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Post by Stu Venable on Sept 17, 2015 12:59:35 GMT -8
There's one. If you scroll up, you'll find it.
I'm working on an ad for Sin Silly.
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Post by Stu Venable on Sept 18, 2015 11:27:16 GMT -8
Regarding Humanity and Feeding
These questions are aimed at GMs mostly, but I'd like player input as well (at least regarding preference)
How often do you apply/enforce the humanity rules? And how often do you hand-wave feeding?
How do vampires without something like Dominate deal with feeding without killing? Or is the assumption that you always kill? It seems rather dangerous for a vampire to accost someone and leave them living (assuming they can't Dominate a false memory or something).
I hand-waved feeding in the second session, as I couldn't figure this out.
I've started a list of people on One-Note, called "Victims," where I'm listing the name and a little background around everyone they kill.
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sbloyd
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Post by sbloyd on Sept 18, 2015 13:26:55 GMT -8
I dislike handwaving feeding without good reason. If a character has an established Herd you can shuffle some feeding into the background - but I would only do that if some actual interaction with the herd vis a vis feeding had been established already, even if it was bluebooked or the like.
Victims for vampires without Dominate. ... you have some options. Club them senseless and feed, they will likely assume they were mugged. Feed during sex... but you will probably have to burn blood to get there by activating human life functions like an erection; a bite during the throes of orgasm probably will not make someone think 'vampire' but rather 'hickey'. There's also Sandmen, who feed from sleeping victims. Break into a house like Skully did, and have a snack. You can also feed from animals; there's a big Ole cattle ranch north of LA, isn't there?
As far as killing... yeah, killing would be bad. A mortal will recover from one blood point in a day. With three Herd mortals, you could take two from one member in rotation and come out one ahead every day.
But in my opinion you must absolutely use the hierarchy of sins for Humanity. It is a key feature of the game. More later.
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sbloyd
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Post by sbloyd on Sept 18, 2015 13:47:41 GMT -8
To elaborate on that last bit: one of the touchstones of the game is "A beast I am lest a beast I become." (In Camarilla games, anyway.) Vampires aren't nice people, even though they pretend to be... but you have to limit yourself to the little evils lest you become a monster.
One recent example comes from Tim's game: one of our players is a recent Embrace who has been in "woo hoo! i'm a sexy creature of the night with superpowers!" (he's Toreador) mode, but recently seeing another character break down under the stress of conflicted feelings from a partial blood bond combined with building hunger from repairing damage to her body from fire has made him consider that maybe being a vampire isn't all whiz-bang cool.
I dunno what Stork's character's humanity is, but he acts pretty casual about killing prey. You should come down on that shit hard. A vampire who leaves corpses laying around is a serious liability to the Masquerade - as you have been trying to illustrate with ... what was his name? Robert? Stork's character's "brother" and his Sire.
If I were you I'd make a little poster to hang behind you with the Hierarchy of Sins on it to remind them.
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sbloyd
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Post by sbloyd on Sept 18, 2015 13:49:32 GMT -8
If you have the time, you could make little obituaries (or outsource them here) and pin them to the wall behind you, for each Victim.
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sbloyd
Supporter
WHAT! A human in a Precursor service vehicle?!
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Post by sbloyd on Sept 24, 2015 8:11:32 GMT -8
Okay, partway thru Ep 3 now. Am I the only one that thinks Sebastian might be the one trying to topple his brother?
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kgerm
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Post by kgerm on Sept 26, 2015 9:18:49 GMT -8
Aside from all that has been said already, I have one more mechanic that may or may not help you.
When I make characters I also add them into a reputation chart. If the character does something good or bad I note it in that chart and decide how likely the character is to help. Most characters start out as indifferent (0) but some can have different attitudes. Based on that I decide how likely they will play the characters or do bad things to them. Hope it helps.
@ sbloyd: Sebastian toppling his brother? That would be awesome. So far I think it's the keeper of the Elysium.
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sbloyd
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Post by sbloyd on Sept 27, 2015 6:05:25 GMT -8
I think the Keeper might be too pat.
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Post by weaselcreature on Sept 28, 2015 10:27:39 GMT -8
Okay, partway thru Ep 3 now. Am I the only one that thinks Sebastian might be the one trying to topple his brother? Nope. He's being awfully helpful. It could be natural, but then you add the temptation of the Book of Death in, and... As far as feeding and humanity and such; if you're going to make changes, make sure the players are fully aware (I know you mentioned it at the start of Ep 3). Example: with Albert being nonchalant about killing in the beginning, that becomes par-for-the-course behavior for the character and player; if you make a change and "come down on that shit hard" out of the blue, then both player and character will be stammering "bu-bu-but...that's how it's always been with no issue."
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airdor
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Post by airdor on Sept 28, 2015 15:27:49 GMT -8
Hello, Just gotta say I love your Actual Plays Stu, and I am really enjoying the Mote of Sin so far. With that said the Lord Anthony problem that was brought up at the end of episode 3 , couldn't you just have Lord Anthony kinda turn on the players a little. What I mean is that he asked them to find Stork's Sire and all they ended up doing was not finding her, coming back with information he already knew or at least suspected, ran off to complete some business deal in the middle of it all, and also got one of there own framed for the killings in the first place! That doesn't seem like a job well done infact Anthony might be thinking about just cutting his loses here and turning Stork over to Daniel just to be done with it. On a second note, I love the fact that the players didn't realize that the other Vampire at the bar was kinda threating them. She knew full well that they would run to Anthony and she wants him to know its her behind this- which is pretty badass! First time posting here and once again Great work Stu!
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Post by RudeAlert on Oct 12, 2015 19:10:50 GMT -8
Heya Stuche, I realize this response is a bit late coming but hopefully it might still be of some value.
So regarding making NPCs, I had an idea a little while back that I never had the chance to try but I figured I'd share it anyways. Assuming this is not a crucial NPC, and more of an on-the-fly kind of deal, I figured it might work to simply give an NPC 3 stats: Physical, Social, and Mental. Then give each of these states twice the value that you would give their most representative Attribute rating in that group. (Ex: If an NPC is essentially average in Physical tasks (Average Attribute rating is 2), then the NPC would have a Physical Stat of 4.) This stat then functions as that NPC's entire dicepool for relevant tasks. I realize that this is really oversimplified and might be over/under-powered in some situations, but I figured that for a more minor NPC built up at the last minute, it might be enough.
Regarding Humanity; how much you choose to use it is really a matter of taste. Some groups barely use it and just play their characters as they want and deal only with the social ramifications of their actions. Some groups will use the full rules of Humanity every single time they could show up. The former option leads to a much more free-style, less angsty, and less moralistic game. The latter leads to something that could almost approximate an L5R-like level of dedication to morality (instead of Honor), as the players/characters have to debate over a whole lot of decisions to determine whether they can get away with the shit they need to do as vampires, without being consumed by their Beast. Where you fall on the spectrum of Humanity use really depends on where you want the focus of your game to be. If you don't want morality to play a role in every decision the players/characters make, then a more fast-and-loose approach to Humanity is what you want. On the other hand, if you really want to tighten the moral vise on your players/characters, then you want to use Humanity as much as possible. I would say though, that being very strict with the Humanity rules can lead to a bit of a meta-gamey situation. Unlike in L5R where the code of Bushido is an in-game concept that the characters are well aware of, Humanity is more of a game-level concept that is far more abstract in-game, essentially as morality is in the real world. This can lead to a lot of debating on the players' parts rather than their characters.
Regarding vampires' physical appearance over time. I'm not sure what V20's stance is on this, but in the last version of Vampire the Masquerade, a vampire's physical form is permanently set after the Embrace. Every day during the daysleep, a vampire's form resets to his appearance at the moment of the Embrace. Exceptions: -(In V20) The Gangrel can acquire animalistic features through Frenzies, which heal over time at the same rate as Aggravated damage. (It used to be permanent, which I thought really sucked.) -Aggravated damage leaves permanent scars that never fully heal. (Not 100% sure on that one, but pretty sure.) -The Discipline of Vicissitude can change a vampire's form permanently. There may be others I can't remember but basically, vampires don't change after the Embrace. You can cut your hair or shave every evening when you wake up, but growing hair of any kind is right out.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 28, 2015 14:12:49 GMT -8
Okay, partway thru Ep 3 now. Am I the only one that thinks Sebastian might be the one trying to topple his brother? Only just catching up on the APs (still got 4 to listen to) and I have to say I was wondering exactly the same thing, Sebastian jumps out to me more as the perpatrator than anybody else. Vampires are meant to be schemers, the Keeper just seems to be too obvious (though I also wouldn't be surprised if she's just stirring the pot to try and get some infighting going).
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Post by Forresst on Oct 29, 2015 0:05:52 GMT -8
Oh hey I was gonna ask, Stu did you ever get your Sin Silly ad made? Do you want one? I like making things!
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Post by Stu Venable on Nov 7, 2015 10:04:08 GMT -8
That would be awesome.
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Post by Forresst on Nov 7, 2015 23:37:43 GMT -8
Ok! Do you want one of those little regular page-size posters like for concerts? Or something bigger or smaller?
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