bug people look like beetles or flies a bit under a foot long. They reproduce by laying an egg in (human) baby's ears, which hatches into a maggot that burrows in and then hangs in the brain (Khaaaan!), lodged across the two ventricles. The maggot forges neural and nutritional connections with the brain, and essentially becomes part of the child's mind. If you were to x-ray the child's head, it would look like the cancer.

As the child grows, the maggot grows with it, eventually accounting for more than half of the brain mass (the brain tissue slowly shrinks). When the child hits puberty, it goes comatose for a bit while the maggot metamorphoses into the semi-adult form. At this point the insect has a strong desire to bust out of the head, mate, and go lay eggs in babies' ears. Some do, some don't. Those that don't live on in human form, knowing that they're really alien horrors.

Now here's the fun part: to make surviving easier, bugs often act as normal humans and marry into normal human families, human children and all. Of course, most of those children will end up with maggots in their brains.

So a bug-person might have an actual family, with a parent(s) that is responsible for them being an unholy abomination. Furthermore, one of the two parents is quite likely to be unaware that the other is an alien, and even some of the children might be normal humans, as the window for integrating the maggot is short.

Slow transformation of the host body due to alien proteins and RNA is optional, as is the ability to emerge through the host's mouth and fly around for short periods of time. Eventually bugs might just grow too big to fit in their hosts (and hosts may die), so older bugs might all be in bug form.

[Grek]

Rather than cancer worms, I think they should be full of centipedes.

[Mr. Bane]

Alien bugs.

[Nihlin]

Copypasta that might otherwise be lost to the space-time rift (though I assume Frank's stuff was itself copied from a document that he had written locally).

---------
Frank wrote:
---------

I rather liked the concept behind the nWoD thing where when a Vampire's Potency went up they got more and more restrictive feeding requirements. First they lost the ability to feed from animals, then they lost the ability to feed from humans, then they lost the ability to feed from low potency vampires. Unfortunately nWoD shot that right in the face by giving out a Coil of the Dragon that made you able to totally ignore that. And since it was a prerequisite for the totally ridiculous upgrade where you could get net blood by pouring your own blood into a glass and drinking it - you could pretty much assume that any character was going to just ambiently have it long before their Potency got high enough to care.

But the concept was nicely Riceian before they killed it utterly. But putting Luminary humans in there between normal humans and supernaturals seems workable. And of course who can forget the Creature From the Black Lagoon and his need to mate with a Luminary human.

Anyhow, here's an example of a Physical Discipline and a Sorcerous Discipline:



Celerity
There she goes again.

Celerity is the power to move with the astonishing speed of the supernatural. Celerity must be consciously activated at a cost of 1 Power point, and its effects last for one scene. Distinct from other disciplines, the effects of Celerity are cumulative. The discipline as a whole is activated or not during a scene, and may be activated as a Reflexive Action while rolling initiative. When activated, the character gains a +2 bonus to Initiative tests. With Intermediate Celerity this bonus increases to +4, and with Advanced Celerity this bonus increases to +8. During the initiative phase, a character with Celerity may choose to reduce the speed that will move at to a more normal velocity. The degree of speed utilized cannot be changed again until next initiative phase. In general, character whose Celerity more than doubles their speed in any dimension would constitute a masquerade breach.

Basic Disciplines

* Quickness While Celerity is active, the character gains an extra initiative pass during any confrontation turn.
* Nimble Feet While Celerity is active, the character is able to walk and run at stupendous speeds. The character's personal movement rate is quadrupled. If the character has Intermediate Celerity, the speed increase is itself increased to six times. If the character has Advanced Celerity the movement increase is eight times. In addition, the character ignores penalties for acting while moving over difficult surfaces (although she may be slowed down by them as normal).


Intermediate Disciplines

* Alacrity While Celerity is active, the character gains an extra initiative pass during any confrontation turn. This is cumulative with Quickness (for a total of 2 extra IPs if both are known).
* Quicken Sight While Celerity is active, the character may perceive and derive meaning from fast moving objects. She may follow a specific card in a shuffled deck, read a sign on a fast moving train, or gauge the trajectories of bullets in flight. She gains a +4 bonus to Defense Rolls, and suffers no penalties from dodging more than one attack during an Initiative Pass. If she has Advanced Celerity, the bonus increases to 6 dice.


Advanced Disciplines

* Blur While Celerity is active, the character gains an extra initiative pass during any confrontation turn. This is cumulative with Alacrity and Quickness (for a total of 3 extra IPs if all are known).
* Rapid Thought While Celerity is active, the character is able to consider their situation and their surroundings carefully as if they had little or no time pressures. All penalties for splitting one's attentions between two or more activities (such as wielding two pistols or picking a lock while dangling from a rope) are canceled. The character ignores all penalties for a “rushed job.” And finally, the character always wins initiative against enemies, and must roll only if another character also has Rapid Thought.



Walk of Flame
“People running around. Skin on fire. It's beautiful.”

Fire is likely the dividing line between man and beast. And yet while it is undeniable that fire provides light and warmth, protection from the monsters of the darkness and the forging of bricks and steel – that's mostly a facet of technology. Magical fire is a terrifying thing that rages at the limits of control and burns things down to ash. Firestarters in the World of Darkness are of course based largely on Carey, and it is unsurprising therefore that fire magic spends a lot more time spreading panic and a lot less time smelting iron than controlled industrial fires do. The Walk of Flame draws strength from the Dark Reflection.
Basic Disciplines

* Fire Walking The character hardens themselves against the flames and no longer burns. This does not protect them from shrapnel propelled by an explosion, but does protect them from any wounds caused by heat itself. Use of this power is entirely reflexive. Fire Walking is counterable and detectable only when the character is actually being protected from fire damage.
* Hand of Flame The character can conjure up flame in their hand, varying it in intensity from a lighter flame raising from an extended finger to a 30 cm inferno in their palm. The fire does not burn the hand it sprouts out of (the waves of heat move away), but the user is otherwise not protected from the fire or fires she starts. Calling, changing the intensity, or extinguishing of the flame is a Simple action that costs nothing. The fire can inflict as much as the character's Logic attribute in fire damage.


Intermediate Disciplines

* Fire Starter The character concentrates momentarily and something bursts into flame. Alternately, the character may have a bolt or ball of flame fly from some part of their body to explode at the target. Either way, the flames inflict the character's Logic attribute in damage, and are resoled as a ranged attack targeted with Logic + Science. Using this is a Simple Action.
* Flames of Panic By spending a power point, the character sends waves of terror into crowds of people. This magic affects every creature except themselves the character can literally see (which means that she can shape its effects by voluntarily closing one eye, for example). The character rolls Logic + Intimidation, and each affected creature makes a Willpower Resistance Test. Targets are panicked and stampede around irrationally for one round for each net hit of the caster.


Advanced Disciplines

* Hell Storm By spending a power point and a Complex Action, the character can fill an area with hellish fire. The flames inflict a base damage equal to the character's Logic attribute, and are resolved as ranged attacks targeted with Logic + Science. However, the hellstorm cannot be dodged by targets who are more than a meter from the edge of the effect (multiply this maximum distance accordingly for creatures that move especially fast). The area can be tremendously large, affecting any area that can be seen up to a hundred meters per point of Potency.
* Scorch the Gateway By spending a power point and a Complex Action, the character can enhance a fire magically such that it leaves a gateway from the mortal world to the Dark Reflection (and back) in its wake. By concentrating on the fire the character can attune the resultant portal to one specific creature for each Complex Action spent concentrating (until the character runs out of names or the fire burns out and the way manifests). The character may then make a Logic + Occult + Potency roll, and all attuned creatures get a bonus die to escape through the gate for each hit.

[Nihlin]

More copypasta

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Frank wrote:
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Ok, so I have a couple of questions about Luminary detection. I'll italicize what I think we should do.

Is this something that works on sight? Does it work through a portrait, photograph, or video recording?

Yes. Detection is generally a visual thing, though it can also function through scent. Dracula spotted Mina through a photo in the 1992 movie, though I think that it might be more difficult to do through photo, video, and iconography due to editing and manipulation of the images.

What does a Luminary look like to the people that can see them? Do they glow? Are they brighter and more vibrant than their surroundings? Could you miss one if you were scanning a crowd? Does it affect their ability to hide from someone that can perceive their Luminosity?

I like the idea of Luminaries appearing as full-color entities in a world that otherwise appears drab and washed out. Any "color bleed" they might have is relatively minor. Luminaries should have a slight penalty to avoid detection by anyone that can perceive them.

Is Luminary (and other supernatural) detection a power that all supernaturals have as a default? I'd be inclined to say "yes" and put the onus of obscuring one's nature on the observed creature. I'd also have the detection and classification be something relatively simple. So, when a Leviathan looks at an assemblage of supernatural entities, he can tell who the Luminaries are, who the Werewolves are, who the Prometheans are, etc.

Yes. Luminary and supernatural detection should be automatic and always-on. Assessing a supernatural creature's type might be the equivalent of a swift or immediate action.

Regarding the population of Luminaries, are people like movie stars, statesmen, olympic athletes, and captains of industry more or less likely to be Luminaries compared to the general population? If there is 1 supernaural creature for every 100,000 humans (using Frank's earlier population of 60,000 worldwide), how many Luminaries are there? Do they count against the 60,000 supernaturals? Do they comprise their own pool as, unless something happens to interact with them, they live and die as ordinary humans?

I don't know about the Luminary distribution, but I could think of justifications for pegging their numbers at both greater and lesser than the general supernatural population.

[Nihlin]

Yet more copypasta

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Quote:
Why is there only so much conceptual space? Why is there so little?



The amount of conceptual space available is variable on an individual basis. People who spend more time reading up on the backstories and putting puzzle pieces together can keep more relevant balls in the air and accommodate more conceptual space. People who are casual players will have smaller conceptual spaces dedicated to the game. However, more conceptual space can be filled with organizational history and stuff more easily than a lack of conceptual space can be made up for by anything. So aiming near the lowest common denominator makes a lot of sense.

There seriously isn't room in anyone's conceptual space for all of vampirism. Seriously, even a moderately successful attempt at just recounting the dry facts of that stuff is literally over 900 pages. The Vampire Encyclopedia is 960 pages of just little encyclopedia entries. That's a whole game's worth of reading material and more and it doesn't even try to get everything on the same page.

The second reason is that in the oWoD Hitler was driven to evil and madness because he was apparently the only actual real human being on the planet. That's hyperbole, but only barely. Every "type" of supernatural creature has to have enough of them running around in the world to actually create a type. For there to be stereotypes at all, there have to be groups with similarities. So you want to run around in San Jose, California. There are a million people there. It's a huge city. It's next to other cities in the greater San Jose/San Francisco/Oakland metropolitan area that collectively add up to 8 million people. More than London. But seriously, how many supernaturals could even that huge city complex contain? 300 maybe? I mean, that already puts every murder committed in the region every year under the control of a supernatural, but in fact of a different supernatural.

Prak wrote:
Why can't you have, for example, one type of each supernatural race for each myth archetype for each major ethnic group?


But OK, let's imagine that there are 12 basic supernatural types and we're giving each one a version from 7 different ethnic groups (using the incredibly reductionist divisions of Europe, Middle East, South Asia, Pacific Islands, East Asia, Africa, and Americas). That's 94 types. That means that when you meet a kind of monster that there's maybe two other versions of that "kind" somewhere in the entire sprawl. At that point you don't even have Djinns (Semitic Demon) or Naga (Dravidian Leviathan), you have Steve. Steve is a unique fucking monster, because you will never encounter another creature that is whatever the fuck Steve is.

In short, if your total number of available monster types becomes large enough that your experimental sampling is unlikely to encounter the same type more than twice or so over the course of the campaign, you should dump the entire concept of types and just go point based. The only purpose of having Nosferatu and Troglodytes is so that you can encounter them over and over again and have that have some kind of consistent meaning.

With 18 playable and 6 nonplayable monster types, the chances of running into two things that are the same thing is about 4%. On average you go through about 13 NPCs before you encounter a duplicate. That's already stretching things to near the breaking point.

-Username17

[Nihlin]

Still more copypasta:

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Amra wrote:
---------

FrankTrollman wrote:
Even fifty years ago we would be casting about for werebears or sealwomen.


Not so. People who turn into bears are a staple of Northern European and Native American mythology at least. And also, Selkies.

I can absolutely see where you're coming from in terms of not turning the game into a smorgasbord of crazy shit from all over the world, but people turning into seals and bears are absolutely "mainstream" from a mythological perspective... or is it just that you're saying that "black and white horror movies are our primary source and we're not going anywhere else"?

If so, well, fair enough. I don't know of a single old film in which selkies or bear-men featured prominently.

On the subject of campaigns supported by the proposed material, I think there's a fairly obvious one missing from the list:

It's Us Against Them: One or more supernaturals of some description have been photographed/caught on video/captured/DNA sampled/willingly revealed themselves and the military/a scientific laboratory/a newspaper editor/Joe Public is in imminent danger of starting to believe. That can't be allowed to happen.

With regard to RC2's point, another reason why monsters would team up is simply "vulnerabilities". Most monsters are going to have lifestyles that pretty much flat-out require support, and - more to the point - support from people who don't suffer from the same problems. If you drain people dry, it's handy to hang out with someone who'll eat the evidence but not so clever to hang out with others who are doing the same thing in the same town. If you're torpid for the hours of daylight, you *really* want a pal who isn't - particularly if you're on the move a lot - whereas you derive far less benefit if your entire posse turn into hatstands when the sun's up. If you're too monstrous in appearance to interact with human society, you're going to need a "face man". If you flip out at full moon and start removing jugulars with your teeth, making friends with creatures powerful enough to restrain you (or understanding enough to help you cover your tracks) is a necessity. If you've got to spend three days a month totally immersed in salt water or die, it is exceptionally friggin' handy to have others around you who don't share that weakness; either to take care of business while you're gone or to help you make sure you can get there when you need to. You want the guy who isn't violently allergic to silver to take the monster hunter's bullet for you while you sneak up behind and smash his holy-water sprinkler. And so on.

Different supernaturals can take advantage of each others' strengths, sure, but where they can *really* help each other is in not sharing the same weaknesses. As supernaturals, you have this in common: you're not human, and you're outnumbered thirty-thousand-to-one by people who are, and who would destroy you all if they ever really believed you existed. That's a powerful reason to cooperate, right there.

[Nihlin]

Frank replied:

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Amra wrote:
Not so. People who turn into bears are a staple of Northern European and Native American mythology at least. And also, Selkies.


Oh sure. I'm not saying that stuff isn't there, it totally is. I'm saying that it doesn't receive a whole lot of source material from the 20th century on. Which frankly, it doesn't. The primary source material of course are the Gothic Horror Classics. And those contain werecats and weredogs. Thereafter we could go to pretty much anything - there's real (if tongue-in-cheek) primary source material for weretomatoes and even historical precedent for weremelons. But when you pole people today to name non-wolf lycanhropes, Wererats pretty much top the list. And by a rather large amount.

Amra wrote:
I can absolutely see where you're coming from in terms of not turning the game into a smorgasbord of crazy shit from all over the world, but people turning into seals and bears are absolutely "mainstream" from a mythological perspective... or is it just that you're saying that "black and white horror movies are our primary source and we're not going anywhere else"?


The folk process is an evolutionary one, with roots back thousands of years. But you can't actually interact with the process, you can only interact with the people alive today. So the radical upshift in popularity and resonance for ratmen in the last 40 years is something that one has to take into consideration.

However even within that context, no human you are likely to meet is going to be familiar with every myth you reference. And so it comes that one has to give out an inspiration list. Movies and books to read. And yeah, people should read Dracula and Frankenstein. Those books are flat required reading. They should be required reading anyway. I'm actually offended that people can get out of Junior High without ever having read those books. But the place to go after that is the set of inspirational movies that created the genre in the 20th century. And those are of course the Universal Horror Monster Movies. And it is for this reason that people keep making the joke about White Wolf eventually releasing Mongoloid: The Hunching.

And while we don't have to go that far, there are a bunch of things that are in the original source material that would be painful in the extreme to remove. Werecats for example. Cat People, Cat and Canary, Curse of Cat People, and so on. Or subhuman cannibal mutants. Or zombies.

In general, a very good litmus test for what the essentials are for monster team ups is the ones that actually show up in monster team up movies. The clear winners are Vampires and Werewolves, Underworld is about nothing else and they made two sequels (one of which was even good). But the other major team up movies should not be discounted as a source of information as to what's "iconic."

Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein

* Dracula (played by Bela Lugosi!)
* The Wolfman (played by Lon Chaney Jr.)
* Frankenstein's Monster (played by Glenn Strange)
* The Invisible Man (played by Vincent Price)


Hands down the most canonical movie in the genre, this movie not only holds up incredibly well generation after generation, but it has the iconic cast. Fuck yeah. It is important to note that the movie is part of a series where they encounter an evil wizard and a mummy, but that movie is nowhere near as good.

Monster Squad

* Dracula
* Wolfman
* Frankenstein's Monster
* Fish Man
* The Mummy


A very nice movie. An easy recommendation for people of any age.

Van Helsing

* Vampires
* Werewolves
* Frankenstein's Monster
* Mr. Hyde
* Chosen Human



Frankly, this movie blows. But it's an important litmus test none the less.

That makes our six basic types feel very solid. And it's only really the subdivisions that get wrangled over. Lycanthropes get Werewolves, that's frickin obvious. And then we could honestly just cap it after wereleopards. That would work. I'm for throwing wererats in exclusively because a lot of kids these days think wererats are cool. And I happen to agree.

[Nihlin]

I'm just gonna skip the whole thing with RC's objections and the other thing with the... you know. With the dogs. And the questionable conduct. That made babies.

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Ice9 wrote:
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Reflections
It's aura is unlike anything I've seen! ... better hope high explosives work.

People slip in and out of the planes more than is healthy, and sometimes this agitates the boundary, like ripples on the surface of a pond. When those ripples are severe enough, they can produce a Reflection. Reflections are distorted amalgams of one or more people or creatures, formed from the substance of a plane. They are generally unstable, deconstituting within days or weeks of their formation, but they can cause a lot of havoc in the mean time. Reflections have some degree of correspondence with their plane of origin (for instance, a Gloom Reflection would probably stick the shadows), but are mostly unique. Reflections can never pass on their characteristics - even one that was mostly Vampire couldn't create other Vampires, for example.

[Nihlin]

Frank replies to various people:

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Vnonymous wrote:
Would adding a temporary bonus to certain auspicious events work?

Sure, Dracula can just suck down a few hobos, but if he really wants to get down to business, he's going to find the pure and beautiful virgin luminary and suck her dry or turn her into a vampire or something, and the werewolf is going to be strong when the moon rises, but when the full moon rises, they turn into Wolfzilla etc etc.


Yes, that would work. I mean it does open the door for people to keep virgin girls in cages to pop the top off when it comes time to throw down and then the team just waits for a full moon during a thunder storm so that they can do the ultimostrike. But to an extent, that's kind of OK. Even potentially a good thing if there are some sort of real-world concerns that keep people from just pressing the "next" button day after day under they get the right stellar conditions. Provisionally, I'm in favor.

Grek wrote:
From what been described so far, a werewolf has three forms, human looking, animal and an animal-human hybrid. Each of these different forms should have different effects and be useful for different things. If a vampire gets "Transform into wolf" He should get exactly that. The wolf form. The wolfman is oneup on the vampire because he can also turn into a wolfman in addition to the other two forms.


Yes, but those are two powers that the Werewolf starts with. If it is your goal in life to play a Tzimisce you're going to be playing a Ventrue who buys a lot of Protean powers. And you'll probably end up with Beast Form and Monstrous Form. And Flesh Crafting, and Form of Mist, and Body Weaponry, and so on. If you sink enough points into Protean, you'll be better at transforming yourself than the Werewolf will be. Because the Werewolf will be sinking his points into other powers. And then he'll end up being able to teleport through mirrors and shadows or cloud peoples' memories (assuming for the moment that he wanted to replicate an oWoD Garou).

The preselected powers are just powers on the basic lists. And if you walk in as special type A and take your optional powers as the ones that special type B happens to start with you may well be able to do a passable job impersonating the other critter. But yeah, your power schedule and your magic weaknesses aren't going to change. If you're a "real" werewolf you're always going to discolor salt and if you're a "real" Ventrue you're always going to offend cats and babies. Specific limitations/advantages are also going to apply. So the real werewolf is going to have anger management issues.

[Nihlin]

The Gloom

----------
Josh Kablack wrote:
----------
Now as to how that differs from The Gloom:

TS Elliot wrote:
SOME say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice, 5
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.



Quote:
The Gloom The best rendition of the Gloom is of course in Nightwatch, which even calls the place that. It's a cold and oppressive world where darkness presses insistently upon the light and heat of travelers. Powers of death leak in from every crevice and extinguish fires and the lives of small animals. Blood hungering insects and ghosts scour the Gloom.

[Picture of "The Scream" here]


The Gloom has been around forever. Some say that it is space itself and the big bang created the human world as a tiny mote within the gloom, while others say that the Gloom is the force of entropy to which all things shall return in The End.

Whatever the case, The Gloom is supernaturally cold and dark. Nothing grows here and everything that lives within The Gloom is hungry all of the time. All the plants are carnivorous and all the insects are parasitic.

The Gloom is home to what the unenlightened would call ghosts, wendigos, and vampires. All of them endeavor to draw prey in from the human world where they may drain the blood, life, and warmth from it to feed their insatiable hungers. The true horror is that such victims do not rest in peace, but instead rise driven by the need to recover the blood, life and warmth that was taken from them - in an ever growing cycle of futility.

(Thus in addition to Nightwatch, it's Dracula, Fredric Brown's Who Goes There (aka John Carpenter's The Thing), Alien, Ravenous, Wuthering Heights, etc)

[Nihlin]

I have to assume that Frank has this saved locally, but...

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Draco wrote:
Thats a good thing since the whole point of the Gloom is being dark, there really can't be two other worlds using the dark schtick.
While I mostly agree with you and have every intention of looting Josh's excellent writeup whole cloth, I think it's important to note that all of the worlds have the "dark" shtick. It's the "World of Darkness" and fucking everything is poorly lit. The Wilds are a surrealist and threatening fairy wonderland of darkness. The Gloom is a frigid and bottomlessly famished world of never-life of darkness. The Dark Reflection is a burnt and scarred land driven by regret of darkness. And even the Mortal World is a land of bitter danger and implacable conspiracy of darkness.

But yeah, the Dark Reflection writeup in the world section looks like this now:



The Dark Reflection
“You can go to hell!”
“We can't. Not alone...”

A long time ago, some people fucked up really bad and parts of the human world started to fall into the fires of The Dark Reflection.
Nobody's quite sure exactly when or what - some say that it was the hubris of the atomic fires that ended WWII, while others say it is the ancient truth contained in the myth of Prometheus and the Scriptural references to Gehenna; some that men merely merely opened the doorway into the world of ashes; others say that it men started the unquenchable fire that begat The Dark Reflection.

Everything found in The Dark Reflection was first wrought by humans, and then destroyed by fire. Everywhere in the Dark Reflection there are always remnants of human habitation, and everywhere in the dark reflection, there are always smoke and ashes. Yet it is exceedingly rare to encounter men still living nor open flames still burning.

The Dark Reflection is home to what the unenlightened would call demons, ifrit and mutants. All of them endeavor merely to survive long enough to escape. Survival is a brutal matter of scavenging amongst the cinders and preying upon the weaker residents. Escape is more difficult, never more than a temporary respite: for each of the dwellers of The Dark Reflection carry the seed of the unquenchable fire within them, and any who escape are doomed to one day start a blaze which will drag another piece of the human world back into The Dark Reflection.

Getting to the Dark Reflection

Natural passage in and out of the Dark Reflection is almost always through fires or mirrored surfaces, and it is the latter possibility that gives it its name. Sometimes when something is burned, a rend between the mortal world and the Dark Reflection is left in its place. This is most likely to happen when the burnt thing in question was a source of security such as the wall of a family home or school, or a child's blanket. Once a character has been to the Dark Reflection even once, these portals appear far more commonly in their presence for the rest of their lives. Those who have been to the Dark Reflection often find themselves avoiding mirrors for fear that they will find the profane staring back at them.

Sorcerous means to enter and escape the Dark Reflection are mostly found in the Path of Mirrors. Leaving the Dark Reflection is difficult for magical creatures. Whether traveling by sorcery or through a gateway, moving from the Deep to the Shallow or from the Shallow to the Mortal World requires one to make a make a Resistance Test (Social if attempting to traverse a summoning, Mental if attempting to pass through a mirror gate, or Physical if attempting to navigate a burnt rend in space) with a Threshold equal to their own Potency. If returning to a known place, the storyteller may award a bonus of 1-5 dice to the escape attempt depending upon how familiar one is with the location. Summoning rituals and special gate preparations can add additional bonus dice in addition to allowing for an Escape Test at all. This can render the Dark Reflection a near inescapable prison for the very powerful. For example, The King With Three Shadows has a Potency of 10 and suffers from a name binding that further raises his escape threshold to 15.



Anyway. The World section is also very importantly dedicated to organizations. They are divided into several sections:

* Coteries: groups roughly the size of the player characters, of which the player characters are collectively one.
* Cults: groups that characters can belong to that tech you one of the types of magic or another.
* Covenants: big groups of supernaturals that are like nations that players interact with politically.
* Antagonists: groups of enemies that players can oppose for an entire campaign without running out of enemies or getting into heavy philosophical wankery over it.



There are of course many pitfalls. Cults need to be accessible so that they can be in the story at all. It's OK if the exact membership of the Giovanni or the Black Hand is at least nominally secret, but supernaturals (including, indeed especially the player characters) need to be able to contact them. Also the cults need to exert a loyalty that is less than that of the Coterie. Because having a player be asked to betray the party to House Tremere (or whatever) is basically like shooting the entire game right in the face. And cults need to be able to accept and get along with the other cults even when they disagree about shit because player characters will want to be members of different cults.

The covenants need to be able to accept living side by side with members of other covenants. To use the national metaphor, they should be like France and the United States - not like South Korea and the DPRK. Players need to be able to take in characters from more than one covenant and not need a crap tonne of bullshit metagame rationalization as to why the characters can adventure together. Inter-covenant conflicts and politicizing should be real, but they should also be something that the individual can ignore. The following conversation should highlight the kind of relation they have:

Camarilla Ventrue: "What do you think of the World Crime League's exploitative tariffs and victimization caps in Venice? "
WCL Nezumi: "I think I'm a black market analyst from San Francisco and I don't give a rat's ass what people do with their tooth marks in Croatia."
CV: "Italy."
WCLN: "Whatever."



It is absolutely vital for politics to go forward that most people involved can afford to not care about the majority of issues in play. This is what allows people to make compromises and shifting alliances and such. If all disagreements are simply "You go to hell! You go to hell and you die!" then there's no room for sweet words or backroom deals to influence anything. It's just people stabbing each other.

And the antagonists need to be doing stuff that isn't "plotting your destruction." Indeed, while they should have some hangup or another sufficient to make stabbing them n the face instead of negotiating a land deal both logical and ethically defensible, they also need to be doing other shit sufficient such that going off and doing your own thing instead of being mobilized to fight one of the antagonist organizations is likewise a non-suicidal thing to do.

And finally, every organization of every size and point of view needs to interact with every kind of supernatural creature. If you're the robot girl from Metropolis you should under no circumstances be asked to "sit out" an adventure arc because it revolves around one group or another that can't or won't talk to you and doesn't matter to you anyway.

So here is some writing in that direction:



Coteries
“Go Team Venture!”

I honestly don't care if you call your team a “team” or a “coterie” or a “pack” or “coven” or “herd” or “Fred.” It's not important. What is important is that the player characters are a Scooby gang that works together and shares screen time. They'll be in the same areas a lot, working towards the same goals, and so on and so forth. These bands of supernaturals are pretty common, because of the whole thing where there are six billion humans and only about sixty thousand supernaturals. These guys are possibly your only friends, the only people you have shared experience potential with, and so on and so forth.

Loyalty to these small groups is assumed to be greater than loyalty to any world spanning clubs. The Camarilla does not expect that you will betray your friends for them, because it seriously isn't like you can go out and get new friends. Immortality is a long time, and the number of supernaturals is never that large, so personal loyalties are considered extremely important by just about every one.

Most coteries are generally 3-8 supernatural people with possibly some trusted retainers given quasi-membership. This is convenient because one of them could very well be “the player characters and maybe an NPC or two.” And indeed, the general assumption is that players will be part of th same coterie. Doing things this way allows the mission statement of the coterie to act as velcro to attach plot hooks to every player character, ensuring that the major action doesn't leave anyone behind. A coterie of Scooby Doo detectives can get all the players into the action right away when any of the characters finds out about a supposedly haunted house, while a coterie of relic hunters can get the players up to speed with just the subtlest hint about the whereabouts of a famous pistol. Even a coterie of guys who meet together for pizza and poker night can be righteously mobilized when supernatural goings-on hamper their evening ritual.

Coteries are thus structurally a very important part of the story arc for any group playing in the World of Darkness, because they provide a reason for the players to be telling the same story instead of having their characters drift apart and do their own thing. It is also important to note that many of the famous coteries from genre television shows like X Files, American Gothic, and Supernatural only have two characters in them much of the time. Since aWoD is a cooperative storytelling game, that is an unreasonable expectation to have. A better template would usually be the coteries from more ensemble cast shows like Angel or even Scooby Doo.

Covenants
“New plan: we don't cut each other's head off in an attempt to gain asymmetric power.”

Whether they like it or not, supernatural characters in the World of Darkness are subject to the rules and judgments of one or more of the Covenants. Acting as defacto nation states, covenants provide a Hobbesian mandate of behavior that is difficult to ignore. Characters may indeed be a member of one of them, which provides benefits comparable to those of being the citizen of an archaic empire. However, breaking the edicts of any covenant is punishable by that covenant if it catches you (subject to possible negotiations if you are a well placed member of another).

The covenants are as a whole not called that. In fact, they aren't called anything as a whole in-game, because they don't belong to any over organizations. Each is kind of like a mafia, with some sort of shady leadership hierarchy and elaborate titles to convey subtle differences in duties and status. In reality all the covenants exist to fulfill essentially the same task, so while they spend a fair amount of time insulting one another, it is profoundly unusual for them to actually come to blows. Each covenant provides the following:

* Preserves the Masquerade – each group calls it something different, but everyone is keenly aware that sufficient numbers of peasants with torches have slain supernatural creatures in the past and will do so again if the lid isn't kept on pretty tight.
* Facilitates Social Interaction – for all the nosferatu babble about how they prefer the life of the hermit, they really don't. Normal humans are incapable of really understanding what it is like to be a supernatural creature and really the only peers a Leviathan has is other Leviathans, or at least other supernatural creatures.
* Acts as a framework to work out differences – supernatural creatures exist outside and in many ways above normal human societies, and live their life very much like a Hobbesian battle of All against All. And while it is true that their power and mystery does make them well qualified to do that, they have no unique advantages over other supernatural creatures. And thus it is in true Hobbes fashion the creatures have put together over organizations to keep each other in check. Arguing things out with an Archon is slow, but many supernatural creatures have a lot of time.


Covenants do not, as a rule, recognize dual citizenship or anything of the like. And switching one's status from one to another is a slow painful process that generally just isn't done. But a supernatural creature from one covenant can generally expect to not get stabbed in the face or eaten by members of another. A supernatural creature from another covenant can expect to be treated as a foreigner, but not as a foreigner from a nation that is at war with the local one. Indeed, since all the covenants are international and borders are pretty vague even when they exist at all you can pretty much go where you want without getting much more than the fish eye. And that mostly from Leviathans who actually have fish eyes.

Western Camarilla (New World Order)
“Lack of loyalty is one of the major causes of failure in every walk of life.”

The Camarilla is, according to its own history, an ancient truce declared between various supernatural creatures long ago in Babylon. It was apparently put together in the face of some grave threat which is no longer talked about. Members of the Camarilla are called “Kindred,” and the regional leadership is divided into “cities,” “domains,” and “kingdoms” of which terms are all used interchangeably. Regional leadership is held by a Primogen Council, which powerful kindred are apointed to for life, and this council is led by a Prince or Aval (both are unisex terms which predate their use in royalty). How much influence the prince actually has varies from region to region. A primogen or prince who travels to another domain is automatically a member of the primogen council wherever they happen to be.

Laws of the Camarilla are hopelessly baroque, and most of the old ones are shockingly specific and draconian and inscribed into clay tablets. They have by and large been repealed and replaced with ones which are easier for everyone to get along with. Still, there are some hangers on, as it is widely reported that it is still technically a death sentence for the perpetrator and their three closest friends to steal an aurochs from a member of the kindred.

Probably Established: 8th century BCE, Persia

Eastern Camarilla (Carthians)
“Tradition is but the illusion of permanence. Change is not just inevitable, it is good.”

Supernatural societies have with necessity been extremely conservative over the generations. And such it was that when the age of enlightenment hit the human world, the supernatural world found itself falling behind. The Carthian movement was founded as a reform movement for the supernatural world to take advantage of the new ideas and opportunities found in human science. Arranged in a “cell structure”, the Carthian Movement nominally holds that all of their membership is equal, save for the Revolutionary Committee members themselves who are substantially more equal.

The Carthians hold that advancements in human strength and society are, or at least can be, for the good of the supernaturals. Rather than viewing the world as shrinking, leaving them with less and less space in which to hide, the Carthians view the world as growing with more and more humans and cities with which to obscure themselves. The Carthian masquerade is one based largely upon anonymity rather than invisibility.

The Carthian Movement appeals to the young (which in supernatural terms means the last 400 years or so), and campaigns for the removal of traditional privileges for the ancient and established monsters of the world. The Carthians favor change and a new way of doing things modeled upon human reforms, but that's about as far as they go in agreeing with one another. It is easy to get the distributed Carthian apparatus to help tear down something or turn upon a criminal, but relatively difficult to pass effective resolutions. The ideological divides amongst the Revolutionary Committee are fierce and hard drawn, so the group as a whole acts rarely and with much debate on matters of anything but immediate survival.

Probably Established: 1st century CE, China.

The Sabbat
“A bishop of the Sabbat can believe anything, but most of us don't.”

The effect of the Roman Catholic Church on human history is hard to over estimate. As Rome itself was coming crashing down, Europe was largely cut off from the Middle East, Africa, and points further in Asia. Europe became isolated, and the influence of the Camarilla all but vanished. It was at this time that the supernatural creatures of the European region created a new organization modeled on the fledgling Roman Catholic Church.

The Sabbat has extremely confused theology and you are specifically not allowed to be excommunicated for heresy. After all, the Sabbat's primary role is to facilitate social interaction and conflict resolution between members rather than to advance any specific theological agenda. The Sabbat is led by an Anti-Pope who wears a mask and whose identity is nominally secret. The Anti-Pope leads the council of Cardinals, from whom he or she is nominated, and does so for an unspecified amount of time before being replaced – occasionally by themselves in a different mask. Below the cardinals are bishops, below bishops are priests, and everyone else is referred to as “Flock.” Other organizations refer to Sabbat members derisively as “Sheep.”

The Sabbat maintains a number of parallel hierarchies in addition to the primary one. Rather than being a bishop or priest (which is regional), one could be Apostolic Exarch (which governs a region that is not under Sabbat Control), a Military Ordinal (which handles defense of the order regardless of location), or a Personal Prelate (which is organizational and has personnel but no fixed territory). All of these titles carry approximately the same weight as Bishop.

Probably Established: 5th century CE, Rome.

World Crime League
“Don't tell me that you're innocent. Because it insults my intelligence and it makes me very angry.”

With the encroachment of the Mongols into South and Southeast Asia, the kingdoms remaining outside the Khan's grasp were cut off from trade with the outside world. The supernatural creatures of the region were forced to make their own way, without influence from the old power structures. A pirate navy formed in Southeast Asia, which preyed upon naval traffic and helped fight the Mongol Empire. Keeping themselves on a military, outlaw footing kept the Mongols out of their lands and waters for as long as the Ming dynasty stood, but by the time they had reestablished connections with other Covenants, the Viet Shadow Kingdom had power of its own and its membership had no real desire to rejoin the Camarilla. They instead took their criminal activities world wide and became the League of Pirates, and eventually the World Crime League.

Because of their piratical roots, the World Crime League has a vaguely naval structure at the top. There is a council of Captains who discuss world issues and update the guidelines. Locally, WCL members infiltrate whatever criminal groups happen to be active in the region and modify themselves appropriately. WCL members have risen to high ranks in Triads, Vory, Mafia, and Ghost Cartels.

The WCL values money and other trappings of human temporal power as well as mystical power, and one can literally purchase their way up in the ranks of the Covenant. The group holds that breaking the laws of man and corrupting the values of human society is a goal in and of itself, and undermining the rule of law and morality is seen as a powerful and respectable achievement by the League.

Probably Established: 13th century CE, Dai Viet.

Antagonistic Organizations

“Actually, those guys are just bastards. We fight them.”


What makes an antagonist organization different from a “normal” organization in the World of Darkness is not that they are “the bad guys” – after all it is abundantly clear that a substantial number of people in all the supernatural societies are bad guys. These organizations are filled with blood drinking monsters. No, the salient thing about the Antagonists in this setting is that they are not willing to live and let live with the members of other covenants and cults. So while it is entirely possible to have a story in which one character is from the Camarilla and another is from the Carthians, it is basically impossible to have a cogent story in which one character is in the Marduk Society and the other characters are not.

The assumption then is that the antagonist organizations will be NPC only. The player characters will be members of the standard covenants or independents and as such the warriors of the Shattered Empire who show up at all it will d so as enemies. It is entirely possible to play a campaign in which every character is a member of the Marduk society, and that's fine. If you weren't OK with playing a game that skated closely to the edge of evil you wouldn't be playing a game about vampires and werewolves.

The Marduk Society
“We've slain the monsters of the world until they skulk in darkness like rats. Did you really think the darkness would protect you?”

In ages past the mighty sky wizard Marduk fought with the great Tiamat and slew her, saving humanity from her dark tyranny. As the savior of humanity, Marduk became a wise and just king who ruled over Sumeria thousands of years ago. He passed his magic down to disciples, and in classic fashion they perverted everything Marduk stood for and are now a terrifying edifice.

The Marduk Society retains the ancient magics of Marduk himself and continue to hunt supernaturals, nominally to save humanity from the oppression of supernatural influences. However, the leadership of the Marduk Society actually are supernatural creatures. After ruthlessly hunting down the spawn of Tiamat for generations they found that they were able to grant themselves immortality by eating the flesh of Leviathans, a practice which in reality transforms their elite membership into Leviathans. The sorceries left behind by Marduk are in truth no different from the sorceries of any Witch, and thus it is that the core membership of the Marduk Society are no different from other supernaturals save for the hat they wear and their intense desire to not get along.

Marduk's magic draws heavily upon human fear and suffering to use as power. However, while the historical Marduk apparently used this as justification to wander the lands righting wrongs and saving the endangered, the modern incarnation conspires to make mortal governments oppressive and ruin the lives of children. Ideally they claim that once their war is won they will make all human society utopic, but there is no particular reason to believe this is true.

The King of Three Shadows
“How nice of you to join us. You can share the same fate they are going to suffer.”

Long ago a powerful mortal king married a queen of the fairies. Abandoning his kingdom of men to wither and die, he took a new name and attained everlasting life with a grim bargain with Demons. A bargain that ultimately hurled his kingdom into the deepest pits of the Dark Reflection. The King of Three Shadows has become as the fairy are, and he lives forever without changing. He is now their dark king, and commands the mirror goblins – an army of fairies and demons which do his dark bidding. He is supported in his endeavors by three powerful Fairies – The Three Shadows of the King.

Fairies and Demons have a difficult time getting to the world of man at all, and must pass through a reflective surface to do so. More powerful fairies and demons need more specific mirrors through which to pass, and thus usually require that these doorways be custom built to draw them through. While a minor mirror goblin might be able to come through a pool of water or a pain of glass, powerful demons need a mirrored surface of exacting specifications – for example one might require a mirror at least 2 meters across made of bronze and polished with olive oil, lemon juice, and human blood.

The King of Three Shadows himself requires a titanic and exacting mirror to again trod upon the Earth, and it is thus that he is forced to send minions through the portals to acquire the strange materials and specific events they need to allow him to march across the threshold with his demonic army to conquer the human world.

The Shattered Empire
“They have learned nothing, and they have forgotten nothing.”

According to the Shattered Empire there was once a mighty nation which ruled over all of humanity with magician kings. Where this kingdom actually was, when it existed, who the people were who ran it, and what the cultural traits of it were like are all lost to time. The Shattered Empire calls itself a dozen names: Ur, Atlantis, and Golgatha to name just a few. And while their stories of their glorious days of world ownership are somewhat conflictory, and quite possibly exaggerations or just plain lies, they are nonetheless willing to kill people over their world conquest plans. And that makes them dangerous.

The very top of the Empire is called either the Rain King, the Masked Prophet, or the Once and Future Emperor. Whether these are three different people having a power struggle or one man with a variety of titles is not clear. Cells of the Shattered Empire hide in cave systems, deep in jungles, and on top of forbidding mountains. They collect powerful magics and threaten the world with them.

-Username17

[Nihlin]

That seems like most of the really important stuff. Beyond that, there were many other useful comments and discussions, but I'm not sure how much more to copy over.