Thursday, September 10, 2009

sorry for the spam. This is the last of going through my archives and posting the good bits

Selene: So... if Aetius is your fav Ventrue AT, and Dean is your favorite Lasombra, and Selene is your favorite Tremere AT
Selene: Who do we need to add to flesh out the pack?

CamCoord
: Zio! as your pack priest.

Selene
: Bah.
Selene: He's not worthy.

CamCoord: Look
CamCoord: It's not all stupid powers
CamCoord: Someone has to explain genre to you guys

CamCoord: and Zio! has sabbat genre DOWN

Selene
: Until I monomancy him.

CamCoord: why?
CamCoord: he's your priest and you're vinc to him is huge

Selene
: Dammit.

CamCoord: He talks about how fucking awesome you are in service to the sword of Caine

Selene: This Sabbat thing blowz.

CamCoord: He worships your dark aura of death
CamCoord: and appeases your ego as the ultimate thaumaturge killing machine

Selene
: okay
Selene: well
Selene: maybe.

CamCoord: He hearlds your entry into each esbat with a confessional of your glories and triumphs.
CamCoord: Think Chaucer from A Knights Tale, if Chaucer was a blood drinking fiend celebrating the gifts that Caine has given all of you and signing while you make the blood flow
CamCoord: What the Cardinal of Baja and Alto California would do with such strong swords

Selene
: Ok. Maybe it doesn't suck too bad.

CamCoord: Like I said, it's the roleplay part. Leave that to us. ;)

The Sabbat is really easy to play, harder to play well. The Camarilla is harder to play, but honestly, once you get the basics, it's very easy to play. And no, Camarilla does not mean playing the biggest bastard out there with out care of feelings. The point of the Camarilla is the struggle to hold on to your humanity, if you're playing like you're a sociopathic monster killing by proxy you are doing it wrong.

The Camarilla game, death is cheating, killing your opponent robs you of an opponent. Robs you of your Joker or Sherlocke Holmes. Sure it's satisfying and some concepts in OWbN just need killing, but that should be the players choice or the ST's input. Not necessarily through PVP violence.

The concept of "Face" is part of what Camarilla society is based on. How you are seen, how others treat you, that's the important thing. Losing Face is death, and being an unstoppable killing machine is not Face. Being able to say "my sheet is bigger than yours" is not Face. Saying I don't care is not a luxury, because then you've allowed yourself to lose Face and you'll be tainted and when it is something you care about, you'll be alone with no friends because no one likes hanging out with that guy, and that's the problem with the Camarilla. You need to hang out with people, or you become the crazy hermit that needs to be put down.

Learn to use Face. Learn that being in the Camarilla means caring about how others see you. Learn that monsters on paths that show off how cool they are for being on a path is the Sabbat, not Camarilla and in the Camarilla, you may be forced to smile at them in a court, but you're not going to make them your facebook friend.
"The Selene Zoolander Center For Archons Who Can't Read Good And Wanna Learn To Do Other Stuff Good Too"

Dale loves this post.

Larry the Bruce - something about WoD and traits or something.

Me - WoD is not OWbN Genre.

Some ST named Jordan - "Are you serious? I know OWbN moved away from the books but should we get rid of WoD and make it some disney happy fun land?" His email is 10 times longer than mine. Mine was 5 words. His "OMG THINK OF THE GENRES!" was about 50.

Seriously.

A five word sentence gets me into trouble on the ST list (council I can do it in 3.)

My response -
Are you new?

I'm not trying to be mean, I just need to figure out how much of a 5 word sentence I need to explain.

Players quit rather than roleplay out the consequences of their PCs actions. STs say "omg, no one could have found out that secret" despte the player with the secret running around and telling it to everyone.

WoD - You're a shitty vampire, low on the totem pole, scared of the dark and the knowledge that for as cool as you are being a filthy bloodsucker leeching on humanity, there is always something bigger, faster, nastier than you.
OWbN
- "Let's have PC Justicars."

Council says that Coords should have to get everything they want to do approved by them. STs allow Trevor Wallace, the Prince/Archbishop/Setite Pontiff of Oakland who had his true name changed through a Setite ritual to avoid being discovered as a Path of Mars cracked out Brujah.

The Camarilla in OWbN is a violent, militant, xenphobic organization that promotes Paths of Enlightenment, getting Thaum to win, and that you don't need an accounting or to care about the Sect and it's rules as long as you can kill anything that has a splat book.

I am definitely not saying that OWbN is a disney theme park with desperate college students in costumes trying to keep the kids happy, wait.. .maybe I am if by kids you mean players with entitlement issues and juvenile power fantasies and costumes you mean STs.

Alan
Cam Coord

I recognize that not all get my humor, and that over email, it's harder, but really, it's starting to look like they're not even trying. They take themselves, the org, their PCs so seriously to psychotic levels that they can't deal with anything that might cause them to think or laugh at themselves.

The point I'm making is that OWbN genre gets used a lot on Council and ST lists. And that would be fine, but those same people like to turn around and defend their actions with WW genre, sometimes in the same breath. It gets annoying. We're playing a homebrew setting created by the power gamers that haven't quite yet and want to re-write the game to suit them, unless that's suddenly being used to get them, in which case it's "oh, well, the books say this is okay..."

It's become clear that a lot of the genre fail in the org is at the ST level and they're willingness to hand out cookies but never bother to explain to their players the game they are playing.

And again, this isn't a burnout rant, I'm not there yet, but sometimes I wish these people would rather explore why they play and what they want out of a LARP rather than spend so much energy on an email over 5 words.