Quote from: RPGPundit;1039102The orientation of Mage was largely that the world is evil because you don't get to have the special-power elites doing whatever the fuck they want while everyone else lives like worthless peasants.

Uh, no.  The player side wanted to make ALL the peasants to be Mages too!  But each Faction had their own way of getting people to 'Awaken'.

Which is a whole problem that no one addresses at any point.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1039116Which is a whole problem that no one addresses at any point.

In the context of an RPG that was an almost impossible task, in my opinion.

Quote from: Mike the Mage;1038814In the original scenario, Loom of Fate, neither the Technocracy nor the Traditions can be said to be the "good guys".  In fact the conflict is more based on the Moorcockian themes of Law and Chaos

Or from a Garou's perspective, The Weaver and The Wyld.

Quote from: Mike the Mage;1039121In the context of an RPG that was an almost impossible task, in my opinion.

That's one of the problems.

Another is when you have people who don't want to change the world (and they're NOT either faction) and suddenly given this power.  Then there's others with actual mental conditions and suddenly have this power...  And they all go at it with each other.  What do you think will happen?  Because I can't mentally handle that.

Quote from: CRKrueger;1039124Or from a Garou's perspective, The Weaver and The Wyld.

Yep, and Mage and Changeling seemed to follow that Moorcockian dichotomy after WtA set it up in the WoD.

I suppose the Wyrm would be Stormbringer/The Black Jewel
.

QuoteIn the book The Quest for Tanelorn, a man claims that the demon in the sword is named Shaitan – a variant of 'Satan'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stormbringer#Description

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1039125That's one of the problems.

Another is when you have people who don't want to change the world (and they're NOT either faction) and suddenly given this power.  Then there's others with actual mental conditions and suddenly have this power...  And they all go at it with each other.  What do you think will happen?  Because I can't mentally handle that.

Agreed. I think the setting as an idea for a series of graphic novels is interesting. As a background for a RPG, not so feasible unfortunately. I am reminded of an article in an old White Dwarf article by David Langford on how literature and film would be different if the main protagonists were PCs.

Quote from: Mike the Mage;1039126Yep, and Mage and Changeling seemed to follow that Moorcockian dichotomy after WtA set it up in the WoD.

Mage actually went a step further in that it had mage factions representing Weaver (early Technology; wants the universe to run like a well-oiled machine with no deviation... by mid-to-late 2e they'd evolved into the Men-In-Black movies, trying to keep the world spinning another day as all these crazy reality deviants keep pulling their crap), the Wyld (Marauders; whose personal paradigm warps reality around them without their even trying), the Wyrm (Nephandi, mages who embrace Descent instead of Ascension) and Balance (The Traditions; again by mid-to-late 2e this was more that they had examples of all three other types of philosophy among their members than that they actually embodied balance... but ostensibly they existed to protect Sleepers from the excesses of the other factions and to try and get the Sleepers to awaken).

As someone who's been running a continuous Mage campaign for 20 years now, the general trend over the years has been that the Tradition PCs have moderated over the years and have been able to work with moderates in the Technocracy by finding some degree of common ground (usually in the vein of "keep the world safe from the things that go bump in the night") where they can co-exist. The other has been the notion of the PCs having to be act as moderating forces on the extremes of their respective factions. Tradition politics as a big bad of sorts really took a center stage about five years ago and has never really let go... The Technocracy as Well-Intentioned Extremists started about three years before that (including a civil war the Tradition PCs helped determine the winner of)... the two combined have led to some wonderful moments where Tradition PCs have questioned if they're even on the right side of things in a given situation.

I have a Conspiracy Flowchart these days to keep track of it all the Tradition and Technocracy (and other faction) politics as different sets of PCs have actually helped advance the interests of different factions over the years... sometimes without even realizing they did so).

That campaign sounds great. BTW my wife is from Fort Wayne. We got married there and it's kinda "home" when I am in the US (I'm British):cool:

I enjoy it a lot. I think my favorite part from a setting standpoint is that while it based in the modern world, the players can choose to visit places that fall under just about any genre. I've got two groups running currently and one is trying to shut down a Pentex-organized drug ring in Chicago while another is exploring the lost civilizations of the Hollow Earth. Past groups have visited everything from the Fallen Tower on the edge of Oblivion to exploring strange worlds aboard a Void Engineer science cruiser. The stakes at various end games have ranged from the fate of the cosmos to the fate of a single soul with resolutions ranging from massed armies of mages doing battle to asking a single question.

It can be as alien or as down to earth as the players wish to explore. My job as the GM is just to keep track of what's going on in the world and inform the players of what's going on around them so they can decide what to do. If we're just starting a new set of characters (sometimes the whole group feels their characters have reached a satisfying endpoint so they all make brand new ones) I'll throw an inciting incident into the mix from my conspiracy flowchart if the group doesn't have any particular goals they want to pursue on their own, but even that's probably just a loose end or unintended consequence of their old PCs actions.

Honestly, the setting practically runs itself at this point.

All the classic WW RPGs can be characterized as "super special people being ignored or persecuted by people not as special as they are".

There is a lot of inbuilt self-pity and narcissism in the WoD but that holds true for a lot of games.

You Are Special so Persecuted by By Big Bad Society

WoD
Unknown Armies
Exalted
Playing Dow/Dragonborn etc in D&D
Some Super heroes (X-men) type games
Ars Magica


You are ordinary people in extraordinary situations

DCC at low level
CoC
most OSR D&D clones at low level
Traveller

Quote from: RPGPundit;1039534All the classic WW RPGs can be characterized as "super special people being ignored or persecuted by people not as special as they are".

This of course ignores the fact that rules establish PCs as low men on the totem poles in their respective settings.

Vampires are neonates; less than 50 years old at the bottom of the social pecking order and with minimal physical power compared to their elders (3-5 dots in disciplines versus 10-15 for even a modest elder) and can't be higher than 8th generation when the power ramp up (vastly larger blood pools, the ability to spend more than one point per turn and to buy superhuman stats) comes at 7th generation and up. Half the point of forming a coeterie (PC party) is that pooling your resources you can survive the political games of the elders (and eventually become elders themselves).

The same goes for werewolves (newly turned, you are only rank one and so can only gain rank one gifts in a system that runs up to rank 6).

Likewise for Mages, you start as an acolyte (Arete of 3 or less out of 10, spheres of magic can't be bought higher than Arete) on a path that includes adepts, masters, archmages and oracles above you. You're the grunts in the Ascension War or Independents trying to survive in the margins between superpowers. You need mentors to learn any sphere you don't know and if you improved nothing else but Arete and one sphere with XP you might reach adept status in that single sphere after 15 game sessions (which is about the level of a lot of the NPC opponents in the books) and another 20 sessions to master that one sphere.

All of the settings also include horrors well beyond the PCs (antideluvians/methuselahs, malfeans, nephandi lords) that put into perspective how tiny even the elders, tribal leaders and masters are.

So, yeah, you're "special"... in the same way a first-level fighter, wizard or cleric is special in D&D. You're a cut above the masses, but you're a long way from the top... the journey to get there (or failing in the attempt) is the whole point of playing the game.

Sure, you start on the bottom rung of the super-special people.

In D&D, it's presumed your 1st level character is a "veteran", that they got there through study or effort. In WW games they're almost always the super-special people because they are just inherently better than the hoi polloi.

True in D&D pre 3.5 you start off as a journeyman at 1st level but more recent WotC versions of the brand seem to start PCs off at a much more "super" initial position. i think it was said best (don't recall by whom) that Old School D&D feels like everyday people doing extraordinary things while 3.5 feels like etraordinary people doing everyday things.

Having said that, having a character class puts you in a very small demographic. In fact this is often forgotten in the sort of modules I dislike in which the local blacksmith is a 3rd level fighter, the local priest an 8th level cleric and the lord is a 12th level Paladin.

IIRC a Balrog type creature in AD&D would have had 13HD so just about everybody in LOTR is below that apart from maybe Gandalf the White, Elrond, Galadriel and Sauron himself (and Tom Bombadil ofc).

So being a 5th level anything is something we play as a BIG DEAL.

So while not on the level of WoD archetypes or playing a Supers RPG, even just having a character class means you ain't everyday people.

Unless you're playing DCC and survive the funnel.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1040012Sure, you start on the bottom rung of the super-special people.

In D&D, it's presumed your 1st level character is a "veteran", that they got there through study or effort. In WW games they're almost always the super-special people because they are just inherently better than the hoi polloi.

Mage presumes that a starting character has been awakened for 3-6 years learning the basics of magic from a mentor before starting play. They actually have separate rules for if you want to start as a just awakened individual; Arete is 1, You get 1 dot (i.e. detect "sphere" effects only) in two spheres and have lower attributes, abilities and willpower than a typical starting mage. They even have guidelines for how long it took to learn your starting spheres; six-months for a rank one, one year for rank two, three years for rank three. Each. So a starting PC with two spheres at rank three is presumed to have been studying under a mentor for six years already to have the power that they do. They're inherently 'better' than the hoi polloi in the same way a PhD in physics is 'better' than a bachelor's degree in science... because they worked for it.

Vampire presumes that a starting PC has spent FIFTY YEARS under the wing of their sire, learning the ropes and a few dots in vampiric disciplines, and is only now being allowed to fly solo so to speak. They presume it took the vampire literal decades to master the ability to shift shape or dominate minds. The presumption is that any vampire that hasn't actually learned the basics of his clan's disciplines after 50 years has probably already met Final Death by this point (lack of motivation makes you expendable in undead politics).

Werewolf presumes that a starting PC has gone through training and then the Rite of Passage, a task that requires a cub to accomplish a goal specific to its tribe using what it has learned (examples include "A Wendigo rite often takes the form of a vision quest, while the Get of Fenris commonly send their cubs into combat with Wyrm-spawn.") before the game begins.

In other words, you're just wrong. Again. All the different PC types in the World of Darkness are presumed to have gone through study and experience to get where they are at the start of the game. They're as much "veterans" as a level 1 fighter, cleric or magic-user is.