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evisiron
2008-02-05, 01:09 PM
This actually came up in the game...

If a Malkavian manages to make someone believe they are a chicken (clucking and all), could a gangrel using Feral Whispers talk to the person in 'chicken'?

Severus
2008-02-05, 01:16 PM
I think the answer is that your players aren't getting the dark angsty emo that is vampire.

The way it should have ran:

The Malkavian explains the utter futility of existence. The victim goes mad and kills himself gruesomely. The gangrel, whose last shred of humanity was tied to the victim goes mad and begins wandering the streets feeding on stray cats and talking to pigeons.

That's vampire.

cupkeyk
2008-02-05, 01:16 PM
Using dominate's modify memory? That's a lot of rolls... LOlz (well dementation has no such capacity) Modify Memory will only convince the person that he's a chicken and will act as a person percieves a chicken and not be able to actually do chicken like things including gliding with its semi vestigial wings or communicating via clucking if chickens do have a language. So no Feral whispers will not work on a dominated person who thinks they are a chicken.

Meanwhiel a salubri can draw out a chicken's soul and place it on a vacant body. Only in Vampire, animals don't have souls, they have bodies and spirits. Sentient mortals have souls, spirits and bodies. So there, oh well.

cupkeyk
2008-02-05, 01:19 PM
I think the answer is that your players aren't getting the dark angsty emo that is vampire.

The way it should have ran:

The Malkavian explains the utter futility of existence. The victim goes mad and kills himself gruesomely. The gangrel, whose last shred of humanity was tied to the victim goes mad and begins wandering the streets feeding on stray cats and talking to pigeons.

That's vampire.

People roleplay Vampire very differently from each other. the way we play vampire is very socializing, high society eeew-combat-will-only-get-my-Manolo-blahniks dirty oh-my-god-did-he-just-use-a-discipline-in-elysem kinda way with pinkies hovering giggles.

Indon
2008-02-05, 01:47 PM
I think the answer is that your players aren't getting the dark angsty emo that is vampire.

The beauty of the World of Darkness system is its' immense versatility.

Severus
2008-02-05, 01:49 PM
It was a joke, people.

DementedFellow
2008-02-05, 01:51 PM
The beauty of the World of Darkness system is its' immense versatility.

Really? I always saw it as the same game over and over. I was also really disappointed with their Changeling: The Dreaming. That said, the best supplement I read on WoD was for the gypsies. I strongly recommend it as it can enhance any WoD game.

Rutee
2008-02-05, 01:54 PM
Really? I always saw it as the same game over and over. I was also really disappointed with their Changeling: The Dreaming. That said, the best supplement I read on WoD was for the gypsies. I strongly recommend it as it can enhance any WoD game.

R-really? It's got so many story options within the same base setting, and so many different ways to flavor that base setting! How'd that happen?

cupkeyk
2008-02-05, 05:13 PM
R-really? It's got so many story options within the same base setting, and so many different ways to flavor that base setting! How'd that happen?

Ditto on that. We go from epic worldspanning adventures to spy-vs.-spy espionage to hack and slash to polite social stuff.

Dragonmuncher
2008-02-05, 05:54 PM
This actually came up in the game...

If a Malkavian manages to make someone believe they are a chicken (clucking and all), could a gangrel using Feral Whispers talk to the person in 'chicken'?


Hmmm... I don't know the system, but I'd say no. If the Malkavian just makes his victim believe he's a chicken, the victim will just act like he thinks a chicken should act. So he'd probably go "cluck! cluck!" and maybe even "talk" to chickens, but any responses would be out of his now-deranged mind.

D&D analogy- if you used some sort of enchantment to make someone believe they were a Druid, they still wouldn't be able to speak Druidic or cast spells.

raygungothic
2008-02-05, 06:05 PM
DementedFellow: your clue is pretty subtle :smallbiggrin:

DementedFellow
2008-02-05, 06:08 PM
Well, I just didn't like how nerfed everything was.

You can be a mage, but don't get caught casting spells.
You can be a vamp, but don't get caught sucking blood.
You can be a were, but don't get caught ...being hairy.
You can be a fairy, but you don't do anything really explicitly.

It's a matter of playstyles, but if I have access to an ability, I kinda like to use it. The only one to make sense to stay in hiding was the gypsies. They did well to make a cohesive world to the vamp, the mage, the were and the fey.

But yeah, it was like, "you have a special gift/ability but you can only use it when you have to and if you do use it then this everpresent secret organization will come after you and hunt you until you are dead." I understand that WoD is a lot more oriented to roleplaying verses rollplaying, but I don't dig the vibe where you have to hide and everything is bleak and grey. Maybe I'm not angsty enough.

By the same setting in my earlier comment, I was talking about how you had to be in hiding the whole time. That's why I don't play ninjas when I play D&D, I'd rather not spend a few hours pretending like I'm hiding.

Rutee
2008-02-05, 06:18 PM
Well, I just didn't like how nerfed everything was.

You can be a mage, but don't get caught casting spells.
You can be a vamp, but don't get caught sucking blood.
You can be a were, but don't get caught ...being hairy.
You can be a fairy, but you don't do anything really explicitly.

It's a matter of playstyles, but if I have access to an ability, I kinda like to use it. The only one to make sense to stay in hiding was the gypsies. They did well to make a cohesive world to the vamp, the mage, the were and the fey.
It's funny, but I never really had trouble with that. I suppose it's because we didn't place emphasis on maintaining the Masquerade (There were times when it was an issue, but it's not like we inserted mortals into everywhere for the sole purpose of making it harder to maintain). If you really do expect unfetterred access, yeah, the WoD just isn't for you, but it only /has/ to be a huge problem if you choose to focus your game on it, IMO.


But yeah, it was like, "you have a special gift/ability but you can only use it when you have to and if you do use it then this everpresent secret organization will come after you and hunt you until you are dead." I understand that WoD is a lot more oriented to roleplaying verses rollplaying, but I don't dig the vibe where you have to hide and everything is bleak and grey. Maybe I'm not angsty enough.
Well, the angst and bleakness are only really enforced by the playerbase. oWoD systems don't enforce that, at all. Vampire is where most of the emo kiddies went though, it's true. Note that there's still a pretty high number of powers you /can/ use, even in plain sight of mortals. The trick is to make it look like nothing bad happened.



By the same setting in my earlier comment, I was talking about how you had to be in hiding the whole time. That's why I don't play ninjas when I play D&D, I'd rather not spend a few hours pretending like I'm hiding.
At least you explained what you meant. The complaint you voiced earlier just didn't make sense.

comicshorse
2008-02-05, 06:20 PM
Spaeking as a vamp. player you can use disciplines all you like provided no MORTALS see you. And if they do see you well there are still lot of options ranging from removing their memoroes with Dominate to removing thjeir brains with a .357 magnum

Severus
2008-02-05, 06:22 PM
Wandering further off-topic, I just didn't feel that the WoD games had as much replayability as other games.

I enjoyed the hell out of the long campaign I was in, but the vampire schtick feels used up to me now. Don't really have much of an urge to play it again, even if the context were much different.

For whatever reason, D&D and fantasy does have that replayability to me. Granted, I want a different world after an extended campaign, but the core system remains fresh to me.

Rutee
2008-02-05, 06:27 PM
For whatever reason, D&D and fantasy does have that replayability to me. Granted, I want a different world after an extended campaign, but the core system remains fresh to me.

Aside from tastes (Because WoD doesn't tilt itself to the same kinda stories that DnD does), this might be part of it.

Kyeudo
2008-02-05, 06:29 PM
I think the answer is that your players aren't getting the dark angsty emo that is vampire.

The way it should have ran:

The Malkavian explains the utter futility of existence. The victim goes mad and kills himself gruesomely. The gangrel, whose last shred of humanity was tied to the victim goes mad and begins wandering the streets feeding on stray cats and talking to pigeons.

That's vampire.

This made me lol. I'm so sigging this.

EDIT: Or not. Stupid sig size limits.

Fuzzy_Juan
2008-02-05, 06:30 PM
To answer the origional poster's question...by game mechanics...No. Animalism does not work on anything except animals. Nor will it allow you to influence garou whatever their form. (barring of course things that effect 'the beast' which effect vampires specifically). Feral whispers cannot be used to converse with someone who thinks they are 'x' animal because they are not in fact that animal and thus are an inappropriate target for the use of the power.

By ST Fiat, the power may work in such a case if it is funny. Such are the laws of comedy that if someone thinks they are a cow and you start mooing at them, they will understand even if you both have no clue what you told them.

As a side note...by ST interpretation, a character may use Auspex telepathy along with The Forgetful Mind to directly rewrite memory of a subject at the speed of thought without the need for all that elaborate explinations of the memories you want to erase/change/add. As such, this version of The Forgetful Mind becomes akin to Chimestry's Horrid Reality power. In that the user is capable of inserting the memory of any event whatsoever directly into the mind of the subject with all the vivid details that are difficult, if not impossible, to describe with words. The memory modification can be done as fast as one can think of all the details...for as long as the power goes and as long as you decide the memory lasts, they will 'live' whatever you want them to.

You want to know why Malks are feared as 'spreading chaos and madness', and why the Tremere are sometimes 'known' to posess terrifying magic that is beyond any written rules? Just keep that combo in mind...

Lord Tataraus
2008-02-05, 06:33 PM
Wandering further off-topic, I just didn't feel that the WoD games had as much replayability as other games.

I enjoyed the hell out of the long campaign I was in, but the vampire schtick feels used up to me now. Don't really have much of an urge to play it again, even if the context were much different.

For whatever reason, D&D and fantasy does have that replayability to me. Granted, I want a different world after an extended campaign, but the core system remains fresh to me.

So...change the setting? Probably the reason you like D&D more for replayablity is because it's default setting is extremely general and the DM basically makes it all up. Whereas in the WoD games the setting is more defined. However, that doesn't stop you from changing the focus or even the fluff of the game. I ran a Vampire & Werewolf game which was based off the Underworld and Blade movies. The vampires had huge mortal resources and vast numbers of mortals were "in the know" as it were about vampires, thus the Masquerade was very lax. I would suggest fooling around with the fluff if you're having trouble, maybe in your world vampires rule openly over mortals or maybe they are hunted by the tyrannical mortals (and everyone knows about them). There are limitless options.

Indon
2008-02-05, 06:45 PM
Really? I always saw it as the same game over and over. I was also really disappointed with their Changeling: The Dreaming.

I very much disagree. While each game has in common the theme of a world-beyond-the-world-we-know, and often an overarching theme of decay and/or culmination towards a great event, I felt each major universe had wildly different themes (with minor varations in-universe).

Compare the Vampires, one of the major powers behind the scenes of Humanity, bickering amongst each other for power and struggling to maintain human...

...with the Mages, idealists who each want to reveal their unique vision of the world to everyone else, but must contend with a cold cynicism instilled by an organization interested in promoting a universe in which the human creative spirit gives way to structure and stasis. (and conversely, the Technocrats, idealists who seek to bring enlightenment to humanity and must contend against madmen who seek to unmake civilization)

Severus
2008-02-05, 07:05 PM
But what WoD is IS the setting.

Strip that away, and you have a specialized group of supers characters. Once you've shifted the focus, then you might as well just play a supers game where you're unlimited in context.

And if I'm going to do that, I think some games model a supers set up much better than WoD. I love their vision, but their rules implementations blows chunks.

Rutee
2008-02-05, 07:17 PM
But what WoD is IS the setting.

Strip that away, and you have a specialized group of supers characters. Once you've shifted the focus, then you might as well just play a supers game where you're unlimited in context.

And if I'm going to do that, I think some games model a supers set up much better than WoD. I love their vision, but their rules implementations blows chunks.

I... maybe Werewolves and Vampires are supers.. but.. Mage, Changeling, etc, not so much.. WoD's got a defined setting, but you don't suddenly waste the money if you use the system on a different setting. And I thought the rules were good with the types of supernaturals they were trying to do.