The Technocratic Union are the primary antagonists to the 9 Traditions. No so much purely evil for the sake of evil but a well funded highly authoritarian secret society ideologically opposed to the Traditions. The Technocracy brought us modern plumbing, vaccination and modern medicine, toilet paper, and nuclear weapons, advanced bioweapons, capitalism, and the prison industrial complex.

The Nephandi are the evil for evil sake mages. They are seeking to spread as much pain and misery and bring in the descent of humanity into destruction.

And then there's the marauders, mages who's magickal hubris gets the better of them and they succumb to a reality warping madness.

In my experience when I've been playing any system for a long time and my players say "hey do something different" they are almost always looking for something very different from what we are all playing. I've spent the most amount of time playing Mage the Ascension in my rpg career, eventually my current group was hey Mage is getting a bit stale, let's do another game. So we did some Vampire the Masquerade, and it was too close in flavor to Mage. So we started playing some Pathfinder and that was the breath of fresh air we were looking for. Eventually we did switch back to mage, but one of my players decided to run their own campaign set in Star Wars which was a ton of fun.

So forgive me for using my own experience of when my players have asked to play something different my understanding is they are looking for something more drastic that going from one Tolkien inspired fantasy game to another Tolkien inspired fantasy game or from one modern Gothic punk game with magic to another modern Gothic punk game with fangs.

I'm getting tired of eating Mac and Cheese all the time "have you tried Caccio e Pepe?"

It's still pasta and cheese.

If someone asked me for something other than dnd to play, I'd imagine they're looking to get out of the tolkein flavored medieval fantasy genre into something different and recommend something like World of Darkness, modern supernatural urban fantasy for political intrigue and melodramatics, or Blades in the Dark, victorian industrial fantasy heists. Not "grittier Tolkien flavored medieval fantasy."

In my eyes rolls basically need to be Yes Ands or Yes Buts.

Roll well: Yes And you figure out some extra information/figure it out quickly so you have advantage on your escape/you look impressive in front of the guards who did let you into the room

Roll poorly: Yes But you take a bit too long figuring it out, now guards are walking into the room/one of the guards escorting you into the room points something out to you making you look a unobservant/you accidentally break something and you've now left evidence you were here.

I really like WoD's Resources background, one thing I do tend to append to the rules is separate out recurring income from lump assets.

Basically Income Resources are used up and refresh each month worth of time provided players maintain their income or have retainers keep watch over the accounts. Lump Resources are like having a big pile of gold, or a big inheritance from an eccentric uncle or just a bunch of money in a savings account. Once they're used up, they're used up.

total and absolute belief in something

My Syndicate agent with an Adam Smith book and a wad lf cash THE POWER OF CAPITALISM COMPELLS YOU!

Yeah, gender being a social construct doesn't mean everyone everywhere just suddenly becomes genderless androgynous blobs, we still express our gender in the ways we want to express them.

For example High heels, sheer leggings, long curly hair, and a flowy skirt and poofy blouse adorned with shiny bits. Am I describing the style dress of women today or the style of dress of 17th century French kings?

Point taken, but they also still had the resources and people to make that many charts.

I was more intending Mage the Ascension but Ars Magica works too. They were both initially created by the same company

We save our carcasses and use them for a stock that goes into the gravy for the next time we do a turkey dinner. We'll usually do a big turkey dinner 2 or 3 times each year including Thanksgiving.

Odd, everything I'm coming across is saying broths are made from meat where stocks are primarily made from bones. Both use vegetables as part of the aromatics.

You think I made the market for Ganyu jack? That every casino is part of some big 'ol conspiracy?... BULLSHIT!! Gamblin's just a part of who we are!