Prometheas

World of Darkness Beginning

How alive is alive?

World of Darkness Beginning

Seems legit. go for it.

When we have 5 character sheets we can begin

World of Darkness Beginning

^uhm, this is classic world of darkness. Not just that, we're using the 20th edition players guide new player introduction rules. so virtues and vices will be unnecessary until later game when everyone's used to the mechanics.

Though, clan toreador in old world of darkness would substitute just fine, your starting powers will be auspex, celerity, and presence though.

And don't forget cWOD uses awareness, appearance, and charisma instead of resolution, presence, and composure

World of Darkness Beginning

Hi. I would be interested in creating a vampire for this game. I've not played this version of the game. I am also new to this "RP" style so if I make errors along the way I apologize in advance. I did read all the literature and current politics for this version. As for charater generation do we get the 5/4/3/ for attributes, and 11/7/4 skills? Or are you doing 30 points for everything? My first question, the time/date/location(for language) we are starting at? The other question is, are we going to be brand new agents of darkness(needing a sire to tell us the sun is bad and to explain disciplines) or are we semi knowledgeable? Are the players able to dictate how their characters embrace went our will that be your domain?

@Markofkri

Thank god! someone actually asks questions!
1.)It's going to be a base 30 points for everything(meaning your left with 21 points as 9 are spent on having at least a 1 in each attribute). I went with this because everyone's going the start out just turned and it prevents people from being pop-stars in their previous life.

2.)Vampires will get a sire(as you kind of need one to become a vampire), but other supernaturals who can turn on their own will have to buy the merit background.

3.)Your embrace will be determined largely by you clan, as each clan is rather ritualistic about how they go about it. But as far as your character's backstory and how they met their sire is up to the player. It's your character after all.

The location of the story will take place in Santa Monica, quite a bit before the events in bloodlines if you get the reference. We just need 5 people's character sheets to start a campaign, and then anyone is free to enter or leave as they like. This is just the start, so it will focus mainly on world building and establishing the "regulars", or players who are in the story frequently enough to be the main characters,

World of Darkness Beginning

feel free to ask questions in the comments

World of Darkness Beginning

Just to clarify, everyone starts out with only 30 "freebie points" to make their character. each point buy's one "dot" in everything. If you spend one freebie point to by knowledges: Computers, you get Computers 1. If you spend another point, you get computers 2.

( 9 points is automatically taken from this total to buy one point in each "attribute", leaving "21". This is because a person with Strength 0 would be too weak to move and a person with Intelligence 0 would be permanently in a coma.)

I must also mention you cannot raise your starting willpower above 5, and everything else has a starting limit of 3. (you can't start out as a super-model, you have to play as average Joe for a while)

I would also like to introduce Backgrounds and merits

Backgrounds

Backgrounds are the leftover things from your old life or the things that you can fall back on to give you A slight edge. Things like an old job to provide income, a house on the edge of town, influence in an industry, fame, and even things provided after your sudden change into a supernatural being.

Backgrounds aren't something you HAVE to have, on the contrary many supernaturals start out with nothing from their old life as a matter of choice ton keep loved one's safe.

Backgrounds are bought with freebie or experience points at any time(you can get another job if you need the money), and like everything else the starting limit is 3 (no corporate CEO's or famous models).

Some examples:

Resource- A steady flow of income from a job or savings account

influence- Your ability to affect a group or industry

Allies- Buddies you can rely on and who expect the same in return

Generation(vampires only)- The generations between you and caine, This background increases your max blood pool and allows you to spen more blood each turn. Can be bought up to 5.

Familiar(mage only)- A familiar that is the only way to get rid of paradox without suffering consequences. the Higher the background the more powerful your familiar and the more paradox it eats.

Arete- A mages understanding of the universe, none of a mages spheres may be higher than this background.

Totem(werewolf or spirit only)- A gaurdian spirit who watches over you or your pack. It will help you in tough situations and will even teach different gifts depending what spirit it is

Merits

Merits are an extra edge your characters has that makes them unique. Maybe they were born with the ability to heal fast, maybe they own a nightclub, or maybe theirs just something about them that makes you want to do what they say.

Merits are as numerous and diverse as knowledges, ranging wildly from owning said nightclub (3 point merit), to remembering everything in perfect detail(2 point merit), to even having a gaurdian angel watching your back in the worst of times (6 point merit).

The beautiful about merits is they have no starting limit. you could buy a 6 point, a 7 point, heck even a 10 point merit and none would be the wiser (still costs 10 freebie points to but a 10 point merit).

If you're thinking this is all getting a little expensive then allow me to point you to Mr.merits brother and best friend:

Flaws

What are flaws?

flaws are the little drawbacks your character has. She could be be clumsy(botched, 3 point flaw), slow(absent-minded, 2 point flaw), be unable to perform a certain school of magic(inept, 5 point flaw), or be just a little bit too on the crazy side(derangement, various).

You may ask "Why the H*** would I want to buy a flaw", but you don't buy flaws, flaws buy YOU.

For every flaw you get you get an equal amount of freebie points to the flaws rating. So if a mage gets the "sphere inept" flaw for spirit, that mage can Never cast spirit magic, but in return gets 5 points to spend on anything he wants.

That's not even the best part.

For every flaw with a rating above 3, you can raise one attribute/talent/power up to that flaws rating. That same mage could take the extra points to raise his appearance to 5 and be that super-model you always dreamed of and still have 22 points(more than the 21 he started off with) to spend on everything else.

God help him if he ever runs across an evil spirit though, Mua ha ha ha ha.

World of Darkness Beginning

Please post your full character sheets here

Any questions about clan, breed etc. that I haven't gone over do to the vast number of things I'd have to write, ask in the OOC tab.

When posting in the IC forum please only post your current health and point pools at the top of your post and bolew that post your current humanity score, like so:

Mage

2/5/20
9
above the mages health is orange/willpower is white/mana is blue
and the humanity score is yellow

Werewolf

2/5/3/4
9
above the mages health is orange/willpower is white/gnosis is green/rage is purple
and the humanity score is yellow

Vampire

2/5/14
9
above the mages health is orange/willpower is white/blood is red
and the humanity score is yellow

World of Darkness Beginning

Basic Mechanics, Sheet Design, etc.

World of darkness is a turn-based role playing game set in modern day earth with fantasy and sci-fi elements. With the right skills and powers there is technically no limit to what you can do, the mechanics only exist to somewhat quantify what you can do(and to keep newborn vampire from trying to say they can tear apart buildings with their mind.)

Each player will pick a starting creature, a nature/demeaner, and select their powers from 21 starting points.

All actions are determined via dice roles(10 sided only) and as such some effects will be unpredictable and spectacular

To all the friends I invited to this forum, this is the forum you ask questions on. If you put them anywhere else, delete them immediately.

The Basics

In world of darkness each character has a number of mechanics that determine whether or not they're going to die.

All of these abilities are measured on a scale of 1-5 exempt in some cases players and NPC's that can exeed this scale up to ten.

All abilities in world of darkness are classed into three types

Attributes

All attributes require at least one dot each as its impossible to have zero in any thing(this first dot is automatic and doesn't need to be bought) and these attributes are classed into different types depending on use.(for reference, having five in any ability means your a master of that ability. Example 5 dots in computers means your a world class programmer and having 5 dots in appearance means you have the looks of a supermodel. conversely have a one in anything means your a dud, a one in appearance means your kind of ugly, a zero means people would have trouble even looking at you.

Mental

Wits-Your ability and speed to process information.

Awareness- your ability to use your senses and understand your surroundings

intelligence- your ability to understand and store knowledge.

Social

Appearance- your looks

Charisma- your ability to draw others into your way of thinking.

Manipulation- your ability to manipulate people.

Physical

Strength- your strength

Stamina- your health

Dexterity- your speed and hand-eye coordination.

Natural

willpower- your ability to resist control and manipulation. it's the only trait the anyone can raise to ten normally and it equals how many willpower "points" you can store, which can be spent on various things like temporary immunity to mind control to superhuman feats of strength.

power points- whether it's blood for vampires or mana for mages the number of these you have stored determines how often you can use your powers, no points no magic.

Health levels- how much damage you can take until you die, your health levels are equal to 0 plus your stamina. If your health hits zero you don't die, your just bruised up a bit, but any further damage will limit your ability to fight until it hits -5, at which point you're knocked unconscious. when your health hits -6 you die.

All classes also can suffer one of three types of damage
Bashing damage- punching, kicking, blunt weapons, etc. damage from these weapons can be ignored with a stamina role.(example: if the player is hit with 1 point of bashing damage and they make a stamina role that makes one success, then the damage is "soaked" and they don't take damage.

lethal damage- knives, guns, claws, etc. this damage living thinks can only soak this damage magically. undead being (vampire, zombies, etc.) can soak this like basing damage.

aggravated damage- fire, radiation, magic, etc. extreme/magical damage that can only be soaked with magic and cannot be healed naturally.(basically if you don't have any healing magic and you'r hit by this, you're screwed)

abilities

Abilities are sub divided into categories like attributes, but unlike attributes you don't need to have at least one dot in any or all of them (but you want to have some a least.)

Talents

Talents amplify the attributes you already have, making them stronger in some situations.(example: you have awareness 3 and your looking for someone in a crowd, so you would role 3, 10-sided dice with difficulty 9(meaning you have to role a 9 of higher) and one success finds them. If you had alertness 3 on the other hand, then you would role awareness 3 + plus alertness 3 which would equal 6 dice to role, making things easier.

Alertness- mastery over your senses, strengthens the awareness attribute.

Athletics- increases strength and dexterity out of combat (running, swimming, etc.)

Brawl- increases strength in combat (hitting in the right spot, kicking his legs from under him, etc)

Dodge- increases dexterity in combat (Dooodge!)

Empathy- increases manipulation

Expression- increases charisma

Intimidation- increases appearance when scaring people.

Leadership- increases charisma

Streetwise- increases intelligence outside of social gatherings and business.

Subterfuge- AKA the ability to lie convincingly, increases manipulation

Skills

Skills is your ability to do stuff like use melee weapons or drive a truck, and the effects of having 1 to 5 dots in a skill varies for getting better a using melee weapons in melee to learning how to diffuse bombs in security.

As the number of skills you can have is technically infinite, I'll list a few basic ones. I also won't hold it against you if you want to make up your own, just ask me first.

Melee- the ability to use melee weapons

Drive- the ability to operate vehicles. each dot not ony determines how good you are at driving, but also the "level" of vehicle you can drive.(you're not piloting a jet at drive 2)

Crafts- ability to make basic constructs and art.

Firearms- ability to operate guns, works similar to drive in levels.

stealth- your ability to hide out of sight.

security- your ability to create(or break into) secured area's.

Knowledges

Knowledges is a bit more ambiguous. I'ts basically what you know, like for instance a hacker would have computers 4 as a knowledge, but a man with computers 1 could just about operate widows without breaking it.

With knowledges your character character can create artifacts, hack computers, or tear apart one of his enemies carefully laid out plans. Further more knowledges can be specialized, for example if the previous hacker specialized in Apple computers, he could hack into any Apple computer, phone, or tablet at 6 difficulty, while the same hacker with just computers 4 would have to role against 8 difficulty.

Unfortunately specialized knowledges are limited, that hacker with Apple computer 4 won't be hacking into any microsoft windows computers.

Feel free to make up any specialized or unspecialized knowledges as you see fit.

Powers

Powers are the supernatural abilities specialized to each class and have completely different mechanics for each one. so below I'll put a basic description for each class below.

Mage

Mages are the most powerful among supernaturals. Their powers are based on sphere of influence that grow stronger the more dots you put into them. unfortunately they have the weak constitution of normal mortals and are easily killed at earlier stages.

Also must be very careful of how they use their powers a warping reality to your will isn't without consequences. If a mage bends reality enough that he breaks the laws of physics(turning off gravity, flying, shooting fire from his hands), he causes whats called paradox. For every point of paradox a mage gains, his maximum mana is lowered by 1(so if a mage has the normal max of 20 and he gets 1 paradox, its lowered to 19). If his paradox exceeds 20(maximum mana) he's wiped from existence(automatic death, no restarts, no resurrections, non-supernaturals forget he ever existed, etc). Also by blatantly using magic in the open, your letting a lot of unwanted attention know exactly where you are and that your a mage(enemies ranging from minor annoyances to ancient gods, many of which thinking a mage would make a fun toy or a light snack.)

Paradox can be "absorbed" at a rate of one point per "scene"(whenever we pick up where we left off), but in return for the lost paradox point they will have to face a story-based punishment (getting the worst diarrhea of their life, one of the companies they have stocks in going out of buisness, getting run over by a car, or having all their bones brake for no reason to start off). You can also get a Familiar that will happily eat paradox at a rate depending on it's strength ( a 1 dot familiar will eat 1 paradox an in game month, while a 5 dot familiar will eat one paradox an in game day), but the stronger the familiar the more mana it will need to maintain it's form( a 1 dot familiar would need one mana a week, while a 5 dot familiar would need 5 paradox a week).

Mages can only ever store 20 points of mana at any given time, and they don't regenerate this naturally. Mages can only refill their mana byeither stealing it from a node(a fountain of magical power, all of which are scattered randomly across the world and of varying usefulness.also probably guarded by other supernaturals), stealing the power directly from another supernatural(which they won't be very happy about), or absorbing it from the environment if you have prime 5.(this won't get you much mana back and risks paradox)

Their "spheres" are:

Correspondence- power over space and distance.

Entropy- power over probability and chaos

Forces- power over the forces of nature

Life- Power over life and mutation.(P.S. this is where healing spells come from.)

Matter- Power over the properties and reactions of matter

Mind- power over thoughts and will

Prime- Power over the flow of magic (P.S. this is your only way to block enemy spells and magic)

Spirit- power over magical realms and beings

Time- power over time itself

Werewolf

Werewolves not be as powerful as mages, but they are by far more brutal.

Werewolves naturally heal 1 point of non aggravated damage each turn, all damage from their claws and fangs is aggravated, they're able to shape-shift at will between five forms(wolf, dire-wolf, werewolf form, partial wolf form, and human form), and in all forms except human they gain increased strength stamina and senses.

Their powers are based on gnosis(pronounced like genesis without the first e) and rage. These act similarly to willpower in that they have a 1-10 dot rating that determines how many gnosis or rage "points" the werewolf can store at any time. gnosis is used to power a werewolves various gifts, magical spells tought to them by other werewolves and spirits. Rage on the other hand is used to perform superhuman feats and even resist death itself.

A werewolf's gnosis doesn't regenerated except at caerns(yes this is the same thing as a node, so a mage looking to drain magic from a caern my find a very unhappy werewolf waiting for him and vice versa), or by devouring spirits(which doesn't gives his friends a good reason not to teach you that new gift you wanted). A werewolf's rage on the other hand can regenerate from looking at the moon, being in stressful situation, or a the start of combat. Be careful though as whenever a werewolf regenerates rage it has to roll it's current number of rage dots, and if it gets enough successes, will go into a frenzy(note that this is not a good thing). A frenzied werewolf will immediately shift into werewolf form and attack anyone or anything in sight. While frenzied a werewolf doesn't need to role strength when attacking, it's an automatic success, meaning that a werewolf with 3 strength in human form will do 3+2(because he's stronger in werewolf form)+1(because he has claws in werewolf form) for a total of 6 aggravated damage to whatever poor fool was with him that day.

The number of werewolf gifts is theoretically infinite, and like vampires, the only way for a werewolves to learn new gifts is in game from NPCs, not bought with experience points.

All Werewolves have an inherent weakness to silver, and as such take aggravated damage from it.

The first three gifts a werewolf gets are determined at creation by the following:

breed- whether your werewolf was born from a wolf and a werewolf parent, a human and a werewolf parent, or two werewolves

auspice- the phase of the moon your wolf was born under

clan- the clan of werewolf your werewolf was born from.

Vampires

Vampires are the immortal undead and the hidden puppet masters of the world of darkness.

vampires powers stem from blood, and thus they can refill their "blood pool" by drinking from any of the squishy mortals around them(including mages and werewolves).

Vampiric powers are also measured in "disciplines", 1-5 level powers that give you new abilities at every level(example the 1 dot power of presence "awe" allows them to hold the attention of everyone around them, and at the level 2 the character also gains "dread gaze" the ability to scare the s*** out of anyone they're looking at and keeps the power "awe" to use whenever he wants).

Vampires Also don't need to make strength rolls, they're automatic successes. This means a vampire with 2 strength doesn't have to roll two 10-sided dice to determine damage (most likely only getting 1 or 0 successes and doing 1 or no damage.), they just do the full 2 damage(+1 if your vampire has claws, and vampire claws do aggravated damage.)

the amount of blood they can hold is determined by their generation. All vampires stem from the first vampire, caine, as such the more generations between you and caine the less powerful you are as a vampire. This is called a vampires generation. The higher your generation the less blood you can hold/spend, the less you can increase your attributes, and the lower the maximum power of your disciplines

All vampires are weak to fire and sunlight and will take aggravated damage from them or run on sight. Vampires must also make frenzy rolls the same way werewolves do, but instead a vampire rolls willpower with a difficulty of 10 - their humanity score.

Vampire's also have inherent clan weaknesses based on what clan the vampire that turned you was. A vampire's clan also determines your first three disciplines, while these disciplines can be trained with experience points new disciplines can only be learned from other vampires.

Character Sheet Example

Name: John Doe
Nature: survivor
Demeanor:Conformist

Willpower: 4

Health: 2

"Power points":"?"

Attributes:
Strength 3 Stamina 2 Dexterity 1

Appearance 2 Manipulation 1 Charisma 2

Intelligence 3 Wits 2 Awareness 3

Traits:

Skill: Brawl 1 Drive 2
Knowledges: computers 1
Talents: N/A

Powers:

"current powers"

Humanity

Everyone has a humanity score that acts as a measure of the characters morals. Everyone's scor starts out at 10 and will decrease by 1 whenever they do something that's not morally sound(like murder). If it hits 0 Then your character becomes an NPC and you'll have to make a new one. Humanity can be increased by doing good deeds(saving the world) or with experience points.

World of Darkness Beginning

"And it only in the depths of the darkness that humanity shall find its true purpose, not as the inheritors of a universe they don't understand, but as pawns for the true puppeteers that skulk in the shadows"

Welcome to the World of Darkness

These are the rules:

1.All PC's have a humanity score or equivalent that measures the sanity of their character

2.If your score hits zero your character becomes an NPC and you have to make another

3.I reserve the right to take away points of humanity at any time if you act too crazy.(this prevents grieffing)

4.Anyone can join in with a new character at any time or make a new character at any time if theirs dies.(this is a flexible game.)

5.I am the story teller and I expect to be treated with respect. This is a complex game and I have to keep track of all the details, so if I mess up from time to time don't hassle me for it.

6. Let's all have fun

just a test

Spoiler

spoiler

good to know