#wod worldbuilding

[newwavenosferatu]

So here's an OOC post about some of the setting changes I made for my own WoD games, as I combined some 5th edition lore with majority v20 stuff.

- SchreckNet is still around! If you know me you know I love SchreckNet, and it while it getting compromised is a good metaplot development, I want to use SchreckNet in my games. The newest version, SchreckNet 3.0 uses a sort of VPN type deal. It's kinda like a reddit-radio combo where people go to different "tunnels" (channels/subreddits) where they get information uploaded in time sensitive transmissions. Most of these fade after a couple of days, and all tunnels are heavily watched and surveilled. It's a Nossie only deal right now, with some Nossies acting/posting on behalf of other clans.

-Hecata is a mini-sect, not a clan. Many members of the "necromantic" clans and bloodlines have joined together in a very volatile alliance for strength and protection. I know this is pretty much just v5 but I want to get rid of the idea that they are a clan in their own right, as I think them being a sect that some deathly Kindred join, but not all. There's still independent Giovanni for example

-Beckoning and Gehenna War are dialed back a lot. Not nonexistent but there are still plenty of elders and even older generations around. Many used the Beckoning as a clever disguise to advance their schemes, move to new territory, etc. Gehenna War skirmishes are happening around the world, not just in East Asia

-Sabbat is still around in plenty of places, if now being a bit more secretive in their operations.

-Many Anarchs still viewed by Cam as an unruly group population of their population, not their own sect. In many places, Anarchs are more of a problem for the Ivory Tower than Sabbat packs or other outsiders .Many Anarchs have also established their own small, but heavily defended Baronies nearby or even within Cam territories.

-WoD Orientalism and other Problems. Probably gonna be the part some people don't like, but I don't care. I'm not interested in perpetuating harmful, misinformed views of other cultures, in life or in my games.I love WoD and it's games, but it had some horrible ideas that are still haunting the modern iteration of the games. Frankly, The Banu Haqim, Ministry, and Ravnos are just stereotypes-as-clans. They have been partially improved, but it's very hard to distance them from their initial versions. I will eventually be doing a major rewrite for these clans to remove the more unsavory bits . This goes for other WoD games too however. I think the lore changes to W5 were mostly positive. However, the majority of the tribes are based on a weird understanding of culture and ethnicity which in removing that, which is in my opinion is a good step, did kind of leave the clans feeling a little "samey". It's not that there can't or shouldn't be a wide array of cultures that our splats are a part of, the exact opposite is true. But to have so many of these clans/tribes/etc being rooted in only stereotypes just doesn't . For example, only about 30% of Get fell to Hauglosk. The ones that fell were the worst of the tribe, and now the main tribe don't have any fashy undertones, basically just Klingon Garou, which is what I always saw them as. Ministry are probably going to be focused on a fictional vampiric deity rather than a real world one, and not be as connected to ancient Egyptian mythology. It's sometimes a thin line between talking inspiration from other cultures and appropriating them in the most stereotypical ways but that's no excuse for doing some research and treating other cultures with respect . Banu Haqim being focused on justice is an improvement from them being just foreign assassins, but I feel like it still comes from a weird understanding of Islam and its laws and traditions. Ravnos are perhaps the hardest to separate from their cultural "influences" (in quotes because it's one of the worst most basic stereotype of GRT people I've ever seen). Even getting rid of the travelling element that makes the stereotypical association undeniable and keeping them as a sneaky clan ruling from the shadows is just as offensive and backwards.

-

#ooc #ooc post #vtm #wod #world of darkness #vampire the masquerade #worldbuilding #wod worldbuilding

[amygdalae]

Also to the previous anon, the entire lore of the Kuei-Jin is defined by orientalist weirdos. White Wolf wanted to make Asian vampires feel ‘foreign’ and ‘exotic’. The Kindred of the East core says this explicitly.

^

#im not very familiar w WoD stuff outside of vtmb but id heard a bit abt some of the worldbuilding being.... like that

[cocolacola]

sooo on the topic of my last post😁😁

if i could rewrite it so the events of Shadowlands never happened, i would. but in a world where i'm a blizz writer and some executive said "no we have to do this"? i would have put it way sooner. it would have been the expansion after wrath (and cata, mop, etc. would still happen in the same order afterward honestly).

and if that's not possible, at least keep Edge of Night relatively intact. the reason for all this is that sylvanas' motive for opening the gateway should have been her chasing arthas into the afterlife in her quest for revenge, leaving a path of destruction in her wake. have that instead of uther tossing arthas into superhell in a ~5 minute cutscene. i guess this sorta still requires her to fight bolvar but "destroying/rebuilding the helm of domination" was an AWFUL plot point anyway and im sure blizz could come up with another way to make a shadowlands portal without fucking up that bad.

you still get the satisfying character arc conclusion of "i cant let the person who hurt me control what i do now" that was used in EoN, but on a large plot-point level. we deserved to see a better representation of coming to terms with that life-ruining bitterness and overcoming it. all while denathrius still gets to exist lmao. SL fans win, Sylvanas wins.

cata being the expansion after sl would have been even more impactful, since there would be the conflict of azerothians feeling as if they had neglected their world in their fight in the shadowlands only to return to it being completely reformed. would have raised the stakes a bit, in my opinion.

all of this to say yeah, SL was possible to pull off and they didn't do it justice. fuck blizz fuck everything im done

#i know hindsight is 20/20 but this is all hypothetical #''what about garrosh in revendreth? he wouldn't have died yet!'' i hear you cry #good. his death in wod was enough for me we dont need him to jump out of a window for writer clout #and since anduin is still a little lad i think he can get his SL arc in some other way that works in with scourge worldbuilding #instead of the jailer using 'domination magic' because like. what #also kael'thas would have gotten closure a lot faster and im biased towards resolving that as fast as possible lmao #warcraft

[of-gods-and-gamemasters]

Time and Prophecy

On the Blog Today: Time and Prophecy, a different look at prophecy for Mage: the Awakening and Mage: the Ascension, but applicable to any #ttrpg with advanced magic. https://www.ofgodsandgamemasters.com/blog/time-and-prophecy

#Mage #fantasy #urbanfantasy #MageTheAscension #MageTheAwakening #WoD #NWoD #ChroniclesOfDarkness #horror #worldofdarkness #worldbuilding #magic

[mask131]

Have you thought of looking at the lore of the World of Darkness? It is the overarching world of Vampire the Masquerade amd Werewolf the Apocalypse, with a lot of unique takes on traditional folklore, religion, and mythology. I'd like to see what you think of it

Unfortunately you wouldn't see much what I think" about it because when it comes to World of Darkness I usually gobble things up and loses most critical thought X)

I am a HUGE, HUGE Changeling the Lost fan, and I also do enjoy a lot the Vampire the Masquerade lore. I only have a vague knowledge of the Vampire the Requiem remake, and I need to get into it in more details one of those days - and from what I understood and saw Changeling the Dreaming was indeed a bad game that Changeling the Lost surpassed in all ways. I did take a plunge into Werewolf the Apocalypse - especially because of the big evil company led by eldritch entities of chaos (that was my jam), though I have no knowledge of its remake - and I also did plan earlier to take a look at the two Mage games (but never could for now).

All in all I am a sucker for most World of Darkness/Chronicles of Darkness products - in terms of lore however cause I can't play them, but from what I udnerstood a LOT of people are just here for the lore and if they have to play they use the Vampire video games.

Though if you want my opinion for the actual over-arching world - I will confess, I actually do not care. I enjoy the lore and worldbuilding and twists of each games on its own, but when it comes to tying them all together into one universe I surprisingly find it the most boring part. Unless it is very well made, I tend to skip all the sections of books about crossovers.

As for "WoD vs CoD", I am a man who likes both and thinks they complement each other. WoD was the original, the start of the trend, ad it had this distinctive feel that you can't recreate anymore of the 90s/2000s Gothic and horror and dark urban fantasy - even though it also aged badly in some aspect, and alongside its best-sellers and masterpieces it had some really bad and flat instalments. CoD learns from its mistakes, takes new fresh twists, and brings a whole new ground of thought, inspiration and art to the table - and I will be forever thankful for Changeling the Lost. But I have to admit that several CoD games also lose a bit of the specific feel and specialty that made Wod special, resulting in several instalments either feeling too generic, too simplified, or just making them look pale and weak compared to their predecessors.

So overall it is a mixed bag.

If I ever made World of Darkness posts, it would be exposition posts where I just collect all info and shoot them back again X) Not much personal critical thought. But if people dig this up, why not? My original "creepy media" posts for the spooky season were the Magic the Gathring ones - but they are not doing quite well, so I can switch to posts about World of Darkness if that's what my audience wants! I just need to conclude the series of post for Dark Ascension that is stored in my drafts, and then I could switch to the White Wolf games

#world of darkness #chronicles of darkness #new world of darkness #changeling the lost #vampire the masquerade #werewolf the apocalypse

[skymagpie]

“Blizzard is currently trying to somewhat mend them“

Correction make worse, the writing has doubled down on orcs, trolls, goblins and Tauren are evil.

The latest book literally talks about how trolls are dumber on a genetic level than trolls.

This is even far worse than the mid 90s and early 2000s Warcraft which already was not great. Also it attracts real world racists if you want to hear.

Oh I know well about the stupid book, it made me so angry as someone who was hoping after 13 years the game would change for the better and also as a Khadgar lover (he would NOT say that, not after WoD and Legion and Dragonflight lol)

When I said that they are trying to somewhat mend it, I feel like I wanted to say they are trying to give these characters more diverse roles instead of just the stereotypes they wrote them in, like make them more three dimensional characters and we get to see them behaving in new ways (like instead of just orcs being warmorgering brutes we see them in roles like scholars, explorers, archeologists, Kirin Tor mages etc).

However that's why I added in the end that it's hard to do because the foundation is built on this racism, so you can't take it out without rewriting the whole worldbuilding. And it's so sad that they are still using the outdated stereotypes about the races like in that book and that it's part of their internal world building/lorebooks they give to these writers.

Also for your last sentence, I was surprised when I shouldn't have been that there are honest to God elf supremacists on Twitter and Reddit that think (white) Blood Elves are the pinnacle of creation along with (white) humans and that trolls are truly 'savage beasts'. Truly the level of derangement I should've expected.

I am sorry this was a very incoherent mess of a reply, but I am not eloquent with words and I have a lot of beef with WoW's racism (and misogyny!) I think that even if they are trying to diversify the cast, the cultural appropriation this is built on will always exist and the racism will always find its way around. I like some old stuff like "The Last Guardian" and its filled with racism to the brim. Sadly this is why I hope WoW fans talk about these things and don't shut down the discussion, in fact I encourage it.

#pls if you ever feel like correcting me or venting I am down because I think fandom doesn't talk about this games racism enough #world of warcraft

[megaweapon]

The current situation with Wizards is yet another reminder of why I think it’s good for the hobby that people explore other kinds of tabletop games. There’s no one end-all be-all game that fits every player, every group, or every scenario. There’s a wide variety out there designed to do everything from play a funny one-shot to organize a whole campaign.

Spend an evening with your friends playing a round of Fiasco. Get up to some action-movie nonsense with a night of Wu Shu. Play a night of Dread, a game whose primary mechanic is a Jenga tower. Try one of the many PBTA-framework games out there--City of Mist! Scum and Villainy! Monster of the Week! Make up your own with the framework, if you like.

Fall in love (as I did) with the storytelling potential of the Genesys system, which can be adapted to all manner of genre (most famously in the fantastic FFG Star Wars series of tabletop games). Again, you can build your own world off of this system, and there are conversion rules to get around the biggest stumbling block, which is their proprietary dice (and free resources to replace physical dice like skyjedi in-browser and RPG Sessions on discord).

Explore (one of my personal favorite) sci-fi settings in Eclipse Phase, a game that’s distributed under Creative Commons, so you can get all the source material you need free and legally. ...I wanna recommend Shadowrun because I do like some of the stuff it has going for it (less so others) but god I’m still recovering from 5th ed. Hopefully the new edition is better. I haven’t played the new edition of Traveller but I remember it as being a delightfully weird but very fun experience.

If you want something a little scarier, there’s always Call of Cthulhu (my personal first TTRPG ever and what got me into the hobby), the newer more action-packed Pulp Cthulhu, or the 20th-century cosmic horror explorations of Delta Green. World of Darkness’s latest edition has done some interesting stuff if you like classic monsters, and the WoD LARP scene is still going pretty strong if you want an “extended cast with a vague murder mystery parlor vibe” kind of experience.

There’s a ton of stuff out there to suit all manner of sensibilities and play-styles.  At the end of the day, it’s all about telling a story, whether that story is happy, horrifying, intrepid, or silly as hell. There’s more than one way to tell it.

I’ll wrap this rant up with my own personal experiences. Technically, the game series I’ve been playing the longest, continuously, is Exile Studio’s Hollow Earth Expedition. Me and my pals have, at this point, about a decade’s worth of storytelling, worldbuilding, and (most importantly) inside jokes from the several campaigns we’ve run from it.

It’s a defunct system now, and we’ve adapted our latest campaign for the Genesys system. We never got the third sourcebook we were wanting, so we’re making it on a WorldAnvil with our group. As a system, it was imperfect, and clearly not designed for the long campaigns we preferred. As a setting, it was compelling but definitely needed some tweaking and brushing up from players. HEX itself was a mere blip, and Exile Studios doesn’t even have a website anymore. Pretty sure they got snatched up by Studio2. Despite all that, though, it was the one that worked, somehow, for all of us.

You genuinely never really know which system is going to be the one that clicks in a way that lasts. Don’t hold yourself back from trying something new.

#ttrpg #idk man just my two cents #most of my current extended irl friend groups i met in SOME WAY #through ttrpgs #i hate to see the state the big names are dragging it in #a rant

[bonelessnerd]

I find your tagging system fascinating /pos would you care to elaborate on/explain it?

Oh well tbh its mostly just for my own refrence, the majority are inspiration stuff for various ttrpg games id like to run some day. This'll probably ruin the mystique, but here's some of the most common ones-

Dungeonpunk- more of an aesthetic or vibe, for the sort of stuff i think would be neat to see in a western fantasy style game like DnD. Sort of a mix of eastern artist's take on the genre, stuff like fromsoft games or old fantasy anime and rpgs, plus that sort of casually anachronistic vibe. Ive described the energy as being like, dungeon crawling with a sword and shield, but while also wearing a hoodie and sneakers. Saved for inspiration not just for dnd, but other ttrpgs like Fellowship, Dungeon Bitches and more.

Motw- Monster of the Week, a ttrpg you may be familiar with based on urban fantasy mystery series like Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Supernatural. Two of my other tags, Curiosity and Pierce Cove, are for different campaign ideas ive got. Curiosity is set in a small tourist trap town of the same name in the middle of the Nevada desert, and takes inspiration from stuff like Resident Evil, The X-Files, and the SCP Foundation. Pierce Cove is set in a dying east coast town beset by mysterious fog and missing persons, inspired by Stephen King's It, Silent Hill and The Magnus Archives

GBG- Ghoul-B-Gone, a Ghostbusters-pastiche short story i wrote a while back and still consider expanding on

Apocalypse World- inspiration for a campaign of the post-apocalyptic ttrpg of the same name. My particular idea is for a world plagued by creeping, ever expanding masses of meat and flesh, taking inspiration from TWD, Mad Max, Annihilation, and Dogscape

Strain- personal project, sort of a biopunk bodyhorror version of shonen battle anime like One Piece or MHA

Tendies- inspiration for a game of Tendencies: Spirits and Glamour, a ttrpg created by a friend meant to emulate battle anime like those mentioned above, but especially Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. Also my de-facto fashion tag.

Masks- for teen superhero ttrpg Masks: The Next Generation. Also a general purpose superhero universe and worldbuilding inspo tag

Lancer- Started out as a tag for the mech ttrpg Lancer, but became a general purpose mech, robot, spaceship and cyberpunk tag.

WoD- World of Darkness, well-known urban fantasy ttrpg brand. Im more compelled by the worldbuilding than anything else, and while vampires and werewolves are what the setting is more famous for, im mostly interested in Changeling the Lost and Promethean the Created, as well as the fan games Genius the Transgression and Leviathan the Tempest.

Mons- a general category for funny monster befriending and catching, digimon and pokemon esque stuff. I put stuff here that inspires my ideas for two radically different games, Animon and Monsters And Other Childish Things, so the tone might rapidly oscillate

Voidheart- inspo for Persona-inspired ttrpg Voidheart Symphony. Debated creating a tag for this one for a while, as i used to just fold it into other tags like Motw, Tendies and Dungeonpunk

Slasher- honestly just a tag for slashers, im just kinda intrigued by the idea of them as a monster archetype in the same vein as vampires and werewolves and such

I may have missed some, or left out the most self explanatory ones. Hope that clears stuff up, sorry if it was a long and unfulfilling read!

[misericorsalvator]

✨

Oh boy, first off your dedication to lore & your worldbuilding, all the way from way back when, is insane in the good way. And though your characters don't necessarily run by a WoD system nor were made exclusively with that in mind, you've done pretty damn good at integrating them near seamlessly 👌And that level of worldbuilding and creating a new system, that's pretty damn impressive mate

#{ooc} #{ask meme}

[idkimnotreal]

we need to talk about night elves in warcraft.

(disclamier: i take every lore retcon after warcraft 3 with a lot of grains of salt, and my reasonably canon timeline stops roughly when wod ends. i have reasons for this)

most societies in real life are patriarchal. historians and archaeologists speculate why that is, but nobody knows for certain. some societies are matriarchal, but they are far and in between.

in worldbuilding, i once read something that struck me as very true: if you want to build a world where a matriarchal society exists, there needs to be a reason why women would dominate over men. while matriarchal societies exist in the real world, patriarchal societies are something like 90% of them, so if you're to make use of an exception, you need to explain it. patriarchy is seen as the natural state of things, the status quo, especially in the west, so matriarchy needs to make sense (since in worldbuilding everything that is not like earth needs to be built from scratch. that's what it is). while it's maybe not right that "men are stronger, hence they dominate", it's the idea people in the west have about patriarchy, that while it may not be right, men have ruled women so far in history because they were physically stronger.

so, following that line, if men and women exist in a fictional universe such as they are in our world, but women dominate, the question then becomes: what exists in that world that offsets the physical advantage men have over women?

kaldorei society is a matriarchal one. women rule and men are expected to take on the role of scholars. there isn't such a society in real life, as far as i know (where only women or the dominated sex are scholars, and most importantly, where scholars were separate from priests pre industrial revolution). but it makes sense in fiction. arms and religion in pre-industrial societies were the pillars of power. the fact that only women in kaldorei society are permitted to become priestesses and be sentinels or rangers tells us that, in their society, women are in charge of government, entirely. they're both bureaucrats (priestesses) AND soldiers (sentinels and rangers).

but why does that happen? why is kaldorei society a matriarchal one? because night elves have a very deep connection to the emerald dream. their scholars have to devote quite literally their entire lives to the pursuit of knowledge. and if men are supposed to be the scholars in kaldorei society, then that takes up all of their energy, and the ruling is left to women. i found it surprising, thinking about it, that this is so logical and makes so much sense when they came up with it in the freaking 90s, pre third wave of feminism. and freaking blizzard too, and we know how "egalitarian" their office culture was at the time (bill cosby room etc). they came up with the idea of a society ruled by women that makes sense, that would make sense if it existed in real life (if magic were real too).

since there was no other society in warcraft that practised druidism (taurens only joined/were invited later, and trolls and worgens much later), there wasn't enough time for such changes to take place in their respective societies, or not all male taurens became druids, unlike with the night elves.

it's even up to debate that whether women ruling kaldorei society is a higher role than being a druid. it may be that ruling was left to women because the dream was seen as a much more noble goal. similarly to how politicians aren't the most important pieces in government today, but high ranking businessmen such as ceos. politicians are in charge of government, but they're not the most powerful people. it could be that druids are more powerful than priestesses and sentinels, even though they're not in government. so kaldorei women wield significantly more power than real world women pre 21st century, but still not as much power as real world men did pre 21st century.

see. i find it all so smart. kaldorei society seems so perfectly explainable for a society so different from ours. i know it was always the intention that they seemed very different and mysterious to humans, back in warcraft 3 times. and blizzard did it very well, i think.

[localfaecryptid]

Listen if anyone would like to just send me massive amounts of worldbuilding for their WOD/COD home games that would be so cool of you. I keep stumbling upon the odd public obsidian.md site and I just need MORE.

[foxxsong]

It's always weird watching people be startled over WoD fascism accusations and the revelation that Nazis aren't always handled the most carefully in their games because, like... Have any of the people surprised by this shit ever actually READ the VtM books? I have. They're absolutely slam packed with every single long-standing conspiracy theory regarding Jews I know of. I love what they've done with the clans and I love the tabletop for it's story possibilities and gameplay, but reading the Worldbuilding section of 5th edition made me wonder when my book was switched with The Protocols of the Elders of Zion without me noticing.

No shit there might be fash on staff. Those ideas had to come from somewhere.

#yes yes i understand the concept of dogwhistles and how they're only obvious to people that already know them #but it always baffles me that anyone can read about the Jyhad and how it means that Elite/Elder blood-drinkers secretly control the world #and not go “Oh! This was either written by Fash or Idiots” #fuckin hell guys the WoD universe has werelizards that want to produce as many children as possible #to survive their next mass extinction #the OG universe was written by at least ONE Nazi and you will never convince me otherwise

[of-gods-and-gamemasters]

"Everything is true. Nothing is forbidden."

New on the Blog: Awakening to Ascension pt1 a Treatise on the Nature of Reality, concerning the Council of Traditions and the Diamond Orders. "Everything is true. Nothing is forbidden." https://www.ofgodsandgamemasters.com/blog/a-treatise-on-the-nature-of-reality-concerning-the-council-of-traditions-and-the-diamond-orders

#magetheascenscion #magetheawakening #ttrpg #WoD #NWoD #ChroniclesOfDarkness #fantasy #worldbuilding #mythology #cosmology #myth #cosmichorror #folklore

[jukemaid]

juke’s great ffxiv persona au masterpost

ok here we go

disclaimer as before my oc my wol my beloved tiamat is a big part of the story but not the main character, more a deuteragonist. g’raha gets to be the protag bc he just has that face. she’s the wol in here just like all my other works but is of course way different than “the wol” in this context since. that is not a thing. anyway

general setting and characters are the same as canon ffxiv. it takes place in a modern universe so everything is adjusted for that. all the races are present and for simplicity's sake i've given everyone a boring human lifespan, tho there's probably some worldbuilding shenanigans to fill in the gaps and callback to ffxiv (for example: there's some historical evidence that suggests viera used to live for hundreds of years, but since it can't be proven it's a matter of ongoing debate). overall the world doesn't super matter for the meat of the au but it's good to have the foundation

the story specifically takes place in sharlayan, which i imagine to be a somewhat rustic mid-sized college city. it boasts some of the most prestigious schools in the country and cost of living is through the goddamn roof. to live there you have to have roommates or get really, really lucky with scholarships that are as rare as winning the lottery. the leveilleur and baldesion families are the two Big Names there and they own various universities and institutes and housing. the baldesions aren't as wealthy or powerful, but offer more benefits to students at large regardless of their financial status or background. the vast majority of scholarships come from their programs and funding. on the flipside it's near impossible to get anything substantial out of the leveilleurs bc they're extremely picky about what to put their money into. there's a stigma surrounding hem as a result-- that the only people in their good graces did some shady under the table shit to get there. the bad part is they're not entirely wrong, but it's not bc of the leveilleur family themselves but associates with too much power and too little supervision.

the cast consists of all the scions from 2.0+ onward, with varying degrees of relevance and history. i'm trying to keep things like individual character development consistent with canon as far as timing and events goes, with some adjustments to be less bad. most are university students, friends/family of said students, or people with weird connections that just tossed them into the group. the scions were already established as an anti-shadow unit prior to the beginning of the story, so there's various relationships and dynamics for our dear catboy protag to learn when he shows up. only a handful of the scions are persona-users, with the others involved by their request (read: refused to take no for an answer) to provide means of support outside of battle.

and battle! i decided the Shadow Place is gonna be WORLD OF DARKNESS, and otherwise 13th inspired, which can be accessed by rifts that have been suddenly appearing across sharlayan with no discernible cause. touching a rift causes the person to warp to the world of darkness, which is like a fucked up spooky dilapidated version of sharlayan. except there's no other people there and it's full of shadows trying to kill you. anyone without a persona who falls in there is guaranteed to die, since the smaller rifts are a one-way trip. the scions have personas with support abilities that allow for an artificial rift to be opened and closed on command, from the outside, and that's how they explore. also most of them call the world of darkness "wod" (pronounced like wad) and it annoys y'shtola specifically.

the defining event happened four years prior to g'raha (designated fool and wild card) coming into the picture. it was catastrophic and massively traumatic, causing the deaths of some of the original scions, yda and minfilia, as well as their founder, louisoix, and kickstarted a lot of off-screen events that will come to a head later. suffice it to say there was a lot of anger and interpersonal conflicts in their group afterwards, leading to the severing of friendships and some notable persona users outright leaving. over the last few years the atmosphere HAS settled somewhat, but bad blood is still very much present and not everyone wants to talk to each other.

characters and things they do and! i forget characters all the time so if i missed any (and i def missed some) don't worry about it

original scion persona users: y'shtola (empress): magic dps and heal. uses agi. current team leader urianger (hierophant): heal/support. uses zio thancred (emperor): physical dps and debuff. uses slash yda (strength): physical burst dps. used strike papalymo (tower): magic dps and debuff. uses bufu

new scion persona users: alphinaud (justice): heal/support. uses hama alisaie (magician): mixed phys/magic utility. uses slash, zio, and agi krile (temperance): navigator. can open artificial rifts g'raha (fool): wild card. starting persona is mixed dps and support. uses pierce and garu

??? persona users: tiamat (death): mixed phys/magic dps. uses slice, agi, and mudo. current field leader estinien (hermit): phys dps and debuff. uses pierce ysayle (moon): heal/support. uses bufu and hama zenos (devil) phys burst dps. uses slice and mudo

non-persona users still involved: louisoix (aeon) minfilia (high priestess) tataru (fortune) moenbryda (chariot) arenvald (star) haurchefant (lovers) aymeric (hanged man) lyse (sun)

and more.................

some various details that are important to the plot: -tiamat was supposed to be the wild card, but the Thing four years ago exploded the possibility of her journey and caused her arcana to settle as death. neither she nor anyone else knows that she was the og fool since she didn’t awaken back then, and only g’raha (as the current fool) could possibly learn of this at some point. -g’raha moved to sharlayan thanks to a baldesion scholarship and connections through krile who, as the granddaughter of the founder, pulled some strings to help her bff out of an otherwise tricky situation back home. he has never met any of the scions and only knows about them based on what krile said. -alphinaud and alisaie attend a nearby high school after kicking a fit (or, alisaie kicking a fit) over not wanting to go to a faraway Fancy Private School their father picked out, bc they wanted to stay close to their grandfather’s legacy. much like in canon, they’re both chasing down what exactly louisoix was so invested in... which gets them into the persona business. -tiamat is the only member of the earlier scions group to not technically be a scion at all (since it’s a funded university group for current enrollments) and also not be in any kind of school. she’s just there

#ffxiv #ffxiv persona au #will be updated now and then

[prokopetz]

While I appreciate the effort that later World of Darkness writers have put forth to unify the assorted end-of-the-world bullshit, I think it’s just plain more entertaining from a gameplay perspective when each playable character type has their own completely different apocalypse coming down the pipeline that’s just wildly incompatible with all of the other apocalypses, and also none of them believe any of the other apocalypses exist, either because they don’t know about the other playable character types, or because they do know but think all the other playable character types are a bunch of superstitious morons. Like, you’re a literal wizard embroiled in a long-running personal feud with mallgoth Cthulhu and you think the vampires are the superstitious ones because they believe in Jesus. Goddamn.

#gaming #tabletop roleplaying #tabletop rpgs #world of darkness #wod #worldbuilding #eschatology #religion #christianity #swearing

[sleepvines]

Happy Worldbuilding Wednesday! What kind of things have become status symbols in your world? Certain colors of styles of dress, possessions, or maybe modes of transportation? Fancy foods, weird house designs, particularly bizarre forms of entertainment? What are some ways the well off show their well off, and how does the everyday person emulate it?

Oh I absolutely love this question!

A status symbol in many places is having exotic or unique creatures as pets, especially outside of the main country. It’s common for merchants to sell weird animals they find to high paying clientelle! This is sort of what happened to port as a kid, he looked like a funny animal

A good knowledge of history and literacy isn’t common either! Most people in Eriden (country) live in small towns and communites that don’t have access to acedemia. That’s why most info is passed orally! The history records are kept in the archives (in the coastal city) and you have to pay a small fee to rent them.

And lastly, Alchemy, the study of the world’s “”magic”” is almost entirely reserved for the rich. It is extremely difficult to gather the materials and knowlege yourself. (Laine and her dad worked very hard to achieve the understanding they have). There’s special training and components you can get if you have enough money, and it’s usually just so people can show off anyway.

#ask #worldbuilding #worldbuilding1 #wbw #wod