And now for something completely difrent.....any white wolf players here?

[GonePostal]

i dont think, id want to play with spider (no offense, spider) but you seem like one of the guys that would be like " nuh uh! that doesnt count! WALLHACK!!" etc.

[Spider]

Nah In some games I'm quite normal... in other games i'm more of the powergaming type...

I made a character in V:TM that's the equivalent of Caine... heck he could kick his ass...

Quite scary what type of characters I can make sometimes...

[Doppler]

Ok long post, probly one of three, Ill cover mages if someone else wants to cover vamps and weres and save me a lot of trouble it'd be mucho apreciated.

WIthout going in too deeply into the rules for each system lets say that everything in white wolf is 10sider based. All your skills/stats have a rating from 1-5 (or in some rare cases more) 1 being mildly proficient 5 being world class, 6 being THE BEST in the world.
There are two kinds of magic:
Static Magic as practiced by were's mummies vampires and some sleepers et all. Basicly they have a spell book or a discipline, they do a required act they get the required effect, no more no less.
Dynamic Magic as practiced by mages. We burned the spell book and took a dump on the ashes.

Ill dwell less on rules and more of the system of mage and the general worldview.
Mage essentialy is a game of bending reality.

Everything you know is a lie.

"Reality" is a carefully fabricated order of beliefs pushed out by mass media by an organation called the technocracy to "protect" humanity. I'll cover the technocs later.

Mages for a variety of reasons are in touch with their avatar, which (this is my interpretation) is kind of like the wholeness of everyones spirit. Short and sweet it's what diferatiates them from the "sleepers" and allows them to work magic.

Briefly Ill cover the difrent spheres of magic.

Life:Affects living things, everything from plants to germs to creatures from the beyond, can grow, stunt, reshape and mold as they see fit. Goes without saying that this is the healing sphere.

Matter: Much the same as the above on the low end can change the qualities of matter i.e it's phases (gas liquid solid plasma) on the mid range it can reshape and change the qualities of objects. (not only did I change this butter to gold, i will now reshape it into a knife and stab that green lantern dude. At the upper range you create objects, sometimes highly complex ones at a whim.

Forces: Everything from throwing fireballs to ice rays to thermographic vision to flight.

Time. At the low end you have a perfet sense of time and limited abilities to pierce time distrortions. Mid level you can scry backwards and forwards soemwhat (remember when looking foreward the future is always fluid). YOu also have the ability to speed up or slow down people or things. At high level you can move people, objects or effects foreward in time (never back)

Entropy: THe magic of fate luck and chance. Oh you just happened to find that specific type of ammo right away in the armory, or oh my enemies just all happened to trip as they walk in the door.

Spirit: There are worlds beyond this one, at low levels spirit allows you to peer into ones running parralel to our own. Mid levels it allows you to cross the barriers as well as hurt things that come across them.

Mind: The abilitiy to screw with and take controll of other lifeforms. As well as protect yourself against the same.

Prime: The sphere of playing with the energies of magic itself, Not so powerfull on its own it does its best work when combined with other spheres (indeed to do some of the really cool stuff you almost got to have prime.) At low levels it can charge patterns to either make spells continuous or permanent or eneable objects or people to do magical damage.

Correspondance: The magic of distances, or rather lack there of, low level allows you to cast spells and scry over distances. Higher level allows teleportation and other cool effects from realizing that all place is one place it's just how we percieve it.

[Cont}

[Doppler]

Originally Posted by Spider

Nah In some games I'm quite normal... in other games i'm more of the powergaming type...

I made a character in V:TM that's the equivalent of Caine... heck he could kick his ass...

Quite scary what type of characters I can make sometimes...

Cept it's a matter of the gm going OH FUCK NO! A character the equivalent of caine? flbbt.

[Doppler]

THe traditions:

Among the secret societies of mages there are sort of subcultures called traiditions. They're grouped mostly by how they practice magic although their is some cross bleed. Each tradition has it's own "Sphere" of magic that they gravitate towards naturaly and therefore get one dot in to start with and all further dots are cheaper.

Order of Hermes: Old school sorcerers and wizards, think merlin and harry potter and you dont have too bad of an idea. Mystic tomes arcane languages thats their thing. THey are the oldest "organized" tradition so they tend to have the greatest library of knowledge to call upon. Sphere:Forces

Verbena: Blood mages, whitchraft, sacrifices of themself and others, not so much evil per se as they generaly have to pay for their magic in blood (usualy their own i might add) very much centered around mother earth and nature although not as much as soon. These guys predate the Order by many accounts but didnt get organized into a heirarchy till much later. Sphere:Life

Dreamspeakers:Pagan, wiccan, native american or aboriginal magic, or voodoo. Basicly if it's based around a non mainstream religion it might very well be these guys domain. Native american make up the largest chunk of this tradition but their far from dominating (mostly because this tradition has no real hierarchy) This is the oldest tradition but again they dont all march to a single drummer.

Euthanatos:Hmmm how to describe these guys, their fatalists in the extreme. They believe it is their duty to to kill that which is corrupt, non pure or otherwise obstructs the wheel of life. Bones, knives, even guns are their trapings. Sphere: Entropy

Akashics: Buhdist monks and martial arts practicioners, the wise man on the mountain, the drunken master, lin mu bal. Big believers in mind over body. Sphere: Mind.

Celestial Chorusters:Main stream religions, their magic comes from their belief in their devine calling. Christian Muslim etc. Sphere:Prime

Sons of Ether: Mad scientest, doctor frankenstine meets dr. jeckel and mr. hide meets Jules Vern meets edison and einstein. Rayguns, proton packs, rockets and robots. Sphere: Matter

Virtual Adepts:Fuck hack the planet, hack reality. Hackers crackers, phreakers and other techno wizzes. Why tear down reality when you can build reality 2.0. Think Neo with less martial arts and more reality bending.

Ok now the nitty gritty of how the system works.

Magic is affected solely by willpower and belief. Your pitting your willpower against that of reality. This is why people do things within their tradition: They believe in their mystic symbols or their prayers or their email bomb and therefore it helps their reinforce their belief they will succeed.

Coincidental Magic vs Vulgar Magic:
It is easier for reality to allow 'Oh he just happened to get that lucky shot that hit the gas main which blew up at the exact right spot under the tank to destroy it." rather then.
Oh he typed something on his laptop and a giant lawnmower man esque hand came downa nd smashed the tank flat.

Now it's not to say you cant do the latter, just the former is A) easier to do at the outset B) gets you less paradox, more on that later.

Mage specific terms/quantities

Avatar: Your awakened avatar, more dots in avatar represent your avatar is able to store more quintesance for you (more on quint later) and the more sentient it becomes helpign guide you on the path towards enlightenment. More on enlightenment later.

Quintesance: Quint is a measure of how much raw magic your storing within you, not necissary for the performing of magic it powers magic devices and makes magic easier to cast, or makes spells more potent when put into them. Think of yourself as a generator and quint as one use car batteries you can plug into the ciruit to give it more get up and go.

Paradox is basicly a maeasure of how much notice reality has taken of you, this is bad, you get paradox when you perform vulgar (and some coincidental spells) When you get enough of it it tends to discharge in potentialy bad ways.

Arete: A scale from 1 to 10 basicly measureing how enelighten you are, this is how many dice you roll when you perform magic. In simple terms 1 is a weak mage (it should be noted that the max for a starting mage is 3) at the highest level you are basicly ready for ascention (what all mages are going for)

[Doppler]

Advesaries:

In addition to all the interplayings with vamps werewolfs and other denzines of the world of darkness mages have a few problems that tend to be all their own.

Technocracy: This secret society compossed of some mages who basicly are the oposite side of the coin from the traditions. THey believe in science over magic, and attempt to banish the true magic from the world in order to protect humanity, using humanity as both front line troops and their main tool to do this. THey shape consenual reality against magic and towards science. THey are like a necissary evil, on the one hand they are causing humanity to stagnate and on the whole that will be a bad thing, nd keep the wool over our eyes, on the other hand they protect humanity (as they see it) from evil mages shape shifters vampires et all. They also patroll outer space (really an enforced notion that protects reality from the things that prowl beyond). and hunt things that crawl slither slide or walk through the cracks.

Nephandi: You remember those things that prowl beyond the void, these guys work for them. Bad dudes, mages who strike pacts with extradimensional creatures and tend to get corrupted in mind body and soul. THey seek to crack reality so their dark master can sup on the creamy nugget of souls within. Bad bad bad.

Marauders: These guys also seek the end of reality, but moistly just because their nuts. As much a danger to themselves as to others (both dangers are considerable) consensual reality seems to give up in disgust when it comes these guys. Fortuantly paradox does seem to catch them when they try and do stuff like stuff the earth into the sun by force of will alone but they are still extremely dangerous.

Ok theres my short synopsis anyone who has an idea what they want to play please drop me an email or pm. Oh it goes without saying that No one will be playing a marauder nephandi or technoc. Also if none of the traditions fit you per se there is a kind of miscelania tradition called apropriatly orphans. However they tend to have a lot less of the support networks and powers of other mages.

[Happy lil Elf]

I'd explain Werewolf but I'm really really lazy and considering how I usually try to explain everything at once I'm sure my post would probably end up being about 10 posts long. Way too much work for me

All you need to know is they don't like silver or vampires, and rip things limb from limb.

[Doppler]

Just for the sake of simplicity unless anyone delivers me a really good char sheet and already knows how to play well i'd prefer everyone to play mages. So who is actualy intrested in playing, i have a granbd total of no emails and last check no pms.

[Spider]

I'm interested but you wouldnt like my gaming style eh.

[Doppler]

Well see what we shall see, send me a message with what you want to play or if you know the system well enough send me a starting character sheet.

[Spider]

I know the vamp system quite well... I already need to make an elder... so I'll take the time and make a ravnos antitribu or something...

[Nimbus]

Hmmm...I'm a storyteller for both Mage and Vampire, actually.
I have no games running at the moment though.

[Happy lil Elf]

Eh, I doubt you'd go with the campaigns we generally played well that and I've never been a big over the internet RPGer. Just not fast paced enough for me plus roleplaying for us tends to be more of an excuse to drink a shotload of alchohol enhanced carbonated beverages, bullshit and have some of the greatest geek arguments of all time.

But yeah the one long campaign we played consisted of Vampires and Werecreatures in cahoots. My Kahn (were-tiger), a Gurahl (were-bear) a Mokole (were-...well anything from a were-alligator to a were-freaking-godzilla), and a stargazer (were-wolf) allied with three vampires running guns and drugs through through a nightclub in Florida to fund terorist acts on various agents of the Wyrm.

It made very little sense but damnit if it wasn't fun

[Doppler]

Grrr wish i could delete post.

[Happy lil Elf]

Why?