#ashfinds

[madetobeyourman]

Not just another... A five-member new waveish group called T. Roth and Another Pretty Face do some catchy, creative rock 'n' rolling on their debut album of the same name for Reflection Records. Songs like "Power Play/Surrender" and "Wild Child" tell stories of slightly daffed characters who can't cope with their lot in love-life. One could almost hear the maddening forces at work in the music - pounding rhythms and loud, sometimes abrasive, scream-like vocals. Lead singer T. gave up an acting career for music, but he says he acts a lot in concert: "Every song is like a little movie to me." He'll star in several of them tonight, at the Bottom Line.

for Tico's birthday I went digging in newspapers.com to see if I could find any old pictures - lo and behold, at far left I'm pretty sure that's the old man himself <3 This clipping is from December 10th, 1980.

[freak60000]

canon pathash exchange

[doggos-and-camp-songs]

Ashfinders: What, diablerie? No, that's what bad guys do.

*snorts the ashes of a dead vampire for power*

[hazelenergy]

☕️ + Thoughts on Necromancy

I have zero idea how this works and honestly I'm afraid to ask. I know like...ashfinders do some of this but it's honestly easier to get a Ventrue to talk about their feeding restriction and that's saying something.

[paint-lady]

Absolutely baffled and in love with our three thinbloods working so beautifully as a team after a year cold with Tampa Thinblood Chronicles, but damn we really just decided to wake up and take a swing at the Ashfinders and the Circulatory system, huh?

[xyhez99]

Based on a twitter post from months ago

[kittymsmithwritesstuff]

Hi, I saw someone do a request for ash x rev hcs I wanted to know if you can do one for ash x pathy, I shipped them since day one (:

RIP Pathy he deserves a good GF so here's Ash being a good GF

-Pathfinder brings her flowers because Mirage said girls like flowers. Ash never cared for flowers, but...well, they do sort of brighten things up in her monitoring room for the Arenas. And they do have a sickly appeal when they're dead, too.

-He helps her train her rat to do that whole thing where it walks on her sword. He puts the cheese at the end.

-Pathfinder takes Ash grocery shopping. When she asks him why the hell two hunks of metal are grocery shopping, he says, "because that's what couples do!" and for that trip it was enough for her to see (hear?) him happy, which was a strange feeling.

-Ash doesn't like doing things without meaning, purpose or goals, though, so any future shopping trips are usually for one of the other legends, and usually, that other legend is Mirage.

-Ash thinks Mirage, besides his tech, is a moron. She never tells Path though because she doesn't wanna hurt his feelings.

-Not wanting to hurt his feelings is the moment she realizes she might actually care about him.

-Ash likes dead flowers, reality television and playing with people in the Arenas like they're toys. Pathfinder thinks that her liking dead flowers and psychologically torturing people is weird, but it's okay, he loves and supports his weird, morally unsound girlfriend!

-Begrudgingly, Ash finds herself tag-teaming with Mirage to remind Pathfinder to not let himself get manipulated and to see warning signs.

-Also if anyone does try to manipulate him she will use her knife legs very creatively.

-Pathfinder just likes to be there while Ash works. And...well, she likes it when he's there.

-Bubbly and somewhat oblivious was never her type, but Pathfinder grows on Ash and soon she finds herself missing his presence if they've been apart for a while.

-Pathfinder is pretty sure he's never been happier in his life before he got with Ash, and Ash...Ash is pretty happy too. Though he's the only one that knows.

[djdjakko]

so any ideas for Ash x Pathfinder? Ashfinder, PilotHook, Revfinder 2.0

[madetobeyourman]

Dave and Tico at a high school circa 1986 (I believe this may be Xavier High School in New York City)

via "seedsoflovecares” on Flickr

[madetobeyourman]

Richie and Jon [April 27th, 2008 | Lost Highway Tour | Tampa, Florida]

via debee1015 on Flickr

[madetobeyourman]

A very young Jon with Jack Ponti, when they were both in The Rest.

via “bonjovifriends” on Flickr.

[madetobeyourman]

accidentally fell face-first back into bon jovi and made a sideblog for it. if you want to know my main for certain shoot me an ask or a dm

new jersey as an album and an era drives me a special kind of up the wall <3

rpf but not tinhatting, i go buckwild for jon & richie's relationship in any interpretation

this blog runs on a queue that gets shuffled every so often. i like ask & tag games, they just might take me a little while to get to !

members are tagged by first name, relationships as "[name] and [name]", decades & eras are tagged when i can identify them definitively. other musicians are tagged with their full name/stage name. check the tags on this post for more specific tags that may come up

[hazelenergy]

Thinblood Mechanic Update 1: Homebrew Flaws

//ooc chronicle playtest updates

Tampa by Night is both a fun time to hang out with a couple of thinblood loving friends, but it also is to test out some concepts and fully fleshed out mechanics for homebrew thinblood content. We love these funky little Gehenna portents so much and we know it will either be a long while (or never) when new content for these alchemists arrive. (Yes the ashfinders in cotbg are accounted for).

So, I wanted to update you all with our findings and what new things we are playing with.

We built our three characters with the normal neonate 15 bonus experience at character creation. We each took at least 1 by the book thinblood merit or flaw- and at least 1 homebrewed thinblood merit or flaw.

Our selected Homebrew Flaws were originally written as follows:

1. Thinblood Homebrew Flaw: Harbinger- supernatural flaw "Bad stuff just seems to happen to you at the worst possible moment. Maybe you were unlucky in life, and unfortunately, it followed you in death. Whenever you roll a 1 on your hunger dice, it removes a success on the check. This renders you far more likely to bestially fail.” 2. Thinblood Homebrew Flaw: Deficiency- feeding flaw. "You have to eat food in order to lower your hunger. Your body requires necessary supplements that the blood alone cannot provide. You have to endure the pain of keeping food down if you do not possess the Eat food merit, the life-like merit, or high humanity (8+). If you do not consume food or supplements every night, you cannot lower your hunger below 2.” 3. Thinblood Homebrew Flaw: Hemophilia- lifelike flaw. You must take the Lifelike merit to take this flaw. You cannot will the blood to clot, it just bleeds and bleeds. Whenever you take damage from slashing and piercing weapons or environmental factors, you automatically suffer an Impairment, a -2 penalty to all rolls until you can properly cover the wound and help it clot. Any Vampire nearby at Hunger 4 must make a Hunger Frenzy test.

Right off the bat, we misread our own rules with Harbinger. We were subtracting successes whenever Damien rolled 1s rather than just on his hunger dice. The poor guy could not catch a break. Once we addressed this, we realized there is an accountability issue. Since we are using digital dice, it is easy to overlook subtracting 1s from the Hunger dice alone. Some dice rollers dont show the rolls, just count successes and failures and criticals. We believe that this flaw is actually fairly well balanced in comparison to some of the books, it just requires the player to be vigilant, just as they would be for vitae dependency or mortal frailty. Originally, the Harbinger flaw was a 3 dice pool given to the storyteller to use once per session to reduce the harbinger's successes. This didn't foster a dread inducing dynamic of when is harbinger going to kick in. Instead, it fostered a much more "you versus the dm" culture. While the storyteller has a lot of power, this is not a healthy dynamic to push- especially in a game of personal horror. So instead, we changed it to a static all 1s on hunger subtract successes. This way your character actively struggles against their even worse luck and probably more active beast- and can offset it with risky blood surges and willpower rerolls.

It took longer to recognize how Deficiency is much more lax in comparison to the by the book flaws. While it is continuously funny to watch Tommy sneaking microwavable burritos into their mouth when the Camarilla court isn't looking- if caught it's more played off as "well that's odd" not "wait a moment--thinblood!!" In a modern setting where there's something to eat at every gas station, convenience store dumpster, or neighbor's refrigerator- there's never an issue of getting food. Additionally, we never set how you must endure the pain of consuming food. So we started implementing that you must rouse the blood to use blush of life to activate your digestive system. This is fairly effective- so far. As written in v5, thinbloods always look as if they have blush of life active. However that does not mean they purposefully have it turned on. Another option is making the character roll Stamina or Resolve checks to hold the food down. This feels less optimal as the two dot Eat Food merit would get rid of these checks.

Tommy’s player has suggested that failing to eat food deals superficial damage to your hunger tracker. Reaching hunger 5 in superficial damage means you aren’t in torpor, but are rolling 5 hunger dice- or more. Upon consuming food, you clear a single box (1 scene spent consuming food = 1 box). Every time you eat, you need to rouse the blood, which may further raise your hunger. With higher hunger, you increase your chance of messy criticals and suffering compulsions. Ey also floated the idea of having any superficial hunger renders you unable to use voluntary rouse checks- such as supernatural healing, blood surges, or using disciplines. Our goal is to test the superficial hunger track first- and see how the thinbloods react to rolling a lot more hunger dice. If it feels too lax even then, we will test further punishing factors- but may need to go back to the drawing board completely.

Hemophilia has yet to showcase how dangerous it can be. I play as Hazel with this flaw, and am overly cautious about how close I get her in fights- because I wrote the flaw, I know how bad that -2 impair is. We recognize that this flaw should be coming into play much more frequently, as Hazel utilizes the calcinato method to brew her alchemy and must have her vessels drink her vitae for it to work. This requires the vitae to come directly from her, requiring a cut or open wound to pour it into the mouths of her vessels. There are a few thoughts to this flaw. Firstly, it does not feel necessary to restrict this flaw with the lifelike merit. The flavor text on how vitae, thinned vitae, and regular blood look and taste varies from table to table and storyteller to storyteller. Originally, we wanted to showcase the negative aspects of having lifelike- such as feeling cold, sweating, and never unlearning the need to breathe. But these feel more like flavor text than actual debilitating flaws to a thinblood- and maybe an astute vampiric eye would pick up on these behaviors.  Secondly, the player is allowed to supernaturally heal the wound closed despite the wording on the flaw. We will have to specify if it is superficial or aggravated damage when a wound is self inflicted, such as when Hazel opens her vein for her alchemy. By the book, thinbloods take aggravated damage from almost anything except sunlight without the Vampiric Resilience merit. To heal aggravated damage, it is three rouse checks on the next night to heal 1 box. This can be potentially debilitating for a character without an easy supply of food. Additionally, in combat, it takes a full round or more to heal. Thinbloods are already at extreme disadvantages in combat without proper planning, this would exacerbate it. However that is the point of the flaw- you don’t want to bleed. We will have to keep exploring to see how limiting this is when in full effect. Which means I gotta get Hazel in a knife fight.

The other thing we noticed is that a lot of the by the book flaws tend to not have mechanical disadvantages. They are narrative disadvantages that can have mechanical effects. Some sessions we do not roll any dice other than a nightly rouse check to awake. Some sessions have us rolling checks for every other action. Ultimately, as we explore and finalize these flaws, we aim to craft them that they are less reliant on the dice. However, that might mean we have to completely rewrite them. This is not too big of a concern, as some of the by the book flaws give static mechanical penalties, such as Bestial Temper (frenzy like a full-blooded vampire), Clan Curse (retain your sire’s clan curse), or Dead Flesh (-1 to all applicable social tests). There are some other flaws we have written that fit this mold a little better, such as Tagged and Tracked, and Blacklisted.

Tagged and Tracked: You have been captured by F1rstlight. Operatives are not only aware of your existence, but actively keeping an eye on you. The character may or may not know about their surveillance. They may also be aiding the agents that claim them. Regardless, if other thin-bloods (or kindred) find out what you are, at best you will be blacklisted. More likely, you will be killed.

Blacklisted: Even your fellow mercurians keep their distance from you- at least the ones in the know do. Whether you have been deemed dangerous in their small circles, crossed a leader, betrayed them in some way, or have been set up- you are a scapegoat among the scapegoats. 

So, here are some rewrites to our Homebrew flaws we selected:

1. Thinblood Homebrew Flaw: Harbinger- supernatural flaw "Bad stuff just seems to happen to you at the worst possible moment. Maybe you were unlucky in life, and unfortunately, it followed you in death. Whenever you roll a 1 on your hunger dice, it removes a success on the check. This renders you far more likely to bestially fail.”

2. Thinblood Homebrew Flaw: Deficiency-  feeding flaw. "You have to eat food in order to lower your hunger. Your body requires necessary supplements that the blood alone cannot provide. For every night you fail to consume food, increase your hunger superficially by 1. This superficial damage is not alleviated by daysleep. For every superficial slash through your hunger, you must spend a scene consuming food. In order to properly digest it, you must use blush of life or possess a relevant merit. If the thinblood reaches Hunger 5 with superficial hunger- they do not go into torpor or frenzy.”

3. Thinblood Homebrew Flaw: Hemophilia- kept the same You must take the Lifelike merit to take this flaw. You cannot will the blood to clot, it just bleeds and bleeds. Whenever you take damage from slashing and piercing weapons or environmental factors, you automatically suffer an Impairment, a -2 penalty to all rolls until you can properly cover the wound and help it clot. Any Vampire nearby at Hunger 4 must make a Hunger Frenzy test.

Next up is our Homebrew Alchemy. Some of us spent experience to take new alchemical powers, and im certain we will see how quickly they break everything including the masquerade. Tommy has taken steps towards Hermetic Alchemy, which brings old Alchemical Thaumaturgy into V5, Hazel has taken upgrades to her far reach and eventually will take recipes for Thermotics- melting things! Thanks for reading! Can’t wait to tell you all about our findings next time!

[paint-lady]

Thinblood Mechanic Update 1: Homebrew Flaws

reposted from the RP sideblog

Tampa by Night is both a fun time to hang out with a couple of thinblood loving friends, but it also is to test out some concepts and fully fleshed out mechanics for homebrew thinblood content. We love these funky little Gehenna portents so much and we know it will either be a long while (or never) when new content for these alchemists arrive. (Yes the ashfinders in cotbg are accounted for).

So, I wanted to update you all with our findings and what new things we are playing with.

We built our three characters with the normal neonate 15 bonus experience at character creation. We each took at least 1 by the book thinblood merit or flaw- and at least 1 homebrewed thinblood merit or flaw.

Our selected Homebrew Flaws were originally written as follows:

1. Thinblood Homebrew Flaw: Harbinger- supernatural flaw "Bad stuff just seems to happen to you at the worst possible moment. Maybe you were unlucky in life, and unfortunately, it followed you in death. Whenever you roll a 1 on your hunger dice, it removes a success on the check. This renders you far more likely to bestially fail.” 2. Thinblood Homebrew Flaw: Deficiency-  feeding flaw. "You have to eat food in order to lower your hunger.   Your body requires necessary supplements that the blood alone cannot provide. You have to endure the pain of keeping food down if you do not possess the Eat food merit, the life-like merit, or high humanity (8+). If you do not consume food or supplements every night, you cannot lower your hunger below 2.”   3. Thinblood Homebrew Flaw: Hemophilia- lifelike flaw. You must take the Lifelike merit to take this flaw.  You cannot will the blood to clot, it just bleeds and bleeds. Whenever you take damage from slashing and piercing weapons or environmental factors, you automatically suffer an Impairment, a -2 penalty to all rolls until you can properly cover the wound and help it clot. Any Vampire nearby at Hunger 4 must make a Hunger Frenzy test.  

Right off the bat, we misread our own rules with Harbinger. We were subtracting successes whenever Damien rolled 1s rather than just on his hunger dice. The poor guy could not catch a break. Once we addressed this, we realized there is an accountability issue. Since we are using digital dice, it is easy to overlook subtracting 1s from the Hunger dice alone. Some dice rollers dont show the rolls, just count successes and failures and criticals. We believe that this flaw is actually fairly well balanced in comparison to some of the books, it just requires the player to be vigilant, just as they would be for vitae dependency or mortal frailty. Originally, the Harbinger flaw was a 3 dice pool given to the storyteller to use once per session to reduce the harbinger's successes. This didn't foster a dread inducing dynamic of when is harbinger going to kick in. Instead, it fostered a much more "you versus the dm" culture. While the storyteller has a lot of power, this is not a healthy dynamic to push- especially in a game of personal horror. So instead, we changed it to a static all 1s on hunger subtract successes. This way your character actively struggles against their even worse luck and probably more active beast- and can offset it with risky blood surges and willpower rerolls.

It took longer to recognize how Deficiency is much more lax in comparison to the by the book flaws. While it is continuously funny to watch Tommy sneaking microwavable burritos into their mouth when the Camarilla court isn't looking- if caught it's more played off as "well that's odd" not "wait a moment--thinblood!!" In a modern setting where there's something to eat at every gas station, convenience store dumpster, or neighbor's refrigerator- there's never an issue of getting food. Additionally, we never set how you must endure the pain of consuming food. So we started implementing that you must rouse the blood to use blush of life to activate your digestive system. This is fairly effective- so far. As written in v5, thinbloods always look as if they have blush of life active. However that does not mean they purposefully have it turned on. Another option is making the character roll Stamina or Resolve checks to hold the food down. This feels less optimal as the two dot Eat Food merit would get rid of these checks.

Tommy’s player has suggested that failing to eat food deals superficial damage to your hunger tracker. Reaching hunger 5 in superficial damage means you aren’t in torpor, but are rolling 5 hunger dice- or more. Upon consuming food, you clear a single box (1 scene spent consuming food = 1 box). Every time you eat, you need to rouse the blood, which may further raise your hunger. With higher hunger, you increase your chance of messy criticals and suffering compulsions. Ey also floated the idea of having any superficial hunger renders you unable to use voluntary rouse checks- such as supernatural healing, blood surges, or using disciplines. Our goal is to test the superficial hunger track first- and see how the thinbloods react to rolling a lot more hunger dice. If it feels too lax even then, we will test further punishing factors- but may need to go back to the drawing board completely.

Hemophilia has yet to showcase how dangerous it can be. I play as Hazel with this flaw, and am overly cautious about how close I get her in fights- because I wrote the flaw, I know how bad that -2 impair is. We recognize that this flaw should be coming into play much more frequently, as Hazel utilizes the calcinato method to brew her alchemy and must have her vessels drink her vitae for it to work. This requires the vitae to come directly from her, requiring a cut or open wound to pour it into the mouths of her vessels. There are a few thoughts to this flaw. Firstly, it does not feel necessary to restrict this flaw with the lifelike merit. The flavor text on how vitae, thinned vitae, and regular blood look and taste varies from table to table and storyteller to storyteller. Originally, we wanted to showcase the negative aspects of having lifelike- such as feeling cold, sweating, and never unlearning the need to breathe. But these feel more like flavor text than actual debilitating flaws to a thinblood- and maybe an astute vampiric eye would pick up on these behaviors.   Secondly, the player is allowed to supernaturally heal the wound closed despite the wording on the flaw. We will have to specify if it is superficial or aggravated damage when a wound is self inflicted, such as when Hazel opens her vein for her alchemy. By the book, thinbloods take aggravated damage from almost anything except sunlight without the Vampiric Resilience merit. To heal aggravated damage, it is three rouse checks on the next night to heal 1 box. This can be potentially debilitating for a character without an easy supply of food. Additionally, in combat, it takes a full round or more to heal. Thinbloods are already at extreme disadvantages in combat without proper planning, this would exacerbate it. However that is the point of the flaw- you don’t want to bleed. We will have to keep exploring to see how limiting this is when in full effect. Which means I gotta get Hazel in a knife fight.

The other thing we noticed is that a lot of the by the book flaws tend to  not have mechanical disadvantages. They are narrative disadvantages that  can have mechanical effects.   Some sessions we do not roll any dice other than a nightly rouse check to awake. Some sessions have us rolling checks for every other action. Ultimately, as we explore and finalize these flaws, we aim to craft them that they are less reliant on the dice. However, that might mean we have to completely rewrite them. This is not too big of a concern, as some of the by the book flaws give  static mechanical penalties, such as Bestial Temper (frenzy like a  full-blooded vampire), Clan Curse (retain your sire’s clan curse), or  Dead Flesh (-1 to all applicable social tests).   There are some other flaws we have written that fit this mold a little better, such as Tagged and Tracked, and Blacklisted.

Tagged and Tracked:  You have been captured by F1rstlight. Operatives are not only aware of your existence, but actively keeping an eye on you. The character may or may not know about their surveillance. They may also be aiding the agents that claim them. Regardless, if other thin-bloods (or kindred) find out what you are, at best you will be blacklisted. More likely, you will be killed.

Blacklisted:  Even your fellow mercurians keep their distance from you- at least the ones in the know do. Whether you have been deemed dangerous in their small circles, crossed a leader, betrayed them in some way, or have been set up- you are a scapegoat among the scapegoats.

So, here are some rewrites to our Homebrew flaws we selected:

1. Thinblood Homebrew Flaw: Harbinger- supernatural  flaw "Bad stuff just seems to happen to you at the worst possible  moment. Maybe you were unlucky in life, and unfortunately, it followed  you in death. Whenever you roll a 1 on your hunger dice, it removes a  success on the check. This renders you far more likely to bestially  fail.”

2. Thinblood Homebrew Flaw: Deficiency-  feeding flaw.  "You have to eat food in order to lower your hunger. Your body requires necessary supplements that the blood alone cannot  provide. For every night you fail to consume food, increase your hunger superficially by 1. This superficial damage is not alleviated by daysleep. For every superficial slash through your hunger, you must spend a scene consuming food. In order to properly digest it, you must use blush of life or possess a relevant merit. If the thinblood reaches Hunger 5 with superficial hunger- they do not go into torpor or frenzy.”

3. Thinblood Homebrew Flaw: Hemophilia- kept the same You must  take the Lifelike merit to take this flaw.  You cannot will the blood to clot, it just bleeds and bleeds. Whenever  you take damage from slashing and piercing weapons or environmental  factors, you automatically suffer an Impairment, a -2 penalty to all  rolls until you can properly cover the wound and help it clot. Any  Vampire nearby at Hunger 4 must make a Hunger Frenzy test.  

Next up is our Homebrew Alchemy. Some of us spent experience to take new  alchemical powers, and im certain we will see how quickly they break  everything including the masquerade. Tommy has taken steps towards Hermetic Alchemy, which brings old Alchemical Thaumaturgy into V5, Hazel has taken upgrades to her far reach and eventually will take recipes for Thermotics- melting things! Thanks for reading!  Can’t wait to tell you all about our findings next time!