Malkalady

Hello again there, and welcome back to Malkalady hates on everything! Of course this review is going to be spoiler-free, like the vampire ones I wrote a couple of weeks ago. So I finally managed to get my fingers around playing the Mage prelude game (thanks again to @abadbadman whom I still can’t tag?! for giving me the means to rant out loud, you a good good man :p). First, the whole game and setting was confusing to me; second person story telling is a bit.. weird. The fact that my choices aren’t “written” when I choose them was really off setting. But before I talk about the story, I need to talk SJW stuff. See, I w

Hello again there, and welcome back to Malkalady hates on everything! Of course this review is going to be spoiler-free, like the vampire ones I wrote a couple of weeks ago. So I finally managed to get my fingers around playing the Mage prelude game (thanks again to @abadbadman whom I still can’t tag?! for giving me the means to rant out loud, you a good good man :p). First, the whole game and setting was confusing to me; second person story telling is a bit.. weird. The fact that my choices aren’t “written” when I choose them was really off setting. But before I talk about the story, I need to talk SJW stuff. See, I w

World of Darkness Preludes: Vampire and Mage on steam, ios and google play store This review is about the game in a vacuum. I will make another post about the authors, the meaning behind it, and WWP as a whole. This is, let’s say, a drama-free, spoiler-free review of the game as a game, ignoring everything else. Thanks to abadbadman  (thanks again so much <3) I’ve been able to play the VtM/Mage preludes. This is a spoiler-free game review now that I finished it! I also recommend this very well made, spoiler free steam review. I have liveblogged it and with the tag “secrets liveblogs” you can avoid spoilers. I try

A short chronicle is very hard to maintain in a Vampire the Masquerade (and in Requiem), because we tend to understand VtM as a sandbow game, and since it relies heavily on characters and on personal horror, it gets lengthy to unfold. But there are ways around it! What you need is to create a tragedy. Five acts, peak of horror/action/romance, things settle and a new order is rebuilt.. Here’s the Dramatic structure for you guys to use (short wiki version, this deserves a thesis on its own tho). Actually you only need Act 2, 3 and 5. You’ll need quite a bit of preparation, and a couple of plot hooks to integrate very quickly into yo

I’ve been told I was harsh on my players and on humanity rolls, so obviously, my take on it isn’t so… regular. Let me be clear: in Vampire the Masquerade, the struggle to do the right thing, to do what must be done, and to live well with your conscience is HARD. There is no “right solution”, and eventually, your humanity will fall. That’s your fate as a vampire. It’s the World of Darkness damn it. It’s not cute, it’s not clean, everyone’s a jerk, and hell is paved with good intentions. Players and Characters must make sure they know they’ll be rolling for humanity loss very

I’ve not played tabletop for a while as a DM, but husband has so I’ve been observing. So in our case, this is what applies : Needed (in no particular order) :The iPad (any tablet really, but we have iPad so iPad it is)A ST screenA bunch of diceNecessary booksCampaign notesA folder full of portraits, places and other illustrations (the Ipad comes in handy)Bunch of loose paper for note-taking and pencils+ erasersCoca-cola. As I’ve told in the How to Campaign, to me what’s most important is making sure you have a solid setting and NPCs that all have an agenda in mind. I tend to keep guidelines for each in a dark place o

All Disciplines tend to extrapolate “something” out of the character sheet, and most of the time, general disciplines tend to enhance a particular Attribute. Auspex enhances Perception Potence enhances Strength Celerity enhances Dexterity Presence enhances Charisma And so on… More than the individual dot-powers of each discipline, I’d like to talk about how they work on a conceptual basis, of course, from my own point of view. Then you can use this to extrapolate higher levels more than those very specific Elder powers one could read in all the different books ever published. Especially considering Elder powers