Rehabbing WoD, but keeping it's spirit

[Username17]

That is a specific and intentional change from the Mage cosmology. And I feel that it's a required one. Nephandi are supposed to have been driven mad by descending into a "Caul" dimension full of endless torture that drives people to puppy-kicking, torture-addicted, penis-knife-wearing insanity. Given that we don't want the Demons player characters to be required to come the same faction as Maelmoth Skullfucker, Demons (or, at least, the playable Demons) need to come from a hell dimension that is bad but not but as bad as the place Nephandi come from. Which means that there has to the the hell that Demons come from, and then the hell that is even worse.

Why do we need a dimension for that? Can't the Hall of Flayed Skins just be a place in Hell that happens to be really bad? Really, the Nephandi don't need to have a special dimension at all, their chamber of torture and soul stealing could be on Earth somewhere. There aren't a lot of Nephandi, so they don't need a geographically large area to have their torture gardens in.

Putting it in regular old Hell as originally described is totally fine. Universe bloat is a bad thing and should be fought at every opportunity. It's a lot of conceptual space to add a universe, and if you don't have really good reasons to add one you shouldn't.

And I'm still not getting your demand that the worlds be ordered. Nephandi do not pass through the Underworld and then into Hell. They just jump into a portal that takes them straight to Hell. Then they take the express elevator back and go on a rampage. That's really the whole deal. You seem intent on subverting that process, but you're doing it in ways that make things more complicated, which is bad. Everything should be left as complicated as it or simplified. Nothing should be purposefully made more baroque.

-Username17

[Occluded Sun]

I think you need to actually work out what Nephandi want. As far as I can determine, they were just generic baddies with no real motivation but surrounded by gross-out imagery so you'd know you were supposed to stop them.

It's the modern post-horror-movie equivalent of a top hat and waxed mustache: it lets you know who the villain is supposed to be.

[Occluded Sun]

OS, use the site search function to learn what we mean by dogrape.

It means pretty much what you'd think it means from glancing at the structure of the word. Yep.

Although thank you for recommending that I do that - I now have documented evidence that some of you don't understand basic biological principles OR the fundamentals of moral reasoning.

[Username17]

I think you need to actually work out what Nephandi want. As far as I can determine, they were just generic baddies with no real motivation but surrounded by gross-out imagery so you'd know you were supposed to stop them.

It's the modern post-horror-movie equivalent of a top hat and waxed mustache: it lets you know who the villain is supposed to be.

The Nephandi are actually boring and minor villains. They send their souls to hell to take a level in badass so that they can try to move forward with their plan of destroying the universe. Which is just a dumb plan no matter how you look at it. It's just a wizard with a powerup that no player can ever have or want that makes him powerful enough to be a modest challenge for the whole coven, and with a generically evil mission that everyone agrees that they need killing regardless of other affiliations

Destroy the world? That's horrible! That's where I keep all my stuff!

But basically, there is zero reason to add entire universes to the setting to accommodate these assholes, because they aren't important or interesting enough to warrant that sort of thing. If you needed to cut the Nephandi entirely to get things to fit properly, that would be an entirely acceptable outcome. As it happens, you already kind of want there to be a Hell so that Demons and Infernalists can chillax there, so the Nephandi can be made to fit as originally written. Rewriting them to be bigger and greedier users of setting conceptual space is, however, completely insane.

-Username17

[Grek]

Yeah, now that you put it in those terms, I'm inclined to agree. Fuck the Oblivion layer, we can just have Hell be the bottom of the cosmic pecking order.

[Night Goat]

Evil wizards are cool, so I'd like it if the Nephandi were in the game; I just wish they had a more plausible motive than destroying everything for no reason. I realize that the Tradition mages are kind of evil if you think about it, but I don't think that was the intent.

[Occluded Sun]

The Nephandi are actually boring and minor villains. They send their souls to hell to take a level in badass so that they can try to move forward with their plan of destroying the universe. Which is just a dumb plan no matter how you look at it.

The smartest examination of the topic I've encountered stressed the point that all of the factions in Mage wanted to break people out of Unenlightenment (except possibly Marauders), all used very different methods, and all had fundamental self-inflicted problems reaching that goal. The Nephandi want to free everyone from the Endless Dream, not by transcending individuals, but by undermining the Dream itself. How making people's lives unpleasant contributes to this isn't clear. Oh no, dead puppies floating in pools of afterbirth! Guess I'd better abandon my self-imposed delusions then...

It might be more interesting to have a faction that tries to attack the consistency of the Tellurian and the 'sanity' of individuals in order to shatter the illusion humanity has wrapped itself in. Sort of a fusion between Marauders and Nephandi. Unlike the Technocracy or the Traditions, which are trying to impose their own preferred sorts of structure on humanity's dream, this faction would try to impose disorder in an attempt to cause everyone to realize the dream's nature and reject it.

[Chamomile]

This raises a question. When White Wolf accidentally makes their heroes the villains, should we rewrite them so that they are actually heroes or just be upfront about the fact that they are in fact the villains?

[Occluded Sun]

Ideally you'd want everyone's place on the hero-villain spectrum to be determined by the individuals playing the game. Subjectivity is a major theme, after all.

Evaluation shouldn't be built into the game's premises.

[Prak]

I think you need to actually work out what Nephandi want. As far as I can determine, they were just generic baddies with no real motivation but surrounded by gross-out imagery so you'd know you were supposed to stop them.

It's the modern post-horror-movie equivalent of a top hat and waxed mustache: it lets you know who the villain is supposed to be.

The Nephandi are actually boring and minor villains. They send their souls to hell to take a level in badass so that they can try to move forward with their plan of destroying the universe. Which is just a dumb plan no matter how you look at it. It's just a wizard with a powerup that no player can ever have or want that makes him powerful enough to be a modest challenge for the whole coven, and with a generically evil mission that everyone agrees that they need killing regardless of other affiliations

Destroy the world? That's horrible! That's where I keep all my stuff!

But basically, there is zero reason to add entire universes to the setting to accommodate these assholes, because they aren't important or interesting enough to warrant that sort of thing. If you needed to cut the Nephandi entirely to get things to fit properly, that would be an entirely acceptable outcome. As it happens, you already kind of want there to be a Hell so that Demons and Infernalists can chillax there, so the Nephandi can be made to fit as originally written. Rewriting them to be bigger and greedier users of setting conceptual space is, however, completely insane.

-Username17

I think the Nephandi can just be "The Infernalists other Infernalists say are fucking crazy," because they willingly descend into Hell to have their spirits tempered in the forges therein, whereas other Infernalists just make pacts with demons and read forbidden tomes and shit. No need for an overarching Nephandi plot, they can just be mages who said "be tortured in Hell for an perceived eternity, get phenomenal cosmic power? Sure, that'll help with my (personal scheme)." And some of them come back with succubus concubines and a coke habit and actually say "fuck it, Imma just get an Arcadian tower," and notably are people the PCs can go to when they need that level of power for a plot point, and if a player wants the power up.... I guess there can be a system, but there's the whole "fucks off to Hell for a character-perceived thousand years" problem.

The smartest examination of the topic I've encountered stressed the point that all of the factions in Mage wanted to break people out of Unenlightenment (except possibly Marauders), all used very different methods, and all had fundamental self-inflicted problems reaching that goal. The Nephandi want to free everyone from the Endless Dream, not by transcending individuals, but by undermining the Dream itself. How making people's lives unpleasant contributes to this isn't clear. Oh no, dead puppies floating in pools of afterbirth! Guess I'd better abandon my self-imposed delusions then...

It might be more interesting to have a faction that tries to attack the consistency of the Tellurian and the 'sanity' of individuals in order to shatter the illusion humanity has wrapped itself in. Sort of a fusion between Marauders and Nephandi. Unlike the Technocracy or the Traditions, which are trying to impose their own preferred sorts of structure on humanity's dream, this faction would try to impose disorder in an attempt to cause everyone to realize the dream's nature and reject it.

Actually, there are two interesting thoughts there- The "default" Nephandi plot could be wanting to drag sleepers to Hell to be reforged as they were, reasoning that if it empowers a mage it should at least awaken a sleeper. I still think that Nephandi don't need a unified plot they all pursue, but I do like the idea that there is more than one who are villains because they want to torture people in Hell, but they do it because they want to help them, really!

The other idea is the one you posit about undermining the dream. That makes Nephandi a bit like Q/Discord, but I don't think that's a bad thing.

RE: Accidental villains

I would probably go more relative with the playable groups. The canon antagonists will be people like "altruistic" Nephandi who want things that are objectively horrific, whereas the traditions will be mages who want to awaken sleepers with more innocuous means, and the Technocracy will probably be relegated to a "Behind the Curtain" role who simply wish to maintain reality as it is. The traditions won't, necessarily, want to undo the modern world, simply have a general goal of awakening sleepers with their particular convention.

The vampires will, of course, have a general goal of accumulating temporal power (because by god it makes their balls feel big) and large herds of blood-cattle (which is kind of self-defeating for reasons I'll expound upon when I talk about vampire origins). Then individual vampires have their own schemes, but they probably pretty much boil down to "Take over (reasonable geographic swath that is the next step up from whatever they control now)."

[Username17]

The Nephandi are actually boring and minor villains. They send their souls to hell to take a level in badass so that they can try to move forward with their plan of destroying the universe. Which is just a dumb plan no matter how you look at it.

The smartest examination of the topic I've encountered stressed the point that all of the factions in Mage wanted to break people out of Unenlightenment (except possibly Marauders), all used very different methods, and all had fundamental self-inflicted problems reaching that goal. The Nephandi want to free everyone from the Endless Dream, not by transcending individuals, but by undermining the Dream itself. How making people's lives unpleasant contributes to this isn't clear. Oh no, dead puppies floating in pools of afterbirth! Guess I'd better abandon my self-imposed delusions then...

It might be more interesting to have a faction that tries to attack the consistency of the Tellurian and the 'sanity' of individuals in order to shatter the illusion humanity has wrapped itself in. Sort of a fusion between Marauders and Nephandi. Unlike the Technocracy or the Traditions, which are trying to impose their own preferred sorts of structure on humanity's dream, this faction would try to impose disorder in an attempt to cause everyone to realize the dream's nature and reject it.

Basically what this comes down to is that Mage is a greedy and horrible setting. The fundamental conflict is basically like the Underpants Gnomes, save that it's five steps and both Step 2 and Step 4 are "?"

Neither you nor I has the first fucking clue what you could do or not do that would be helpful for waking people up out of reality as we experience it. That's a nonsensical event and there is nothing that you could obviously do or not do in reality (that is to say: the sum total of all objects, people, and actions that we will ever or could ever interact with or perceive in any way) that would help or hinder that in any way. And then on top of that shit sandwich, after everyone wakes up the rules of reality stop applying and then... what? I don't know. You don't know either. By definition the rules of "reality" including cause and effect are out the window at that point. But the thing after that is supposed to be "profit."

So basically someone having step 1 be "steal underpants" is as good a first step as any, since by definition anything you could do or not do to any person, place, thing, or idea is "in reality" and therefore not meaningfully in the direction you're supposed to trying to take things. Mage is a game design failure state. You literally can't even imagine what an action moving towards your goal might look like, nor can you imagine what the goal itself might be like. That's some seriously zen shit right there.

There are few enough Traditions and they are successfully grouped into three groups of three such that you can actually remember what they are and do. I mean, there's the three spheres that cover everything in the universe that exists, has ever existed, or ever could exist. Then there's the three spheres that collectively account for all dimensional quantities and qualities the universe appears to have. And then the three entire spheres that deal entirely with things that don't actually exist at all and are somewhat hard to describe. So those are totally fucked, and way overpowered, and laughingly piss in the Cheerios of all the other factions (including factions that haven't been written yet) by being incredibly greedy and flippant with the setting, but you can in fact remember what they are. So there's that.

Basically Mage has the animism problem that we were talking about for Werewolf. You can't have a rational discussion about or take informed actions with respect to the Spirit World, because it's so far outside the bounds of your conceptual space that even beginning to have a handle on what is and is not in the setting is something that is laughable to even attempt. And the thing is... that's one sphere in Mage (Spirit) and there are eight more, many of whom are just as bad (especially Prime, but also Mind and Entropy).

You have to chop Mage down to size if you want to have an intelligible conversation about anything. Even if you just want to have an intelligible discussion about Mage. And if you want the actions of Vampires and Demons to mean shit for shit, you have to chop Mage down to size even more. Even the relatively coherent spheres like Matter are simply obviously way too fucking powerful to have the rest of the setting be in any way recognizable as anything. And the incoherent spheres like Prime are all that and a bag of chips.

Basically, Mage from the viewpoint of Mage is just unsalvageable. You pretty much have to pick the simplified Mages from the back of Vampire or Changeling who just cast regular spells. You can go ahead and port in some of the oMage faction names, but the entire Ascension War is just too big and weird for anyone to ever even begin to use.

-Username17

[Username17]

I think the Nephandi can just be "The Infernalists other Infernalists say are fucking crazy," because they willingly descend into Hell to have their spirits tempered in the forges therein, whereas other Infernalists just make pacts with demons and read forbidden tomes and shit. No need for an overarching Nephandi plot, they can just be mages who said "be tortured in Hell for an perceived eternity, get phenomenal cosmic power? Sure, that'll help with my (personal scheme)." And some of them come back with succubus concubines and a coke habit and actually say "fuck it, Imma just get an Arcadian tower," and notably are people the PCs can go to when they need that level of power for a plot point, and if a player wants the power up.... I guess there can be a system, but there's the whole "fucks off to Hell for a character-perceived thousand years" problem.

Wow. That is actually the worst idea on this thread, and this thread had people suggesting some amount of non-zero dog rape compromise at one point. Congratulations, I guess.

Look: the Nephandi are not high art. They are not a great part of the World of Darkness. They are not a big part of the World of Darkness or an important part of the World of Darkness, and losing them entirely would be a pretty small loss. They exist to fill a small niche. That niche is that they are bad guys whose presence and actions can convince rivals to team up against them, while being powerful enough to require said rivals to work together to take them down. That's it. That's all they are for. They are just there so that you can do Spider Man / Green Goblin team up issues and then go back to your regular format.

If you make them "not all bad" then they don't serve even that purpose. There's really no reason to have them at all. If the mere mention of a Nephandus isn't enough to make a Setite and a Silent Strider declare a temporary truce and become brothers in arms for one story arc, the Nephandi bring nothing to the table at all. There are no Nephandi politics or philosophies that anyone gives a shit about. People don't have the Nephandus symbol on jackets or charm bracelets. They are just a villain that can be introduced with little setup that is tough enough to challenge a group of character and high enough priority that nominal enemies can and will team up to fight them.

But you see, your proposal is actually way more fucked than that. Like, way more fucked than that. Players aren't being tortured for a subjective eternity, the characters are. But all the soul flaying happens off camera, the player isn't punished at all. The only reason players don't sign up for the very large powerup of becoming a Nephandus is that the character becomes an out of control Chuwero and the player loses control of them. If you let them go on being bros, fucking everyone would do it.

So not only does this proposal make them narratively even more pointless than they already were, it takes something that served a useful game mechanical function and turns it into a game breaking cheat code.

Seriously man: worst idea of the whole thread. You should get like a medal or a trophy or something for that.

-Username17

[TheFlatline]

We had a player in my group who when the game would start would literally always ask Mister Cavern what he could get if he sold his character's soul in game. I mean, it didn't matter to him as a player if he could get a power up.

In D&D this had a slight consequence of not being able to be ressurected. In something like Mage it doesn't mean shit especially.

[fectin]

Remember, everyone needs a narrative about how they're the hero. Obviously, not everyone actually is the hero, but everyone does need an elevator pitch for how their city on the hill is totally the best city.

Even Hitler thought he was saving an entire nation, and possibly civilization.

[TheFlatline]

Now that we've godwin'd the thread I might point out for some cold ass shit to check out the movie Conspiracy. I think it's an HBO drama about the Nazis coming up with the Final Solution.

They really did believe they were doing something good for the planet at certain levels I think. It's kind of astounding to watch.

[Prak]

But you see, your proposal is actually way more fucked than that. Like, way more fucked than that. Players aren't being tortured for a subjective eternity, the characters are. But all the soul flaying happens off camera, the player isn't punished at all. The only reason players don't sign up for the very large powerup of becoming a Nephandus is that the character becomes an out of control Chuwero and the player loses control of them. If you let them go on being bros, fucking everyone would do it.

Yes, just like everyone who plays D&D starts out by saying "Ok, we're all elves, we're going to spend the next four hundred years as merchants. Once that four hundred years is up, we should have roughly $TEXAS gold, so here's our starting uber-equipment," or "So we're all artificers, we're going to spend the next five years buying scrolls, breaking them down for XP, and using that xp to make wondrous items, and then craft uber equipment for ourselves."

[Username17]

But you see, your proposal is actually way more fucked than that. Like, way more fucked than that. Players aren't being tortured for a subjective eternity, the characters are. But all the soul flaying happens off camera, the player isn't punished at all. The only reason players don't sign up for the very large powerup of becoming a Nephandus is that the character becomes an out of control Chuwero and the player loses control of them. If you let them go on being bros, fucking everyone would do it.

Yes, just like everyone who plays D&D starts out by saying "Ok, we're all elves, we're going to spend the next four hundred years as merchants. Once that four hundred years is up, we should have roughly $TEXAS gold, so here's our starting uber-equipment," or "So we're all artificers, we're going to spend the next five years buying scrolls, breaking them down for XP, and using that xp to make wondrous items, and then craft uber equipment for ourselves."

What the fuck is wrong with you? Claiming that only some people would do it makes it infinitely worse.

-Username17

[Prak]

Who the fuck are these deranged mutants you know who actually do that shit? I have never once met or encountered online a person who do that or even fucking attempt to do that.

[name_here]

Then why the hell does it need to be a player option?

[Username17]

Who the fuck are these deranged mutants you know who actually do that shit? I have never once met or encountered online a person who do that or even fucking attempt to do that.

You're an idiot, so I'm going to have to go through this really fucking slowly. Look, I know it may be hard for you to imagine, but actually taking 400 years off to farm for gold has an actual cost in-game. It means you can't adventure with the other characters and all the plot hooks go cold. On the other hand, going on a one-night or even one-month training sequence doesn't have that cost. You can in fact just go on a short training sequence while the other player character do their little bits of downtime shit and then go back to the regularly scheduled adventuring. So when you conflate something which subjectively feels like a long time to the character, but is in reality a short training montage with something that objectively uses up a lot of game time, you're being a dishonest twatshitter and should stop pooping into vaginas.

The only actual point you have is that if you provide a mechanical gain for a piece of mandatory character flavor, a non-zero number of players still won't take it. But if you weren't such a retard, you would notice immediately that this line of argument makes your idea even more bad. You're offering a big pile of character power for any player who is willing to accept a bit of "my character was tortured in hell" flavor. Which really means that any player who isn't willing to write that into their character's backstory simply starts with less points.

I know you're a highschool satanist who thinks that characters trekking into hell to take a level in badass is "totally fucking metal" or something equally immature, but if you stopped to think about the bullshit you are advocating for even thirty seconds instead of continuing to run your mouth diarrhea, even you would probably eventually figure out that giving people different amounts of character power based on how closely their character concepts match your character concept is so egotistical and stupid that everyone else in the entire universe can see that you're a prat.

-Username17

[Prak]

Probably doesn't need to be. I will reiterate the tail end of the quoted text:

if a player wants the power up.... I guess there can be a system, but there's the whole "fucks off to Hell for a character-perceived thousand years" problem.

It's not like I didn't recognize that making it a player option would be deeply problematic, I'm more of the opinion that if there's something the NPCs can do, then players should have the rules for doing it available to them. There could also just be a thing about how being reforged in the infernal fires of Nephandus completely corrupts the subject remaking them into a powerful infernalist, yes, but one who believes in literal trial by hellfire and that such should be carried to every man, woman and child and that all lesser supernaturals should be purged from reality.

[Prak]

Look, yes, I'm a fucking Satanist who thinks that the mythical places and figures assigned to represent natural urges and concepts that religious authorities wanted to discourage get a bad fucking rap. I'm sorry I can't be some pure "Free Will is an Illusion, and psychodrama is a waste of time" atheist like you.

So, yeah, I recognized that there would be players who would read "tortured in hell, became a badass" in an antagonist description and want that for their character. Hell, I'd even like to play characters like that. I'm sure if you played God of War* that the bit where Kratos crawls out of Hades would make your balls feel vicariously huge too. There's just something about the cultural semiotics of "this is the final punishment for bad people" that makes going there and coming back shorthand for badass--and not just to people who like demons.

Fuck, let's go over the fact that I'm actually not dipping my satanic dick in this project by making Hell a place of punishment and torment. How the fuck does that eve- oh, right, you don't actually give a shit about what Satanism is, you just care that you can use it in an immature insult.

ANYFUCKINGWAYS

1. It's my fucking project. You remade WoD and made your own game. I felt that a game could be made truer to the original to appeal to a player base which AS does not. I know you have this thing about taking up my projects and fucking making them your projects, and it's often helpful because you actually have like ten fucking years of folk lore/mythology trivia and game design experience on me, but feel free to not fucking do that if you're just going to fucking insult me as I work through concepts.

2. I'M WORKING THROUGH CONCEPTS. YES I COME UP WITH SOME STUPID SHIT ON MY FIRST RUN. THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN US, I'm sure, IS THAT I FUCKING GO THROUGH THE STUPID SHIT "PUBLICLY" RATHER THAN ON MY NOTEPAD BEFORE POSTING.

Get off your fucking high horse. I'm 27 and still learning this design shit. I somehow doubt you sprung from your mother's twat with a masterful knowledge of how to fucking make a game.

[Night Goat]

[Chamomile]

Well, damn. This thread seemed like it was going somewhere, but I don't really see it recovering from this derailment.

[hyzmarca]

Dealing with the Nephandi is simple enough. Get rid of the Caul. Nephandi awaken with inverted Avatars, no one knows why. You can join the Nephandi if you agree with their philosophy (that not existing is better than existing) but you can't become one.