u/Astro_Kitty_Cat

Earlier I was looking for inspiration for an “MtA” feel to a setting and a couple of people mentioned watching films. One that struck me as odd at first but maybe isn’t that odd given the setting was The Matrix.

I found myself later on thinking of films that make me think “MtA.”

I immediately thought of the underrated film “Lord of Illusions” with Scott Bacula.

What other films, or any pieces of media, are good inspirations?

MtA is the one mainline game from WoD that I never really got into. I’ve collected the M20 books (and the quick start), then I decided to get the Truth Beyond Paradox collection of short stories, figuring that might help me grasp the world. I also went and got an older Las Vegas setting book to see how a city looks through the lens of MtA.

I’ve thumbed through the books and the Las Vegas book. I admittedly haven’t started the Truth Beyond Paradox stories yet. But I was wondering if people have any other recommendations to understand what the world of MtA is like?

For Vampire it’s incredibly easy because there are so many setting splats, then interactive novels and games and such, so a person starts putting together a mental picture of what the world “should” look like. Same with Werewolf.

I don’t know why MtA is different for me. I understand the “tools in the box” (I know what antagonists exist to pull from for sources of tension, I know about Ascension War tensions), but taking those tools and putting them together into a setting in which to run a Chronicle seems difficult to me. I would ask “is this what that stuff is supposed to come together like? Beats me.”

Now I get that at the end of the day “is it fun?” is the most important question. But I do want to understand it so if I play with other people they get a Chronicle that feels like the world they expect from MtA.

Other than reading the fiction, and basically the one setting book I could find (Las Vegas), any other ideas to resolve this sense of being unsure about it? Other than finding veterans and playing in one of their games of course, I wish I had more time 😅

If I look around online, almost everybody assumes that Cara (from Hope's storyline, the CEO of Double Helix) is Malkavian. I see a lot of incorrect comments about how Cara never displays any powers (but she does!) and a lot of correct comments about how she doesn't outwardly display signs of any Malkavian eccentricity unless it's megalomania or similar.

However, I'm doing my first playthrough as Amanda.

When Cara leaps onto Hope with the plan to diablerize her, I chose for Amanda to use Fortitude to withstand punishment as she tried to pull Cara off. The text of the narrative, which I don't remember *exactly* but close enough, was that Amanda quickly found that Cara could take just as much punishment, implying that Cara was using Fortitude. The narrative said that Amanda realized that it was therefore a battle of attrition (implying Fortitude vs. Fortitude) and that Amanda would eventually lose because Cara was more committed and had more to lose.

I think therefore that there's actually pretty good evidence that Cara is a Ventrue , especially considering that I agree that she doesn't outwardly show signs of Malkavian... Malkavian-ness.

Thoughts?

I love my fiancée from top to bottom, I would take a bullet for her. Without question or hesitation.

And I think she would for me, too.

But she has trauma related to a child she had prior to our relationship that is no longer part of her life. This gets complicated. I knew this child for a couple of years and I know this child has some psychological issues that may have had a part in this estrangement between them and my fiancée.

But ever since this child went to live with Dad, my fiancée has been struggling. She goes to grief counseling. She goes to group therapy. She tries to make things better.

She’s never hit me until tonight. She threatens self harm and I try to guide her away with the future, our future. I try to comfort her. But she retreats into self harm ideation and trying to push me away with words about how she doesn’t think we belong together, about imagined scenarios with me and other women that aren’t true. She admits later that she thinks I can find someone better and just wants to make it easier for me by being mean.

But I love her. From top to bottom I love her. But this grief she has, it’s spiraling so far out of control. She stopped working, I’m the only one that’s working now. She doesn’t do anything with all the time off like the dishes or anything. I love her immensely and have just tried to do the piles of dishes that add up, thinking this is temporary.

I’ve missed work caring for her. I’m about to miss work yet again since I’m supposed to be up at 6am and it’s almost 4am. Tonight she hit me.

Tonight she hit me. I keep coming back to this. I tried holding her hands in the car to keep her from hitting herself. Sometimes she’d go lucid as when some bottle of eyeglass cleaner fell and we both laughed wondering what that was that fell.

But inside she scared our pets. I asked her to stop, to consider our pets. I knelt by her as she hit the couch. I stroked her arms and told her that it’s OK to be mad (at child’s dad) but let’s not scare the pets.

And she hit me enough that I made a sound I didn’t recognize and fell into the coffee table.

We’ve been drinking. I can hold my booze a little bit better obviously since I’m writing this. I know drinking doesn’t absolve anyone but it is a factor to consider.

But she hit me and I made a sound I didn’t know I would ever make.

I know that tomorrow she’ll smooch my forehead and we’ll both act like nothing happened. But how long should a person wait for another person in grieving? She HAS applied to some jobs. She DOES occasionally try to do something with the house. My grievances don’t capture the whole story.

But when I stopped her from hitting herself in the car I cradled my arm on the way in. And when she was on the couch she hit me. I’m probably missing work again being awake and in mourning.

I want nothing more than to love the beautiful person I know that she is. But things are getting worse and not better despite her seeing a therapist, despite her going to group therapies.

I don’t want permission to do anything drastic. I want belief that we can get through her grief. I know that any post about “she hit me” is going to get 500 responses saying “leave her.” But I don’t want to, I want to think she can get better. But I want to hear maybe from people that know things about things, I don’t know.

I’m an elder Millennial, early 40’s, don’t often feel it. I have a good life outside of crippling debt and the knowledge I’ll never own a home, I have a fiancée that is the sweetest woman I’ve ever known, have friends that we all look out for each other, have some family still living that’s inner circle levels of love. Nothing super bad going on.

But sometimes after a long night of drinking when old music comes up on shuffle, from my late teens and early 20’s sort of thing, formative years, I just cry and cry and cry and listen to a lot of it in the dark when I should be sleeping because it feels like a bygone era when everything was somehow brighter and more hopeful and full of promise.

Am I actually depressed or is this just midlife shit we all do

You played a sleeping react and then immediately conceded like a turn 3 Strix Serenade is the problem when you’re playing the laziest, most ubiquitous netdeck imaginable on Brawl.

Have the games you deserve lol

Please walk me through the differences, I'm dying to try out the new edition and its supplements but I want to understand it first. Thank you