[oWoD] Merging Worlds

[Oracle_Hunter]

Recently, I came to looking over some of my oWoD books and I realized how incredibly poorly their settings relate. To pick one example, how do you have a world founded on the beliefs of humanity (Mage) which is actually run by undead immortals (Vampire)? Either you have the High Mythic Ages with flying castles and dragons or you have monstrous antediluvians bending humanity to its will while killing each other. On the other hand, some franchises -- like Vampire and Werewolf -- are almost custom-made to work together.

So, how many of the oWoD franchises can actually function within the same world? Ideally, pick the maximum number of franchises that can coexist and feel free to add in new details to link them together while avoiding Retconns.

Off hand, I'd say you could include everything except Mage but I'm not as familiar with some of the franchises as I'd like.

[Lord_Gareth]

Mage, Vampire and Demon can co-exist, assuming you ignore the fact that the Technocracy hasn't killed the vamps yet. Demon's background collaborates with Mage, but only in favor of the 'christian' background-set; if you're running your game world on a different theory from the books, it doesn't work.

Demon and Vampire can co-exist.

Werewolf and Changeling can co-exist, though you need to figure out if Changelings are Prodigals or not. Werewolf and vampire has the same problem as the technocracy, since a fresh-off-the-change werewolf is a credible threat to vampire elders.

Hunter can't co-exist with anything. Being mortal is a death sentence in the oWoD, and whoever designed that gameline was high on something they should have been arrested for possessing.

Wraith and Demon can co-exist. Wraith and Mage can with trouble; Wraith and Werewolf have even more trouble, mostly for the same reasons that Mage and Werewolf can't do it - too much clashing cosmology.

Honestly, the two big 'problem' ones are Werewolf and Mage, as both assume intricate cosmologies that are completely mutually exclusive. Anything that can fit in with the one more-or-less cannot fit in with the other (for example, Demon collaborates with Mage too much, and cannot co-exist with Werewolf as a result). However, since every game manages to use COMPLETELY DIFFERENT MECHANICS, I would suggest that you don't try to combine oWoD gamelines unless you have a drinking game set up.

[Pilo]

The oWoD settings are related together, however, these settings are not writen objectivelly. When you play at Vampire, the vampires are the main plot (with humanity...), so you don't need the other games to play. Furthermore, the powers of the others are explained in a way you could use them without learning foreign rules. The same goes for Mage and Werewolf. But the cosmology stay the same. The entities play with surnatural poeple like surnaturals play with humans.

If you play at Strike force zero, you have the point of view of a human soldier and each surnatural creature is here to destroy humanity, it does'nt matter if some are protecting them from a big bad evil monster, they will probably never find out.

So settings are related, BUT you can't find so if you don't have all the pieces of the puzzle, and even if you read all the White-Wolf books, some are wrong because the person whom you are sharing the point of view did not have the right clues.

[Civil War Man]

I once ran a Demon campaign that tried to tie all of the settings together. It got a little weird in parts, but it did have a logical line of reasoning it followed. I actually used Cain and Abel as the focal point.

Vampire was easy to fit into Demon. Caine is the first vampire. Done.

Fitting in Mage was a part I added myself. According to the Demon book, when Lucifer was defeated, all the angels that sided with him were cast into Hell. But Lucifer himself never made it, and when demons started breaking out, they found that God, Lucifer, and the Heavenly Host were missing. The part I added was that the slaying of Abel had ripped a hole in the universe, and before Lucifer could be cast into Hell, he lashed out one last time using that hole as a weapon. The attack killed Lucifer, and shattered God, and the pieces formed the Avatars of the Mages.

Werewolf took a bit of mental gymnastics. Werewolf cosmology is divided into the Weaver (Order), the Wyrm (Destruction), and the Wyld (Creation). When properly balanced, the Wyld creates new things, the Weaver shapes those things and gives them purpose, and the Wyrm destroys those things to make room for more new things. I made the Weaver and Wyrm rival factions of demons. Abel's death drove the Wyrm insane, and the demons in it started to destroy indiscriminately. The Weaver tried to contain the destruction, which caused the imbalance seen in the Werewolf setting. Demon describes God as being a force of pure creation, so I wrote in the diminished remnants of the Heavenly Host as the Wyld and most of the Werewolf Totems. The Weaver demons became the Weaver totems, and the Wyrm demons became the Wyrm totems. The party did interact with Werewolves a fair amount in the campaign, and I even had them walk the Black Spiral Labyrinth (I put Abel's soul, along with the hole in the universe left by his murder, at the center of the Labyrinth, with the Dancers worshipping it).

Also, with God and the Heavenly Host being in pieces, there was no place for dead souls to go, which allowed me to include elements of Wraith.

Never really got that good of a place to put in Changeling. I eventually had them be lesser servitors of Heaven. Not angels, but stuff like muses and animistic spirits.

[Morty]

Hunter: the Reckoning doesn't really coexist with anything as it is, but it can be easily fitted into any gameline with little effort. No matter what you do, the supernaturals are screwing humanity over, so the Messengers have a reason to step in and send some cannon fodder champions into the field. It helps that the Messengers' identity is so vague - you can make them whoever you want. Mind you, for some reason I can't quite fathom H:tR doesn't use aggravated damage, meaning incorporating it in crossovers takes some gymnastics crunch-wise.

[Civil War Man]

Hunter: the Reckoning doesn't really coexist with anything as it is, but it can be easily fitted into any gameline with little effort. No matter what you do, the supernaturals are screwing humanity over, so the Messengers have a reason to step in and send some cannon fodder champions into the field. It helps that the Messengers' identity is so vague - you can make them whoever you want. Mind you, for some reason I can't quite fathom H:tR doesn't use aggravated damage, meaning incorporating it in crossovers takes some gymnastics crunch-wise.

That reminds me. Hunters in the campaign described in my previous post were human followers of various demons. They gave the Demon faith in exchange for their Hunter powers.

It was primarily used as a source of comedy. One of the PCs was this very reasonable demon who regretted everything he did during the war, but his primary source of Faith was a homeless man who was completely mentally unhinged even before this PC accidentally gave him Hunter powers. So everything the PC said or did, when run through the filter of a crazy person, was interpreted as a divine order to purge the wicked and the unclean.

EDIT: That Hunter was also based off a Hunter character I played in a one-shot after 2 days of no sleep.

[Morty]

I guess that works within the framework of your game.
Mind you, as I was going to add to my previous post, Hunter: the Reckoning is rather badly designed and riddled with inconsistencies, so whether or not I'd include it at all is up to debate.

[LemuneSD]

The way my group has always handled these situations is that there IS no 'true' canon realities when it comes to mixing the supernaturals. Each has their own world, and to them, it is the true reality that other supernaturals either do not know about or do not understand. It is all based on one's own personal view.

These realities have to have 'truth' to it just as much as Christianity has truth to a Bhuddist, or Greek gods to a catholic. They might learn about the others' beliefs and ideals, and things might even be present to lend credence to the claims, but that doesn't mean it can't merely be some off-result of your own belief system that was misinterpreted or blurred.

A Garou can see a Kindred's thaumaturgy and just think that the vampire is bending unnatural blood magics powered by evil spirits, Wyrm abilities, or whatever the hell it is that powers the leech.

That same Kindred can hear about Gaia, the Wyrm, Weaver and Wyld, and know that its all superstitious voodoo that werewolves have, although there is a lot of evidence showing werewolves interacting with spirits.

Hunters just know that all evil tries to justify itself by claiming attachment to some higher power. While they may pledge themselves to whatever they want to call their personal devils, they are all equally unnatural. That is the reason some people have been imbued with Edges and such, to combat evil.

So basically, each game can coexist as long as you don't try to violently breed them together. That is unnatural genetic mixing, and we all know what happens when THAT road is traveled... Yummy! (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/9091628/Test-tube-hamburgers-to-be-served-this-year.html)

Edit: Also note that this does not make any game's lore any less true.
Keep in mind that even within each game's own lore, there are many variations of the same 'history' depending on who is doing the storytelling. Werewolf is the easiest to pick apart. Each Tribe KNOWS it was the first Tribe ever formed. Each Tribe also KNOWS the tale of the First Klaive, but no two share the same version of either tale. Silver Fangs KNOW they are the true leaders of the Garou even though their rule is not widely recognized. Again, it all depends on who's point of view is being taken.

[Beelzebub1111]

Word of warning, only put Vampires and Vampire Problems in a Demon game if you want to wipe out vampires in that city. One of my players tell the story of him and another player (A fire demon and death demon respectively) were to deal with the Camarilla who were working for a renegade demon or something. They infiltrated one of the vampire meetings and when one of the vampires lit a match to show how bad-ass he was, Fire demon turned it into a bonfire, everybody freaks and the death demon just uses the decay to turn the, now terrified, vampires into dust. When the sabbat came to thank them for taking out the Camarilla, the demons just obliterated them, too. They eventually just wiped out all the vampires in that city leaving the prince half-undead just to get him to draw out the demon, then offed the prince.

And that's how there came to be no vampires in Jersey City.

[JeenLeen]

I've only read Mage and Vampire in-depth, but in our Mage game, we've interacted a fair bit with changelings, demons, and werewolves (and other fera), and I have some idea how wraiths and hunters were worked in, so I can tell how my Storyteller integrated it. For how the universe works, I think he picked and choose parts of the High, Middle, and Low Umbra and Penumbra as he liked and as worked for the game. (Or simply mages can't find some fera realms, and maybe vice-versa.)

For one, each book's point-of-view is what those people believe. So vampires might have some facts, as mages have some facts wrong. (To help this, Time magic is limited to a degree. It takes hundreds of successes to look a few centuries in the past, making verifying facts hard, and most mages didn't take careful or unbiased records of history.)

Early on, demons had their war in heaven. This is when The One shattered, according to mage history. Demons were sealed.

In the ages that passed (a few thousand or billion, depending on if you believe the mystics or technomages), the werewolf Impergium (sp), War of Rage, and aftermath all happened. Also Caine's First City and the aftermath of that. Mages ruled their individual towers, gloves, etc, probably hiding amongst the kine ruled by vamps or the mortals ruled by fera. Doesn't really matter, since no history is really recorded. The Flood is also in this era.

Eventually, Solomon conquers the Middle East and mages start to actually organize to some degree. By now, fera tend to keep to themselves to more of a degree. Mages generally are too selfish or occupied with their own goals to care about the vampires. If a vampire rules the villages in part of a country, well, they know to leave that guy in the tower alone, and vice-versa.

The Concensus thickens, the Order of Reason rises, fae leave and/or become changelings. The Order of Reason, and later the Technocracy, is too focused on the Traditions to worry about wiping out vamps or fera, so they don't. Besides, both like the Masquerade. They can wipe out the guys who want to hide the supernatural after they wipe out those who want to reveal it.

Week of Nightmares frees the demons. Soon after, hunters show up. Mages don't really know (or largely care) who sent them, as they're focused on each other. Maybe the Messengers are a Celestine, or a super-demon freed, or an Oracle or Antedulevian.

At least, that's how we've done it.

[KillianHawkeye]

Keep in mind that even within each game's own lore, there are many variations of the same 'history' depending on who is doing the storytelling. Werewolf is the easiest to pick apart. Each Tribe KNOWS it was the first Tribe ever formed. Each Tribe also KNOWS the tale of the First Klaive, but no two share the same version of either tale. Silver Fangs KNOW they are the true leaders of the Garou even though their rule is not widely recognized. Again, it all depends on who's point of view is being taken.

Man, is that ever true. Then you get to the other shapeshifters, who each have their own origin story and alternate version of the beginning of the world myths, and there's at least a dozen breeds of shapeshifters.



I'd be interested to hear if anybody has properly integrated Mummy or Kindred of the East into their cosmologies.