Avatar is actually the perfect name as the groups which named it believe it to be a literal shard of The One/God (i.e. a mage is the avatar of God on Earth and those groups had enough clout when the Council of Nine was formed to push for that name in the cross-Tradition magical language they cooked up so the Traditions could pool magical knowledge.

Long story short, to better coordinate against the Order of Reason, the Council came up with a set of shared terms that essentially function as a magical trade tongue. It's basically the Latin to the Traditions' German, French, Chinese, Aramaic, Hindi, etc.

Outside of that purpose no one really calls it that though; each Tradition and Convention Book listed the name by which it was known; ex. Genius, Daemon, Eidolon, Spirit Guide.

This shared language also happens to coincide with system terms for these concepts for ease of use.

Also, you seem to be missing a key point about consensual reality... it's determined by the consensus of EVERYONE, not just what Joe Random happens to believe can happen to himself. So in the modern world the consensus is what the majority of 7.5 billion people happen to believe is possible. Stuff like gravity, the passage of time, etc. are believed in by just about everyone (even if the explanation has changed over time, "stuff falls down not up" has been with us for as long as we've been able to recognize out surroundings).

Further, while the Native Americans might not have been familiar with smallpox specifically, they certainly had the concepts of sickness and disease which would make something like smallpox possible (on top of the much larger populations of Europe, Asia and Africa being aware of it).

Magic is the act of pushing against said consensus; a Mage's enlightened willpower allows them to use practices and instruments they believe in to push past what's actually possible. Do it enough and you might get the consensus to believe it's possible too (which was the Order of Reason's approach to pushing science into the consensus; take the lumps of paradox in order to show enough people their way works and the innovations of science become part of the consensus).

It should also be noted that even the concept of the spheres of magic is arbitrary; a construct devised by the Order of Hermes to facilitate inter-Tradition discussions about magical practices and adopted by the Order of Reason (with some name changes; i.e. they call the Spirit sphere "Dimensional Science") for the same reason.

Prior to that magical Traditions used their own systems of categorization; such as Foundation (what would become Arete in shared parlance) and Pillars (proto-spheres) the Order used during the Dark Ages.

It really holds together a lot better than you seem to think it does.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1130177It had the opportunity to do that, but it never actually did. It touched on it a tiny bit with torpor reducing blood-potency and inconsistently affecting memories (so you could create a noob PC who is centuries old and adjusting to modern life, or create false records of events to use for personal gain centuries in the future, etc), but ultimately discarded all those ideas because fans apparently wanted the same eternal unchanging elder vampires as in VTM.

VTR is basically just V5 but the discipline mechanic sucks.

Your ideas are a breath of fresh air in this stagnant rotting fandom.

Thanks for the info. And thanks for the compliment.

Quote from: Chris24601;1130203The fact that you can essentially quantify every other critter type in the game within the subjective reality of Mage generally makes it my default for any crossover campaigns.

Also, for those wondering; the notion that Caine might not have actually been a vampire at all, but suffered a botched Awakening is pretty strongly implied by the text in the Book of Nod.

Lilith performs a cerimony to try and Awaken him and he goes into a vision of being tormented and cursed by angels. Angelic visitors is actually a pretty common form for Avatars to manifest as and such manifestations are common during the Seekings that accompany Awakening and the raising of Arete.

If you really want to run with it though, consider that Creation story isn't about the literal First Man and First Woman, but the first humans to ever Awaken. Adam and Lilith part ways and Eve is "born from Adam's side" in that she was Adam's apprentice who Awakened. Abel too was Awakened, but Caine was not and he murdered his brother out of jealousy then fled into the wilds to find the only other Awakened at that point; Lilith.

Caine though gets so overwhelmed by his guilt and self-loathing during the forced Awakening Lilith put him through that Caine becomes the First Marauder (trapped in his personal reality where he is forever accurded by God). This is why Caine was reputed to be able to create vampiric disciplines at will... because he was actually a true mage (albeit an insane one).

That's great!

Is it your work, or from a WW product?  

It's exactly the type of thing that I want to use in my game-- one of many competing explanations for the vampiric condition.

Quote from: Chris24601;1130227Avatar is actually the perfect name as the groups which named it believe it to be a literal shard of The One/God (i.e. a mage is the avatar of God on Earth and those groups had enough clout when the Council of Nine was formed to push for that name in the cross-Tradition magical language they cooked up so the Traditions could pool magical knowledge.

Long story short, to better coordinate against the Order of Reason, the Council came up with a set of shared terms that essentially function as a magical trade tongue. It's basically the Latin to the Traditions' German, French, Chinese, Aramaic, Hindi, etc.

Outside of that purpose no one really calls it that though; each Tradition and Convention Book listed the name by which it was known; ex. Genius, Daemon, Eidolon, Spirit Guide.

This shared language also happens to coincide with system terms for these concepts for ease of use.

Also, you seem to be missing a key point about consensual reality... it's determined by the consensus of EVERYONE, not just what Joe Random happens to believe can happen to himself. So in the modern world the consensus is what the majority of 7.5 billion people happen to believe is possible. Stuff like gravity, the passage of time, etc. are believed in by just about everyone (even if the explanation has changed over time, "stuff falls down not up" has been with us for as long as we've been able to recognize out surroundings).

Further, while the Native Americans might not have been familiar with smallpox specifically, they certainly had the concepts of sickness and disease which would make something like smallpox possible (on top of the much larger populations of Europe, Asia and Africa being aware of it).

Magic is the act of pushing against said consensus; a Mage's enlightened willpower allows them to use practices and instruments they believe in to push past what's actually possible. Do it enough and you might get the consensus to believe it's possible too (which was the Order of Reason's approach to pushing science into the consensus; take the lumps of paradox in order to show enough people their way works and the innovations of science become part of the consensus).

It should also be noted that even the concept of the spheres of magic is arbitrary; a construct devised by the Order of Hermes to facilitate inter-Tradition discussions about magical practices and adopted by the Order of Reason (with some name changes; i.e. they call the Spirit sphere "Dimensional Science") for the same reason.

Prior to that magical Traditions used their own systems of categorization; such as Foundation (what would become Arete in shared parlance) and Pillars (proto-spheres) the Order used during the Dark Ages.

It really holds together a lot better than you seem to think it does.

I'm a hipster who prefers foundations and pillars. Or Arts and praxes and nemeses as Opening The Dark calls them.

Anyway, the best explanation of the "consensus" I ever read was Malcolm Sheppard's hack Mage: The Dirty Version. https://mobunited.livejournal.com/52042.html Basically, there isn't a consensus reality. Human thought can affect reality, but reality exists outside of human thought.

I'm also a sucker for The Continuum fanbook from the 90s, and that only really works if reality exists outside of consensus since parallel realities are a product of 20th century scifi. http://evildrganymede.net/wp/rpgs/continuum/

Something like Gideon the Ninth wouldn't be feasible in Mage: The Ascension, but would be quite feasible in The Continuum.

Quote from: Aglondir;1130230Thanks for the info. And thanks for the compliment.

One true wayism runs rampant in the World of Darkness fandom. Anybody who wants to do anything with Vampire that isn't endless angst deserves a chance to shine.

Sure, Angel brooded all the time, but he also worked to save innocents and fight evil. Dark superheroes doesn't have to be a bad thing.

Quote from: Snowman0147;1130026How in the hell did I not make it on the list?  Doc Sammy you wounded me...

Though seriously the mechanics are shit.  The staff, freelancers are truly horrible people, Onyx Path owner might be a vile cheat that screws workers from their pay, and the fan base lost its fucking mind.  There is a lot to hate about it.

Yep, that sounds about right. Frankly there aren't a lot of alternatives for urban fantasy and there are even fewer alternatives for modern horror that isn't Cthulhu. The blue books are hard to replace with something that has a similar focus and tone.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1129995I have so many complaints, but here are a few important ones:

Entire post...

My biggest complaints are the purple prose, bad layout and lack of focus these games have. Really pretentious writing style. Needing a lot of words to say something simple. Combined with the bad layout that means a lot of flipping back and forth when reading. And after reading you still don't have a clue what to do with the sometimes cool concepts, because it's just vague. What are you actually supposed to do?

Quote from: CTPhipps;1130111Me: "Listen, jackass, I didn't come here for a cookbook. I came here for a meal."

LOL!

Quote from: jan paparazzi;1130243Yep, that sounds about right. Frankly there aren't a lot of alternatives for urban fantasy and there are even fewer alternatives for modern horror that isn't Cthulhu. The blue books are hard to replace with something that has a similar focus and tone.



My biggest complaints are the purple prose, bad layout and lack of focus these games have. Really pretentious writing style. Needing a lot of words to say something simple. Combined with the bad layout that means a lot of flipping back and forth when reading. And after reading you still don't have a clue what to do with the sometimes cool concepts, because it's just vague. What are you actually supposed to do?

Yeah, that's something I also had a problem with. What I noticed is that the major arcana tribes from Nephilim were better at providing motivations than WW splats, since they were generally built around goals to pursue and quests to quest. For example, the Temperance arcanum are healers: they go around healing people and honing their healing skills. Angel, for example, is a textbook example of a Strength arcanum initiate because he hunts demons.

Quote from: CTPhipps;1130165The thing about that was they started rolling back the Avatar Storm almost immediately after they introduced it with the Stormwardens and the Rogue Council. They also did the Revised Convention books that, aside from being blatant Technocracy propaganda, were still very popular with their more heroic depiction of the Union. A lot of people who hated the Avatar Storm softened on it as the primary result of it in the Union books was, "The Union is now 90% less psychotic and evil than it was while they were being controlled by Autocthonia, Control, and possibly the Nephandi."

M20 has also managed to do a lot with it.

Take note, I used to HATE the Avatar Storm with a furious passion but "rebuilding the Traditions and/or Union like the Rebellion rebuilding the Galactic Republic" turned out to be a lot of fun.

CT Phipps, I must ask you a serious question

What if someone were to ST a game of Vampire: The Masquerade and you were invited to play...but they explicitly rejected the metaplot of the original game.

Instead, they start with just the material in the 1E core rulebook and maybe also Chicago by Night 1E and decide to establish a completely separate counter-metaplot instead?

Like, it starts off with the default setting of Vampire 1E in the early 90's and as it goes along, completely different events happen and some of the other splats turn out different as well...and some don't appear at all

Would you be interested in seeing where that ST goes and what direction they take it in, or are you truly completely bound to White Wolf's metaplot that you'd refuse to play in a WoD setting that is a "What If" scenario?

It's not a toolkit setting...but it's not the metaplot WW had, instead it is a counter-metaplot

I'd be interested in how you'd play in a counter-metaplot chronicle that starts out like VTM did in V1, but then it diverges in a different direction, and you could use either the original V1 rules or the V20 rules

V5 is unable to be used for a variety of obvious reasons, both mechanical and setting-wise

Quote from: Doc Sammy;1130276CT Phipps, I must ask you a serious question

What if someone were to ST a game of Vampire: The Masquerade and you were invited to play...but they explicitly rejected the metaplot of the original game.

Instead, they start with just the material in the 1E core rulebook and maybe also Chicago by Night 1E and decide to establish a completely separate counter-metaplot instead?

Like, it starts off with the default setting of Vampire 1E in the early 90's and as it goes along, completely different events happen and some of the other splats turn out different as well...and some don't appear at all

Would you be interested in seeing where that ST goes and what direction they take it in, or are you truly completely bound to White Wolf's metaplot that you'd refuse to play in a WoD setting that is a "What If" scenario?

It's not a toolkit setting...but it's not the metaplot WW had, instead it is a counter-metaplot

I'd be interested in how you'd play in a counter-metaplot chronicle that starts out like VTM did in V1, but then it diverges in a different direction, and you could use either the original V1 rules or the V20 rules

V5 is unable to be used for a variety of obvious reasons, both mechanical and setting-wise

It's funny you should bring this up because I'm a Moderator for the Onyx Path Forums and just brought up this very subject with regards to another gameline that I used to be a huge fan of, which is to say, Forgotten Realms.

http://forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/main-category/main-forum/the-classic-world-of-darkness/vampire-the-masquerade/1388717-essay-top-ten-tips-to-running-the-sabbat-in-v5?p=1389271#post1389271

Basically, the long and the short of it is that Ed Greenwood really didn't like the changes that were made to his campaign setting [and it really is his baby, no matter who owns it] for the TIME OF TROUBLES and asked his players whether they wanted to continue playing 1st Edition Dungeons and Dragons Forgotten Realms or update themselves to 2nd Edition. His players unanimously agreed they wanted to stick with the campaign setting the way that Ed wrote it.

Ed still familarized himself with 3rd, 4th, and 5th Edition changes to his setting, though, and continued to give advice on the world after those changes because he's a boss.

The thing about this is that I've actually run a few games that have disregarded the metaplot of White Wolf games and see nothing particularly weird about running another Edition of a game. Indeed, it was the basic premise of V20 that it was "metaplot agnostic" which meant that, for all intents and purposes, it was 2nd Edition Vampire: The Masquerade. Even when they "rebooted" the game at the end of its shelflife with BECKETT'S JYHAD DIARY, they fully planned to make serious changes to the setting and disregard things like the Week of Nightmares and diverge from Revised. It's just Paradox ended up buying the license instead.

Which is a long way of saying, "I'm not overly married to the idea of continuity between editions. Whatever works at your table."

Quote from: CTPhipps;1130280It's funny you should bring this up because I'm a Moderator for the Onyx Path Forums and just brought up this very subject with regards to another gameline that I used to be a huge fan of, which is to say, Forgotten Realms.

http://forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/main-category/main-forum/the-classic-world-of-darkness/vampire-the-masquerade/1388717-essay-top-ten-tips-to-running-the-sabbat-in-v5?p=1389271#post1389271

Basically, the long and the short of it is that Ed Greenwood really didn't like the changes that were made to his campaign setting [and it really is his baby, no matter who owns it] for the TIME OF TROUBLES and asked his players whether they wanted to continue playing 1st Edition Dungeons and Dragons Forgotten Realms or update themselves to 2nd Edition. His players unanimously agreed they wanted to stick with the campaign setting the way that Ed wrote it.

Ed still familarized himself with 3rd, 4th, and 5th Edition changes to his setting, though, and continued to give advice on the world after those changes because he's a boss.

The thing about this is that I've actually run a few games that have disregarded the metaplot of White Wolf games and see nothing particularly weird about running another Edition of a game. Indeed, it was the basic premise of V20 that it was "metaplot agnostic" which meant that, for all intents and purposes, it was 2nd Edition Vampire: The Masquerade. Even when they "rebooted" the game at the end of its shelflife with BECKETT'S JYHAD DIARY, they fully planned to make serious changes to the setting and disregard things like the Week of Nightmares and diverge from Revised. It's just Paradox ended up buying the license instead.

Which is a long way of saying, "I'm not overly married to the idea of continuity between editions. Whatever works at your table."

Well, I'm going to invite you to the "counter-metaplot" game then.

It's an online game though, if that is fine with you.

Awesome.

I'd love to hear more.

Quote from: CTPhipps;1130283Awesome.

I'd love to hear more.

Excellent.

I'm planning to do a play-by-post format, and I'll send you the details when it is set up.

On an interesting note, it seems White Wolf will be doing 3 Text Based Interactive Novels to go along with its video games.

https://www.choiceofgames.com/2020/04/coming-soon-three-vampire-the-masquerade-interactive-novels/

I hate WW with a passion, just saying.

Quote from: The Exploited.;1130289I hate WW with a passion, just saying.

So do I, which is why I try to actively subvert and defy their canon and themes. :p

Really, White Wolf was awesome in the early days but then they jumped the shark hard in my personal opinion