Re: Dies Irae

[Roz]

@catzilla said in Re: Dies Irae:

@Wyrmsign said in Re: Dies Irae:

@Pavel
I’m old! Gotta keep up with the kids lingo! In simplest terms, “You should play with me and not /them/ because I’m better at everything.”

Also “I’m not like other girls.”

yeah it’s an intensely sexist meme lol. i’m gonna side-eye anyone using it sincerely

[somasatori]

@Aria said in Re: Dies Irae:

I like the Sabbat. I think there’s a lot more depth to the lore there than is commonly recognized or used when they’re just being run as antagonists to the primary chronicle. That said, the Sabbat is dark and intentionally so.

I really like the Sabbat, but they’re often misrepresented by people as being one-track villains without much depth. That’s a deep misunderstanding of the Sabbat, which has probably as much of a political apparatus as the Camarilla, only focused on different goals. Unfortunately I suppose if given enough room it would have been as you said with regards to the edge lords. I didn’t see too much of that in the short time I was around while people were logging in, but it was something that I was particularly wary about once Tellurium left. Initially we were talking about setting up a kind of “missions” system, where individual packs and Sabbat members would be given tasks and goals to focus on to consolidate power in San Diego. This sort of thing requires people who are very invested in the Sabbat, and also more than one storyteller who’s largely beleaguered in the amount of work that needed to be done to get the sphere up and running.

The goal with the antag groups was to make them similar to Wyrm. In Wyrm, everyone had to be a member of Pentex. You couldn’t just be an unaffiliated BSD pack that was rampaging through the game, you had to answer to your managers and supervisors in some way. This wouldn’t eradicate the possibility of those shitty edgelords, but it would definitely mean that there’s a structure in place to step in if your character went a bit too far afield.

The fact that the game was open to pretty much every single splat and subsplat was also a mistake, in my opinion. Was it exciting to get to try something I’d never played before? Sure. But unless you’re running an absolutely massive game, all that’s going to do is spread your playerbase too thin to provide consistent RP and require more staff than you’re likely going to be able to find to do the job actively and competently.

Yeah, absolutely agree here. If it were up to me, we would have probably just shifted over to being Changing Breeds/Shifter only. As labsunlimited put it, “the San Diego Zoo MUSH.” A lot of the complaints I’ve seen about single or even two-sphere games is that there aren’t enough options and generally isn’t enough conflict, but I beg to differ. You could make a Vampire game where your “spheres” are the different Covenants (in Vampire the Requiem), or a Shifter game where you have staff who sponsor one or two packs and run stories for them. Tbh it might even be more fulfilling, even if it kind of turns the game into a bunch of little tabletop sessions running in the same universe (and isn’t that kind of what it is anyway?)

Pick a handful of things you want to do very well, focus there, and if players complain that they don’t get to play their totally amazing Ailil concept on your Mage game? Remember that “because we don’t think it’s a good fit for our theme” is a valid answer for why something’s not included. Frankly, so is “because we don’t want to”, so long as your vision is clearly laid out and consistently applied to everyone.

I surmise that a lot of this focus was on wanting to be a challenger to Liberation. I definitely liked the idea of having Mages in San Diego, but we didn’t really need it. A lot of the initial push was around Garou and Sabbat storylines, so we could have just gone with that instead of bringing in Mages and Changelings which (IMO) tend to overcomplicate things very quickly.

[Pavel]

@Aria said in Re: Dies Irae:

The fact that the game was open to pretty much every single splat and subsplat was also a mistake, in my opinion.

Agreed.

And, in my humble yet obnoxiously shrill opinion, if you want to have no PvP (which is a perfectly valid desire) then you can’t also have antagonist splats UNLESS you have an even bigger big bad that can result in a temporary ceasefire… not sure how that’d work with Pentex and Garou, though.

[MisterBoring]

Thinking back on it, I’ve run into a lot of people who want to play Sabbat and Wyrm simply because they assume they’ll be allowed to get away with all manner of IC nonsense and can just go “I’m the villain”. In my experience, it’s been worse for Sabbat than Wyrm, but I’ve seen them in both. They do all kinds of random vile things to other PCs or NPC humans, and assume somehow that there aren’t repercussions for that. There are repercussions, they’re just different from playing Gaians or the Camarilla / Anarchs.

What’s even crazier is the number of Sabbat players that throw a tantrum when they violate their non-Humanity Morality path and the staff ask them for a degeneration check.If I had a dollar for every person in my history of playing WoD with a character on Path of Bones / Death and the Soul that assumes the path wants you to just kill people at random, I could pay off my credit card.

[MisterBoring]

@Pavel said in Re: Dies Irae:

not sure how that’d work with Pentex and Garou, though.

In the right city, you could make the Weaver the big bad.

[somasatori]

@MisterBoring said in Re: Dies Irae:

@Pavel said in Re: Dies Irae:

not sure how that’d work with Pentex and Garou, though.

In the right city, you could make the Weaver the big bad.

This was the intention.

So, here’s the big metaplot for Dies Irae since I’m reasonably sure it’s not going to continue:

In 2013, a Glass Walker pack who ran a computing company worked with a group of kinfolk researchers and grad students at SDSU (while being unwittingly monitored by the Technocracy) were trying to find a way to create a defense system against the Wyrm that would swarm an area with spirits. The belief was that by using the Digital Web, they could make this a ubiquitous thing – everyone’s got a cellphone, or at least most people do, so you could theoretically always have access to the Internet and, by association, the Digital Web. They intended to create spirit-driven programs that would allow basically anyone to single-use call for help (basically a computerized talen) when assaulted by the Wyrm. In the lore of Dies Irae, the old Caern that the Garou had was infiltrated by the Wyrm, and so there was a serious concern that this might happen again.

This all kind of worked, but it worked a little too well. What they ended up doing was boosting their signal past the Penumbra (if you’re not familiar with oWoD, that’s the spiritual reflection of Earth) into the Deep Umbra (which can be thought of as being like deep space, and is also referred to as Horizon). They did end up attracting something as a result of this, but it was a formless thing initially that lived in the unformed outer wilds of creation, kind of a mix between chaotic thought form and arcadian being. The signal that it intercepted crystallized its nature, turning it into a bastardization of what one might think of Weaver creatures as being. In effect, it became effectively a Lovecraftian AI that I named Y’golonac.

So, Y’golonac couldn’t immediately travel to the material world and had to travel in a way that was built on the same principles of stasis and structure that the Weaver instilled in the world. It could move very quickly, but it still had to abide by relativity. This meant that it would arrive in San Diego in about 4 years (the signal reached around the Alpha Centauri/Proxima Centauri area). Y’golonac was one of the reasons why the Avatar Storm didn’t happen for very long, because it had a stabilizing effect on the Umbra as it traveled towards Earth (which saved the Technocracy research station that was out in Alpha Centauri). By the time that Y’golonac had heard the signal unleashed by the SDSU research group, had become formed into what it was, it was about a year before the start of events on Dies Irae. This meant that it had roughly 3 years to arrive in San Diego, which is when the players would have to reckon with its introduction (some of you old Reach players might be detecting a theme here).

Meanwhile back on Earth, forces of the Weaver went fucking nuts. They ended up crystallizing a Caern run by the Garou, which the Glass Walkers were blamed for by the Shadow Lords and other tribes, and the overall level of Banality in San Diego peaked. If I had had more time, I would have tried to write up more descriptions of what sort of Weaver stuff you’d encounter. Nevertheless, the Weaver was intended to be the primary threat, though there wasn’t much intention around Pentex and the Garou/Beast Courts working together to fight it. The intention was that it would keep the other off each others’ backs.

As time would go on, players would be able to engage with the larger metaplot and learn more about Y’golonac. As Y’golonac got nearer, certain things were going to happen. I used a longer-term concept of a clock like from Powered by the Apocalypse here, where I had a list of possible actions that the players could take to investigate, strengthen, or weaken Y’golonac over time. If let completely unchecked, or if allowed to be strengthened by some of the groups that were either misled or not (looking at you, Heralds of Basilisk), it had the potential to just straight up end everything, which would look like freezing everything in a moment in time. The moment that Y’golonac arrives in the material world would become the moment. No time would ever pass again, and it would be as if no time had ever come before.

So, that was kind of the big bad. Unfortunately most of my time was taken up by trying to do bug fixes and work on tweaking things, so my work on the metaplot really fell behind. There was a whole historical thing too that relied on cyclical situations. Players would find out that some of these same things had happened before, and that other beings had taken notice of Earth before. There were also some unpopular things that I couldn’t get others to agree with, namely that Gaia (the spirit) had gone into a kind of sustained hibernation akin to death and was not accessible, so playing the forces of the Triat off one another would have been a way to provide a kind of jolt to the system and get Gaia back up and going again. But, again, time constraints as they were I couldn’t come up with a very good proposal that people would agree with on that.

[dvoraen]

@Roz said in Re: Dies Irae:

@catzilla said in Re: Dies Irae:

@Wyrmsign said in Re: Dies Irae:

@Pavel
I’m old! Gotta keep up with the kids lingo! In simplest terms, “You should play with me and not /them/ because I’m better at everything.”

Also “I’m not like other girls.”

yeah it’s an intensely sexist meme lol. i’m gonna side-eye anyone using it sincerely

Don’t forget the favorite response when called out:

“But I’m also one, so it’s okay if I use it.”

[Jennkryst]

@Aria said in Re: Dies Irae:

The fact that the game was open to pretty much every single splat and subsplat

Well, not every splat…

… I got Mummy approved as part of the ‘when Setites show up’ plot arc, never mind if that actually happened or not, Im counting it. No, I’m talking about Sneks and Hellcats (I guess this is because Nyx had to have the most bomb pussy be the prettiest on the game, so any Wyrm-Bastet were right-out) and Thallain.

@Aria said in Re: Dies Irae:

This is the World of DARKNESS, not the World of DISNEY!

To be fair, WoD is supposed to be reality but worse. Every game is in an alt history where fascism isnt on the rise (very WoD theme already) and COVID didnt happen (a plague that is resistant to magical-healing, you say?). I get it. Games should be a break from reality. So dont set them on present day Earth if you want to avoid present day Earth stuff.

@Aria said in Re: Dies Irae:

all the crossover that White Wolf has written into the books can’t always make it work well together.

Yeah, you gotta yeet a lot of what was written and replace it with your own ‘here is why the spheres are forced to work together’ metaplot arc thing.

[MisterBoring]

@Jennkryst said in Re: Dies Irae:

Yeah, you gotta yeet a lot of what was written and replace it with your own ‘here is why the spheres are forced to work together’ metaplot arc thing.

I’m totally okay with this in concept, but I’ve seen it done so disappointingly bad so much that I’m prone to calling games that fail to pull it off “Goth Powered Justice League”.

[somasatori]

@MisterBoring said in Re: Dies Irae:

“Goth Powered Justice League”.

In this house we say “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen”

[Jennkryst]

@MisterBoring Yeah, the gist of the random outline I had from years ago was 'Adamantine Arrows are friends with the Sworn of the Axe (ordo) and other militant arms of the other covenants, because they go fight… Mysterium, Order of the Dying Light, and other book nerds work on research. Silver Ladder with most of the Invictus and Sworn of the Mysteries for socialites. Werewolves sub in as needed (Bone Shadows when fighting or studying ghosts, Iron Masters if inside cities, etc). Ditto other spheres tapping in where it makes sense.

… and that’s for CoD, who dont have that animosity baked into the setting. OWoD does, so you need like… the Prince of a City needs to be kinfolk and have a proven record of working with the Gaian elders. Let them have their spies in his court to keep him honest. Ditto Kinmages, their paradigm refuses to let them tap into Cairns for the Gnosis/Quint, they have to get it other ways. Or maybe they can meditate, but they can’t drain it completely as others might want them to. Fae want dreamers everywhere, keep your banality low and they will love everyone.

Quickest, dirtiest fluff for the alliance is High King David some changeling unleashes contract and now there are Dresden Files style peace accords for everyone to follow. Oooooh, or I could finally get my Everworld knockoff together. HMM…

[MisterBoring]

@Jennkryst said in Re: Dies Irae:

Quickest, dirtiest fluff for the alliance is High King David some changeling unleashes contract and now there are Dresden Files style peace accords for everyone to follow

Some super powerful changeling somehow performs a Sovereign Unleashing declaring over a loudspeaker that reaches the entire city, “VIOLENCE IS FORBIDDEN!”

[Jennkryst]

@MisterBoring said in Re: Dies Irae:

@Jennkryst said in Re: Dies Irae:

Quickest, dirtiest fluff for the alliance is High King David some changeling unleashes contract and now there are Dresden Files style peace accords for everyone to follow

Some super powerful changeling somehow performs a Sovereign Unleashing declaring over a loudspeaker that reaches the entire city, “VIOLENCE IS FORBIDDEN!”

In order to do violence, you must submit paperwork to your local Boggan representative.

[Aria]

@Jennkryst said in Re: Dies Irae:

@MisterBoring said in Re: Dies Irae:

Some super powerful changeling somehow performs a Sovereign Unleashing declaring over a loudspeaker that reaches the entire city, “VIOLENCE IS FORBIDDEN!”

In order to do violence, you must submit paperwork to your local Boggan representative.

[Prototart]

@MisterBoring said in Re: Dies Irae:

@Jennkryst said in Re: Dies Irae:

Yeah, you gotta yeet a lot of what was written and replace it with your own ‘here is why the spheres are forced to work together’ metaplot arc thing.

I’m totally okay with this in concept, but I’ve seen it done so disappointingly bad so much that I’m prone to calling games that fail to pull it off “Goth Powered Justice League”.

first of all, it’s called Justice League Dark, ok

anyway yeah the no-conflict thing was never going to work when you have multiple groups that are by their very nature antagonistic to each other

[Mushling 0]

I didn’t play this game because Scylla hits heavily on most male alts. This is not a problem per say, but it goes beyond just being confident and forward which can be sexy as fuck into the pushy, desperate and not wanting to take no for an answer. This is probably not a good trait in a staffer.

She also has a history of being toxic to female players and characters who she views as romantic competition in ways that break the rules of most games and the generally accepted rules of mush etiquette. This mostly includes targeting an alt she dislikes in pvp roleplay with multiple alts, having friends do the same, targeting players she dislikes across multiple games and spheres, hosting discords focused on roasting and plotting against female players she dislikes, complaining to staff about female players she dislikes in attempt to get them booted if she feels she has that staff’s ear.

This is not just a long-ago long memory complaint but is about relatively recent behaviors at Retro and Liberation. I have been made aware she was staff on some ancient world of darkness mushes. My issues with her have nothing to do with ancient mushes.

I also understand she can be very charming to people she does like and is a talented writer and roleplayer.

I would never play a game where she staffs or even seems to be heavily influencing staff on, because her pushiness for sexual roleplay with men edges a bit too close to harassment imo and because her targeting of female alts crossed the line into cheating and harassment imo. It also was directed toward several different females, not just one.

I also found her roleplay of a Native American to be racist. Her main focus with her Native American Uktena kinfolk was on “hating white bitches”. I found that be a racist way to represent a Native American and especially cringe as I believe that player is very white.

[Prototart]

@Mushling-0 said in Re: Dies Irae:

She also has a history of being toxic to female players and characters who she views as romantic competition

and suddenly I realize why she was so violently against my char joining the Wyrm sphere IC

[Rucket]

I guess I should apologize to folks for when I took up the Vamp sphere for a short time. I went in after one guy (I can’t even think of his name) had just vanished and left no notes and left people with vague chatter about having a place for their concept in the metaplot. I found it a bit overwhelming to go in and try to get things situated and as I was also dealing with overtime (plus my normal work schedule sucks), I just felt like I couldn’t do the job and bounced. I think the sphere kinda closed for a bit after that and I feel bad about it.

[Aria]

@Mushling-0 said in Re: Dies Irae:

I would never play a game where she staffs or even seems to be heavily influencing staff on, because her pushiness for sexual roleplay with men edges a bit too close to harassment imo and because her targeting of female alts crossed the line into cheating and harassment imo. It also was directed toward several different females, not just one.

I have virtually no experience with Scylla whatsoever. She was really nice to me the few times we talked on Dies Irae, I didn’t know her on Liberation, and I don’t play on Retro. But just…

Regardless of what she has or hasn’t done, 'cause I honestly don’t know and am not gonna weigh in on it?

Thank you for saying this out loud. Last summer, I started playing male PCs for the first time in my 20+ years in this hobby. I knew it happened. I’ve seen it happen. I’ve had to step in, either as staffer or as a head of house on a L&L game, when I saw guys being harassed. But man, being on the receiving end of sexual harassment when playing a guy IC and perceived to be one OOC was just wild. Somehow totally the same as experiences I’ve had being harassed while playing a woman and assumed to be one, and yet mind-bogglingly different.

I also don’t really know what my point is with saying this either, except… props for being Team Women Staffers Can Be Creeps Too, I guess?

[somasatori]

@Aria said in Re: Dies Irae:

props for being Team Women Staffers Can Be Creeps Too, I guess?

Man, I have some terrible terrible stories about this very topic that are wholly unrelated to Scylla.

@Rucket said in Re: Dies Irae:

I guess I should apologize to folks for when I took up the Vamp sphere for a short time. I went in after one guy (I can’t even think of his name) had just vanished and left no notes and left people with vague chatter about having a place for their concept in the metaplot. I found it a bit overwhelming to go in and try to get things situated and as I was also dealing with overtime (plus my normal work schedule sucks), I just felt like I couldn’t do the job and bounced. I think the sphere kinda closed for a bit after that and I feel bad about it.

This is sort of what I was referring to with the time piece and as well as not having consistency in staff (I’m not saying you’re not consistent, Rucket, you were picking up a plot that was started by two vamp staff teams before you after a quick succession of people leaving. I think you did your best, and it’s obviously a very daunting task to try to pick up a brand new game’s core sphere with a plot that you didn’t have a hand in crafting).

In the Discord channel that the headstaffers had where we tried to convince Scylla about stuff, both Charybdis and I said that we 100% needed to shut down Vampire because we couldn’t do it justice. This led to a great deal of hurt feelings (edit: on Scylla’s part, I mean) and a deeply frustrating conversation that I ended up bouncing out of (and I quit within a couple weeks altogether). Eventually we did get her to agree, with the concession that we would reopen Vampire as Camarilla to allow for more possible staff. Almost any criticism of the game was taken very much out of context and as a personal attack. In fact, I had not one but three separate people mention that Scylla had told them that I liked comments that were critical about the game in this very thread.