All Things World of Darkness

RE: Seekings...

I've never been a fan of "Train to Level-Up" mechanics/requirements in games. Particularly ones that are understood to be roleplayed in detail and cannot be engaged in as a group.

Like Seekings.

If I were playing in a duet game? Great. Love it. The entire things is about one character? Then no problem, let's lean into that and get weird.

But playing a game that's a group game? Where everyone else just has to sit there and watch you be self-indulgent about your Paradigm? No thanks. Stuff like Seekings destroy momentum and give everyone else a reason to check out.

If you're gaining XP, going on "adventures"? Then that's the only "training" you need, that's your Seeking. All the things they want you to say your character learns in a Seeking? Nah, they're learning that stuff on their adventures. And reflecting on them at night/in the down time that we don't zoom in on.

I/the table I've played Mage at never leaned much into the philosophy aspects of Paradigm, etc. (And I don't think we played long enough to go from 3 Arete - which is what everyone started with because we all had 3 dot Spheres - to 4. So never had to address a Seeking.)

It's all "timey wimey", hand-waving bullshit, and as an ST I think there are dangers in trying to make it "too real", so we didn't find it particularly fruitful to explore that bullshit. Because... it's just gonna be more bullshit.

We were definitely more interested in it all for creating Effects, and getting weird with Effects, and the Umbra, and how Awakened magick interplayed with the Shadowlands and some of the "higher level" concepts of WoD (the Triat and their realms).

Less about the internal, more amount the external and the World (of Darkness).

I feel like this approach diminishes importance of belief and paradigm in the system. Which is fine if that's how the troupe wants play their game, but making belief a cornerstone of your character's being just feels more rewarding in the long run. The books (from what I remember) emphasize that the mage needs to have strong beliefs to be able to affect the world around them. They need to believe that their way is the (only) right way. Why would a mage who strongly believes such a thing stoop down or try to mimic their lessers? The way that mage thinks about her craft would also affect what she can or cannot do, placing certain natural restrictions. For example a devout Chorister proficient in Life who would never willingly harm a living being. Or the difference in attitude towards spirits between Dreamspeakers and Hermetics. A Dreamspeaker might never treat the spirits in the same callous way that an opportunistic hermetic would, trying to subjugate or dominate them, for they revere these beings, while the hermetic wouldn't bother trying to appease or placate an Umbrood, seeing himself superior.

I think by setting a tight, compact and simple paradigm in the very beginning and then slowly expanding it with each Seeking, as your mage's understanding increases and changes, you as player create an easy to understand, meaningful and fulfilling arc for your character, that is enjoyable to play through. Making your paradigm more.. I don't wanna say restrictive, but more contained, defined, you also eliminate any potential friction with ST about what your mage can or can't do with your Spheres.

I think PbP is much more conductive for running Seekings (or Quiets), as it is easier to run solo/personal threads, as was briefly touched/discussed here. Plus I think a more contemplative Seeking can easily be weaved into regular play, with addition of character's thoughts on matters that are happening to the group or around them, thus "learning on the go", so to speak.
:3 I think that sort of "bs" is one of the funnest parts of Mage though.
Just goes to show that there are a bunch of ways to play WoD games, satisfying all sorts of players. That's what I like about it.

I agree with this

And I do have to say, much of my past Mage experience (which is limited) wasn't a very "intentional" experience.

We weren't discussing the cost and benefit and game theory elements to these things. We were just playing straight out of the book and trying to figure it out as we went. So what I'm saying here is totally through the lens of hindsight. And so what in hindsight I can see now was going on.

Plus it was all very stereotypical Traditions characters, and most of my experience was in the "Sorcerer's Crusade" setting and time (less Paradox). So a lot of the philosophy and paradigm stuff was understood through the most basic. stereotype assumptions of the given Tradition.

So there wasn't much that we understood that needed to be explored.

STing it for the first time as I am now and seeing things through the eyes of my players has been a very different and rewarding experience.

And has gotten me more interested in the philosophy and belief stuff.

I don't agree with the idea that it is 'mimicing lessers'. Paradigms are essentially interpretations of how the world works. Two mages who see the same phenomenon of the world will have differing interpretations of how it works, e.g. seeing a ghost manifest, one will talk about the restless soul and another about psychic residue.

This will also happen when witnessing Effects. Mage A just moved by Correspondence 3 from Tokyo to Singapore. Mage A will interpret it as being through curving spacetime to produce a zero-length one-way wormhole between locations. Mage B will interpret it as being because all space is one and by tapping into that oneness one can appear anywhere. Mage B will of course think that Mage A has the wrong interpretation about how Mage A's Effect works, but they both witnessed the Effect itself. So now that Mage B believes that Mage A is an ignoramus who nonetheless achieved a step through space, surely Mage B has no reason to believe that Mage B cannot do even better, what with being the one with the One True Interpretation.

That's an interesting way of looking at it. I'm not sure how it would work though. If the character believes that he can achieve anything within his paradigm, then what is he learning during his Seekings?

Starting with a paradigm that is a stricter, tighter set of beliefs, which then slowly expands as character's mystical understanding of magic and the world around them deepens, through the Seekings, which themselves are inspired by their experiences (such as witnessing different phenomenon, spells and effects), seems like a more solid baseline path to enlightment.

As an ST, I think it would feel a bit hamfisted if the character would just try to line up any possible effect with some, possibly farfetched, explanation, their interpretation of how it would work within their paradigm. There is nothing wrong with certain things not fitting your character paradigm at all, nothing wrong with the character thinking "this is not something I can do, this is not something that is possible". In time, as their understanding and perception broadens, they can come to see these possibilities. But if you do not have starting limits, than what are you overcoming?

Just because you believe you can hypothetically achieve something doesn't mean that you can do it right now. I can learn how to drive a ground vehicle, that does not mean I have the proficiency to drive one already. Seekings reduce need for tools (eventually), increase efficiency/competence/reliability of doing magick, and give access to higher-level Effects (by way of giving access to higher Spheres).
Well how do you imagine people learn about the world and work out how the world works? When you first confronted something outside your paradigm IRL, like a magnet levitating a frog in a lab, was your conclusion 'oh no, this cannot be, this is fake, millions of scientists engaged in study of diamagnetism are conspiring to fake those experiments! Or maybe an evil demon is messing with my senses and I can never rely on empiricism anymore!', or was it 'huh, this is interesting, I wonder how that works, I need to study more'?

Similarly to the above, in the game, when 'your' (your PC's) fellow Hermetic blows up a HITMark chasing you, would you think that is impossible and your buddy is deceiving you by making some sort of trick, or would you conclude that you observed an interesting phenomenon and would be curious to figure out how that works and how to replicate it (and maybe suspect your buddy has the wrong explanation how that works)?

I have this impression that when people advocate for 'narrowing' of paradigms in MtA, they disregard major cognitive faculties/tools that humans have and employ when they manage their paradigms, discover the world, and try to figure out how it works and explain it through their paradigms. But those faculties are why people can have paradigms at all.

How about a change of topic?

If you were to join/run a VtM game, which sect would you want to play as? What themes, moods, ideas would you want to explore?

On the low low low chance that I would play a vampire in VtM (because at this point I would rather play a Revenant), I think it would be interesting to explore the Inconnu (they're mysterious and all sects are wary of messing with them according to some claims). Failing that, Anarchs seem like a general default.

I used to be more intrigued by the Sabbat, but the more I looked into it, the more it turned out that the things I found interesting about the Sabbat were just a thin paint coating, and I did not enjoy such a bait-and-switch.

Why revenants specifically and not a regular ghoul? Any family in particular you want to play or is it something about revenants in general that you find interesting?

Several reasons:

- I like that Revenants are more sustainable (recovering 1 BP/day).
- I like that their powers are innate, inborn, not something they have to get externally each month.
- I like the idea of a 'weirdo' dynasty, one where the whole family knows and understands all the wainscot stuff and is on the same page about it. I find it harder to imagine relationships with 'normie' relatives a non-revenant ghoul would have and it would not be something I'd enjoy.
- There are two families of Revenants that I would be inclined to play. In fact, these two dynasties are so evocative for me that I classify many (most?) of my character concepts as leaning towards one or the other. The Obertus family are the 'natural' one of the two for me, easy to play but not as exciting of the two: obsessive, introverted, studious, secretive, and something of a wallflower, and most certainly not very social. The Zantosa family are the 'fascinating hard mode', more fun but more exhausting to play and easier to mess up: hedonistic, extraverted, social, spotlight-hogging, and not at all subtle.

One thing that kind of puts me off revenants is their distorted upbringing. I feel like it would be rather hard to get into the mind of a character who grew up in such a twisted environment, something akin to Leatherface's clan from Texas Chainsaw Massacre or the crazy families from Hills Have Eyes and those Rob Zombie's flicks. I'm all for exploring the character's traumas and such, but the revenant's baggage is a bit much.

I think playing Giovanni revenant can be alright, in line with their regular schtick.

See, this is the difference in how I expect the 'internals' of being a revenant individual/family to be like. They're a project meant to be stable for centuries. Elders who started this project want it to be a well-functioning organism, not a dysfunctional wreck. So do the members of the family. So assume that below all the sensationalism (written from a normie PoV) about crazy wrecks and trauma, there's an underlayer that is bizarre but not dysfunctional, and individuals to whom all the weird stuff is just not traumatic in a way it might be to someone with a more society-conformist upbringing.

The comedic take on that would be something like the Addams family, but I don't know if there's a quick way of conveying what I imagine a serious take on that would be. I guess maybe the Fly II and Deus Ex II come close but are from a totally wrong genre: the two respective protagonists grew up in very much not normal circumstances, and there's a lot of not so good stuff involved in that, but their upgringers ensured they grow up well-adjusted, well-functioning, mentally healthy, and reasonably well adapted to the lives set before them.

The scarce material on them that I've read definitely gave me the impression that they are very disfunctional and bizzare, in a very Sabbat way. The difference is that they are still human, which makes their childhoods much less palpatable. I believe the majority of revenants follow Paths instead of Humanity, which is quite telling.

I find that they follow Path as indicative that they are more compatible in terms of worldviews with the worldviews of their respective vampiric patrons, and that what might be shocking and traumatic to normies is not to them. Trying to understand them through the lenses and biases of the Path of Humanity is probably doing them a disservice, I think.

I clicked all four in the poll.

• Camarilla - classic tropes. A lot of vampire fiction, including for example True Blood, involves local bosses leading to regional bosses leading to some global hierarchy. The coterie gets involved in local issues and slowly becomes exposed to the machinations of elders. So much to game there.
• Anarchs - As soon as you introduce the global machinations, then you have the immediate responses to confirm or to rebel. The Convention of Thorns did not end the Anarch Revolt, but how do you avoid falling under the heel of the true monsters and keep your humanity?
• Sabbat - my favorite sect to run as Storyteller. The bizarre and grotesque philosophies in a melting pot of competing drives provides a lot to explore. For the player, what is it to be human, and the corollary, what motivates you if you're not? Part and parcel with the Sabbat comes the Black Hand/False Hand.
• Inconnu - I always include these in my games but I'm not sure how relevant they are to play. After all, the general consensus is that they are outside the jihad, so their motivations are more elusive and vague.
• Tal'mahe'rha - another faction. Two of my recent games focused heavily on them, first leading the coterie/pack away from the established powers, and into the mysterious Gehenna cult that is the true black hand. What do the eldest fear, and what mysteries lie deep in the shadows of Enoch?

I'd add another option I read in the v5 corebook: Unbound. What if your group, isolated at conception, thinks they're the only vampires that exist? I ran this as a premise here a number of years ago, and tied of into the mystery of the Beckoning, with the Sabbat entirely abandoning Montreal.

Maybe I'm a basic bitch but the Cam presents such a fertile field for storytelling. I can never get enough.

I'd love a non-standard setting for that (Dark Ages, Victorian, or just non-American modern day), but I'll play in a Cam game any day if the week.

The Cam are the ones who really put the Masquerade, in Vampire: the Masquerade, afterall.

I clicked Anarchs too, but it's honestly a pretty niche game that I'd be interested in Anarchs (and that would be one that basically eschewed the social and political focus of "normal" games and focused on something "grittier"/Street level/survival oriented).

I clicked Camarillla because I still haven't gotten to play a classic Ventrue or Tremere blood mage for more than a session or so, but obviously I love Tzimice and Old Clan Tzimice and True Brujah

New to the forums, new to the thread. Very interested in any of this.

I clicked Camarilla, but honestly, I'd play Sabbat if there was a chronicle revolving around a Sabbat pack infiltrating a city for the first time.

So on a cursory look it's mostly Cam/Anarch game folks are interested in, huh.

I've been tentatively contemplating getting another WoD game up, but have been flip-flopping between ideas, unable to settle on something concrete. Don't really want a repeat of the previous attempt that ended in quite a faux pas, in part, I think, because it lacked a solid, decided on concept. And to be honest, I'd really like to play some Vampire myself, experience the goodness. We'll see, I suppose.