Well if you read the original Chicago By Night, 50 years is about right, but I agree it jars a bit. Mage would have been better toning down the power level a bit and starting with characters with less tutelage.

Meh, there was just simply too much to put right and sort out after a while. Pit cos there was a gem of a game in there somewhere back when urban fantasy didn't make me feel so jaded.

Quote from: PrometheanVigil;1040251Godamm, that's a long time to have been a pre-PC!

2-6 years for a mage isn't too bad, not much different than the 1d6 difference in starting age between a human fighter (15+1d6 years) and a human wizard (15+2d6 years) in D&D truthfully. I should make the caveat though that my frame of reference for the WoD is almost entirely through the lens of Mage the Ascension. While there have been many vampire, werewolf, wraith and changeling NPCs over the years, my games are 100% Mage focused... that likely colors my perspective a bit from people who are coming at it from Vampire or Werewolf first.

QuoteSee, I never got that. Same way with WW properties I never got the absurdly low population numbers, especially given that the majority of the supernatural factions have multiple ranks in their organization structures and are implicitly (or explicitly in a number of cases) hosting hundreds to thousands of members just in their org alone. That just can't work, particularly in the case of, say, more disparate factions like the Carthians or institutions like the Invictus. There's over seven-and-a-half billion Mortals on the planet (and we can assume it's even larger in WOD due to various darker socio-cultural/economic factors): you're telling me there's only 70,000+ vamps GLOBALLY when the metropolitan area of a city like LA is home to 17mil+? Come on son, don't tell me lies...

17 million people would be a base average of 170 vampires in the city (1/100,000 is the official number) and a baseline of 17 true mages (1 in a million is canonical, though there'd be another 70 or so Sorcerers/linear magicians baseline as well).

But here's the thing that the rules point out; those numbers are global averages and Vampires have disproportionate representation in cities (because population density makes it easier to hunt and feed) while the 5 or so vampires the population numbers say should be living in Wyoming just aren't there, they're living in a bigger city where missing persons when they botch a feed are less likely to be noticed. Chicago by Night explicitly stated that the population of vampires in Chicago was 2-3 times higher than the average would suggest (depending on whether it was before or after the war with the Lupines).

There is also canonical material that sets the Clans at much smaller than you'd think. Per the fluff, the size of the Tremere is precisely 400 vampires for mystical reasons... Tremere, his 7 advisers who each have 7 vampires in the next rank down (49 total) who in turn have seven vampires under them (343 total)... basically 7 x 7 x 7 = mystical perfection. The GM is just expected to replace members in that number with PCs if the player makes a Tremere.

Likewise, the Order of Hermes in Mage had the membership of each House listed in one of its books, ranging from Bonisagus officially having just FOUR members (but ranked as a great house out of respect for their founder also being the founder of the Order of Hermes as a whole) to Ex Miscellanea having around 200 (though any individual minor house is probably only a dozen or so at most) and total numbers of about 550 or so True Mages in their ranks. They are also stated to be the absolute largest of the Traditions. The smallest, if I recall, is the Euthanatos at just over 200 True Mages.

If I recall the official numbers back in 2000 (so only 6 billion people) were 2000 Traditions, 2500 Technocracy and 1500 "Other" (disparates, crafts, orphans, nephandi and marauders). The Technocracy also got a lot of mileage out of Linear Practitioners (i.e. Sorcerers and guys who could use technocratic items) which are about four times more numerous than True Mages, constructs (MIBs, HIT Marks and such grown/built as needed) and unenlightened dupes (you don't need to know how the gun works... just that it works really really well). The only ones who came close were the Order of Hermes whose entire program was designed to get as close to "Awakening by Rote" as possible and included Linear Practitioners as part of the ranks of initiates and apprentices leading up to Awakening and True Magic.

QuoteIt shouldn't take you years just to realise you're particularly good at casting fireballs or Mage would be hella low-powered than it is.

The thing is, magic is pretty low powered, at least on the margins the PCs start in. The guys who can theoretically lift a mountain with their magic are depicted as literally centuries old (life extended through magic). Rank 2 Forces (takes about a year) actually has the bulk of what a creative Mage is likely to need Forces for. Invisibility, flight, telekinesis (up to 300 lb.), controlling the flow of electricity, moving fire with your mind... all of that is rank two and takes about a year of study per the rules to get good at.

Rank 3 lets you transform one force into another force (so light into electricity or fire into sound) and ups the scale affected to about 2 tons (basically a car instead of a man) and that takes two years of additional study (while you still get to live your daily life... so grad school, not secluded in a monastery). Two years to be able to go from moving energy around with your mind to completely transforming any form of energy into any other form of energy AT WILL does not feel excessive to me.

ETA: Fireball itself would just a be a Rote, a set of magical actions you've practiced enough to pull off on the fly. Once you have the understanding of Forces 3 needed to channel the energies, learning the Fireball "spell" would take you a couple of hours.

To put it another way, you can't design an F-15 from the ground up (a specific spell) without years of study in aeronautical engineering first. If all you want to do is fly around in an F-15, just have another mage make you a wonder (ex. a ring of fireballs) and use that, but the spheres represent a whole body of knowledge well beyond just that one single application.

Forces 3 is magic missile, light, mage hand, ghost sound, every illusion spell in the book, levitate, fly, fireball, lightning bolt, telekinesis, reverse gravity, invisibility, shield, mage armor, wall of force, darkness, shocking grasp, darkvision, animate objects and a ton more. /ETA

Fireballs also aren't generally part of many real world magical paradigms. A Celestial Chorus might be able to pull off a pillar of holy fire, an Etherite could certainly whip up a Tesla gun, but a Verbena don't really have the concept of fireballs in their paradigm... they'll curse you to die in a freak accident (perhaps being struck by lightning), but they don't throw fireballs. That's not how they believe magic works so that's not how it works for them.

Magic in Mage isn't D&D magic at all (except for that one Orphan for whom it was... and they 'memorized' their spells using a 1e D&D Player's Handbook every morning... Paradox flaws for him often took the form of temporary amnesia to varying degrees... the downside of a paradigm that says spells are erased from your brain when cast).

Quote17 million people would be a base average of 170 vampires in the city (1/100,000 is the official number) and a baseline of 17 true mages (1 in a million is canonical, though there'd be another 70 or so Sorcerers/linear magicians baseline as well).

There is also canonical material that sets the Clans at much smaller than you'd think. Per the fluff, the size of the Tremere is precisely 400 vampires for mystical reasons... Tremere, his 7 advisers who each have 7 vampires in the next rank down (49 total) who in turn have seven vampires under them (343 total)... basically 7 x 7 x 7 = mystical perfection. The GM is just expected to replace members in that number with PCs if the player makes a Tremere.

I implemented VII as having the same structure. Total coincidence. This is using my adjusted pop.# for VTR. Otherwise, I'd quarter that number because there is no fucking way in hell that number of vampire mages would exist and not be chopped right down by their peers (and the supernatural world at large) -- it's not even sustainable as an organisation with that few vampires globally. We can't just handwave this kind of stuff away and this is where my real problem with WW's setting math lies: they're full of crap. Seventeen Mages in LA alone? Nah, not buying it. And I read Destiny's Price, too, so double no.

Speaking of VII though, it's a shame they didn't actually do a proper write-up for them but, on the other hand, it was a good writing exercise. I kept the mystery around them simple: simple is best. It's really easy to go full gonzo with pages worth of detail (almost as if there were an entire series of urban horror books with bulk made up of just that!) and I've had to tell my apprentice GMs in the past to avoid that. Otherwise, you end up with Scientology (there's a reason their "truths" are kept cryptic and obscure from lower level members). Ultimately, I made VII be seven Elders who were coterie of Neonates during the first decades of the 1st millennium who banded together for safety against the really fucked-up Elders who existed in their time . The Seven, now spread across the globe, ended up siring seven childer (or recruited younger vamps) who in turn did the same -- no vampires younger than Ancillae are allowed and roughly 343 are maintained at any time. None of The Seven are yet Ancients but a couple of them are very close by the time the game starts.

QuoteThe thing is, magic is pretty low powered, at least on the margins the PCs start in. The guys who can theoretically lift a mountain with their magic are depicted as literally centuries old (life extended through magic). Rank 2 Forces (takes about a year) actually has the bulk of what a creative Mage is likely to need Forces for. Invisibility, flight, telekinesis (up to 300 lb.), controlling the flow of electricity, moving fire with your mind... all of that is rank two and takes about a year of study per the rules to get good at.

Yeah, oMAGE was totally different in power scale from nMage. You don't get telekinesis until 3rd dot, true invisibility at 5th dot and flight you don't get until 5th dot as well. You just about get flamebolts at 3rd dot but true fireballs aren't until 4th dot. Based on oMage guidelines... christ... mastery is a fucking virtue in and of itself!

QuoteRank 3 lets you transform one force into another force (so light into electricity or fire into sound) and ups the scale affected to about 2 tons (basically a car instead of a man) and that takes two years of additional study (while you still get to live your daily life... so grad school, not secluded in a monastery). Two years to be able to go from moving energy around with your mind to completely transforming any form of energy into any other form of energy AT WILL does not feel excessive to me.

You don't get to do that until 5th dot for most of the Arcana in nMage. There's piecemeal stuff starting from 3rd dot but it's fairly specific (no lead into gold type stuff 'til at least 4th).

QuoteTo put it another way, you can't design an F-15 from the ground up (a specific spell) without years of study in aeronautical engineering first. If all you want to do is fly around in an F-15, just have another mage make you a wonder (ex. a ring of fireballs) and use that, but the spheres represent a whole body of knowledge well beyond just that one single application.

Mate, I've GM'd Mage twice, both for a whole year and for a table comprising very different thresholds of EXP per character. I'm WELL AWARE of how the learning process should be represented. My whole thing is oMage was insane and I-just-don't-know-what-the-fuck-they-were-thinking back then...

QuoteFireballs also aren't generally part of many real world magical paradigms. A Celestial Chorus might be able to pull off a pillar of holy fire, an Etherite could certainly whip up a Tesla gun, but a Verbena don't really have the concept of fireballs in their paradigm... they'll curse you to die in a freak accident (perhaps being struck by lightning), but they don't throw fireballs. That's not how they believe magic works so that's not how it works for them.

Yeah, I'm not into that whole idea of "belief" had going. I totally get the switch to the gnostic style of sorcery they went for -- very much needed. Magic as a power should be objective in and of itself: just because you believe magic should be a certain way stylistically doesn't mean you can't throw a fireball if wish to will it into existence. That said, that's getting into territory very different from what we're discussing which is the insanity in power scale of oMage compared to nMage.

QuoteMagic in Mage isn't D&D magic at all (except for that one Orphan for whom it was... and they 'memorized' their spells using a 1e D&D Player's Handbook every morning... Paradox flaws for him often took the form of temporary amnesia to varying degrees... the downside of a paradigm that says spells are erased from your brain when cast).

nMage allows for D&D style magic to a large extent. Rotes take on that form, it's just not strictly Vancian in implementation (you need to "write them in your spellbook" but they're always available from then on) and unlike Improvised spells, there's no Mana cost (disclaimer: I altered the spellcasting system to make it so that Improvised always cost Mana and Rotes never did unless you augmented them). A significant minority of my players during both chrons actually specialized in Rotes and shied away from Improvised, preferring the consistent, bigger dice pools to the on-demand freedom of effects.

Paradox is also super-fucking harsh in nMage. I actually initially did Paradox wrong... by being way easier on the players than the book was! My players used to do a lot of stupid shit in-game: once I started using Paradox and Mitigation rules as written, the cries of "fuuuuu-" were near-deafening...

See, I found Mage the Awakening downright hollow after having run Ascension nonstop for nearly eight years by then (my Mage campaign has been going on for more than 20 years now); like you could fit the entirety of the Awakening setting into a single Tradition (it doesn't help that gnosticism was basically the Scientology of its day; give us your worldly possessions and we'll share with the secrets of transcending the material world).

Ascension's power scale wasn't insane either, owing mainly to the fact that your dice pool was only your Arete, not Gnosis + Sphere + Skill and you needed to spend those few successes on the spell's actual effects. 3 dice at difficulty 6 when you need one success just to affect a target other than yourself and another success to actually do anything to them and the idea that a starting Mage is snapping their fingers and hurling fireballs is just silly.

Awakening had to cap the effects by sphere rank because to fit with the more universal mechanics of the other supernatural splats (and keep them balanced against each other) they had to use more dice and reducing the difficulty meant adding even more dice. Ascension didn't have that problem because even if you dropped the difficulty from 8 (base difficulty for a vulgar rank 3 effect with witnesses) all the way down to 3 (minimum difficulty for a magical effect) you're still only rolling three dice for successes to spend on the end result (and no doubling of 10's until you've gotten a sphere to rank 4, while 1's subtract right from the start).

For a basic fireball you'd need Forces 3, Prime 2 (to create something from nothing), you'd have three dice at difficulty 7-8 (depending on witnesses). Forces gives you one free success when using it for damage so that covers affecting one target at range. Each success you score on the dice then does 2 health levels (so 0-6 depending on your luck, if you hit, which takes a roll and can be dodged) to one target. You’d have to spend one or more of those successes for area (1 success spent for area would get you a blast about 10 feet across, 2 about 15’, etc.). You also pick up a point of paradox for each one you cast (3-4 if you botch; at 5+ accumulated your GM starts rolling for paradox backlashes).

By comparison a 9mm pistol does 4+successes dice of damage and has no risk of paradox. Forces 2-3 is better for subtle effects than overt battle magic.

Generally speaking you need Arete 5 and Forces 5 before fireballs become really effective (not least of which because rank 4-5 forces is where areas of effect start costing much fewer successes to create). Rank 3 forces can get you a crude fireball (not very hot, not very big and needs more time to cast), but that's not what it's best at.

Long story short; Ascension and Awakening balance the potency of their effects in different ways, but they are both still quite limited in their own ways for starting PCs.

I find it impossible to believe the monsters can stay secret with population numbers that high, barring some kind of global weirdness censor. The more members of a conspiracy there are, the more difficult it is to keep secret.

Either the monsters are eventually discovered a la True Blood, or a global censor keeps the population at large from noticing a la Urban Arcana. You cannot have it both ways.

Well, at least when it was the 5 original series, each of them did have an explanation - Vampires had a global conspiracy which controlled the media and halls of government, etc., Werewolf had pretty much exactly a weirdness censor, Mages couldn't use their powers other than to be improbably lucky without paradox blowing them up, Changelings also had a weirdness censor, and Wraith who messed too obviously in mortal affairs got caught by Stygia and squished into paperweights or whatever.

Now, all of those are what you might call lip-service excuses -- woefully insufficient measures which at best might be inoculum to the accusation that they didn't think of it. OTOH, it's no worse than the 'scientific justifications' most four-color superhero characters' powers get (Iceman draws ambient moisture from the air, nevermind that  he's just made a ton of it in an enclosed room or the like). The numbers don't work, the measures are insufficient (ex. sure a vampire won't survive outing his kind to the world, but some 'set the truth free' fanatic would still do it), but they did put in explanations.

Mage also has the literal New World Order controlling the media and education with agents in key law enforcement and espionage organizations acting to keep existence of the Supernatural (including vampires, werewolves and even weirder stuff) from the masses. They even have Men in Black with memory erasers (when they're being nice) when necessary.

They were masters of fake news before fake news was even a thing.

ETA: I find it rather amusing that the primary opponent in Mage is literally the Deep State + Main Stream Media + Big Education + Globalist Bankers + One World Government types + Google/Amazon. The Technocracy is the culmination of the Progressives wet dreams and the core conflict is opposing them.

Quote from: Chris24601;1040366Mage also has the literal New World Order controlling the media and education with agents in key law enforcement and espionage organizations acting to keep existence of the Supernatural (including vampires, werewolves and even weirder stuff) from the masses. They even have Men in Black with memory erasers (when they're being nice) when necessary.

They were masters of fake news before fake news was even a thing.

ETA: I find it rather amusing that the primary opponent in Mage is literally the Deep State + Main Stream Media + Big Education + Globalist Bankers + One World Government types + Google/Amazon. The Technocracy is the culmination of the Progressives wet dreams and the core conflict is opposing them.

You just erased every objection I've ever had to Mage - and I never liked Mage at all.

Quote from: RandyB;1040370You just erased every objection I've ever had to Mage - and I never liked Mage at all.

With the way everything fell into place for him, in Mage, Donald Trump is either some Orphan Master who somehow flew under the radar until he made his move against the Technocracy -or- Project Invictus (a secret cabal within the Technocracy determined to purge the corruption in the organization and get it back to its original mission of protecting and empowering the common man) was Trump's idea and they're finally enacting their plan to clean house.

If it ever comes up in my campaign I'd lean towards the latter option as a Syndicate "insider" who grew disgusted with the status quo corruption and spent decades prepping for the right moment feels closer to the truth while still holding to Mage's setting. Plus a Technocrat civil war has a lot more opportunities for PCs of every stripe to get involved than one Mage in Washington causing problems for the Technocracy.

Even if Trump is just a supremely talented non-Mage (it wouldn't be the first time), Control and the Inner Circle have to be pulling their hair out at Trump's utter disruption of the Time Table (the Inner Circle's plan to transform the world into a One World Government/Paperless Economy where everyone serves as cogs in their machine). The TPP, NAFTA, Paris Climate Accord and Open Borders are the exact sort of initiatives the Technocracy favors.

I'd still lean towards "he's a Mage" though because of their utter inability to derail him with their own Procedures (ie. Technocrat spells). His tweets and linguistic kill shots (Low Energy Jeb, Little Marco, Lyin' Ted, Crooked Hillary) are definitely his focus for altering reality in his favor.

* * * *

Which actually is another point in regard to the number of Mages in the setting. Mages aren't all guys in robes chanting in Enochian.

That 17 Mages in LA doesn't seem so outrageous when the seven or so that are part of the Traditions could be a Hollywood mogul who weaves magic into his movies to make them extra popular (Son of Ether), a software developer whose apps perform well beyond expectations (Virtual Adept), a Wiccan medical student studying applications of holistic medicine (Verbena), a yoga instructor (Cult of Ecstasy), a stuntman who pulls off insane stunts (Akashic Brotherhood), a Kabbalist rabbi (Order of Hermes) and a street preacher (Celestial Chorus).

Throw in another eight from the Technocrats... an Hollywood investor and a talent scout (both Syndicate), a Tech CEO (Iteration-X), the head researcher at a bio-tech firm (Progenitor), a pair in law enforcement and a professor at UCLA (all New World Order) and a military aerospace contractor (Void Engineer).

Then throw in an Orphan of some type (probably a struggling actor whose paradigm amounts to "sometimes weird shit happens") and a Nephandi in charge of MS-13 members in LA and you're at 17 mages pretty easily and none of them especially obvious as a Mage to the public.

You have perfectly illustrated why I don't like White Wolf games. The politics are based on high school cliques and special snowflakes, rather than anything remotely realistic.

In real life, specifically the USA, you have the GOP and the Democrats. They have these things called "goals" and they are very impatient about pursuing them. The GOP wants to steal from the poor and control women's uteri, while the Democrats want to kill all white people and convert everyone to LGBT. Ultimately, both parties are motivated by profit and use these things called "ideals" to conceal that and attract new victims.

In WoD, the political party system doesn't work. The conspiracies of witches and monsters have to keep themselves secret because they are more often than not serial killers and their goals are generally to turn the planet into a nightmarish hellscape where humanity is either cattle or living nightmares themselves.

That the monsters organize themselves into high school cliques based on things like jocks, Asian jocks, popular girls, computer lab nerds, druggies, Jesus freaks, 1950s B-movie fans, Harry Potter LARPers and so forth is ridiculous.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1040584You have perfectly illustrated why I don't like White Wolf games. The politics are based on high school cliques and special snowflakes, rather than anything remotely realistic.

Sounds like a fun thought experiment! Let's do it!

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1040584In real life, specifically the USA, you have the GOP and the Democrats. They have these things called "goals" and they are very impatient about pursuing them. The GOP wants to steal from the poor and control women's uteri, while the Democrats want to kill all white people and convert everyone to LGBT. Ultimately, both parties are motivated by profit and use these things called "ideals" to conceal that and attract new victims.

So this assumes a few things - that establishment politics of America encompass the totality of the understanding of creatures that have lived for centuries, formed their own habits based on those centuries, including a ridiculous amount of bias. Plus the supernatural power to enforce those biases on others.

I'm not saying you don't have a valid point. I'm saying that point would be more pertinent for modern vampires than elder ones. By "elder" I mean those born to eras of monarchical rule or even older means. Such beings, imo, would look at things like the GOP and Democrat party as useful tools for the herd, or as childish playthings aping their view of some bygone era of the original Republic or some romantic thing like that. But those power-structures do exist, but I'm saying insofar as vampires are concerned those structures exist to provide currency for survival. Which ultimately is blood and territory upon which they can allow their herd to graze.

I've always dismissed the high-school clique idea because while that certainly can exist, I find such comparisons in themselves juvenile and missing some real possibilities. If you take Vampire for what it is - it's monsters cannibalizing humans for *survival* while trying not become a monster, right? We're both perfectly reasonable enough to understand once you have powers like Dominate, Presence, alone - much less the more fantastically flashy abilities - these things concerning mortal politics only matter insofar as they give you a food-supply and temporal power to secure your lifestyle.

The "high-school" politics thing never really floated with me. Unless you're a bottom-feeder. For me it was more like Narcos. Competing criminal cartels. Modern human politics is merely a bell to gather your food.

That said - younger vampires involved in political stuff (especially today) I could totally see what you're saying as being relevant. The problem here is they would relegate themselves to merely being tools for these more established Vampires with *far* more firepower brought against them. Hence this is acknowledged in the game with the Anarchs.

What I'm saying here is that there is a metric shit-ton of nuance you can (and should) bring to the game in order to not devolve it into high-school hijinks. And as I've run the game I don't dismiss those things - it's certainly there. But it's something I include in a much larger whole.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1040584In WoD, the political party system doesn't work. The conspiracies of witches and monsters have to keep themselves secret because they are more often than not serial killers and their goals are generally to turn the planet into a nightmarish hellscape where humanity is either cattle or living nightmares themselves.

I tell everyone this deep secret... I'm going to let it out only here in this post. Ready? Okay here goes.... "There are precisely the *exact* number of supernatural creatures in the WoD to make this exactly what you need to be realistic for your setting." Easy peasy.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1040584That the monsters organize themselves into high school cliques based on things like jocks, Asian jocks, popular girls, computer lab nerds, druggies, Jesus freaks, 1950s B-movie fans, Harry Potter LARPers and so forth is ridiculous.

Agreed. Unless they are in fact, those things when they are turned into monsters... and then you *force* them to deal with the reality of the world that you, as the GM, have created *outside* of those conceits. That's where the game is.

Near Dark - jock turned into a vampire. Still just wants to be a jock. Too bad the conceits are he's part of a roving Sabbat Pack led by an ex-Confederate soldier. Conflict. Game. Profit. Once that scenario is over - the setting expands. The conceits expand. How long does the "jock" thing even matter?

How about even shorter:

In many ways High School never ends... and all the non-assholes of the world are desperately trying to not get sucked back into a perpetual High School that these assholes in power keep rebuilding. Thus all monsters with their Path meters, quiet desperation, and sectarian hypocrisy. 'High School' is merely a metaphor for the hell of being a social being amid monsters, and humans are quite good at being monstrous, therefore build our own prisons.

/sniffs flower tragically

Quote from: Opaopajr;1040679How about even shorter:

In many ways High School never ends... and all the non-assholes of the world are desperately trying to not get sucked back into a perpetual High School that these assholes in power keep rebuilding. Thus all monsters with their Path meters, quiet desperation, and sectarian hypocrisy. 'High School' is merely a metaphor for the hell of being a social being amid monsters, and humans are quite good at being monstrous, therefore build our own prisons.

/sniffs flower tragically

Actually, you're more onto something than you think.  See, the interests most people have in High School, who is sleeping with who, what the popular kids are doing, so on and so forth, doesn't end.  If you have ever been a supermarket and seen the magazine rack, full of lurid stories detailing the lives of those same types of people, except now we call them 'stars' or 'celebrities', but in the end it's same gossip filled stage of social acceptance and denial, just on a bigger field now.  Don't fool yourselves, we never left high school.

Yes, it's the game of social status amid a social predator species (humans derivation is of a predatory animal). The metaphor works because life is still all about those games to the majority among us who want to fill those basic needs. Maslow's Hierarchy and all that... We strive to contain our monstrousness in our pursuit for these needs for the sake of survival; all competing against all eventually weakens all, primed to succumb to the elements. Thus we create systems to contain and channel the primal darkness within: Cooperation.

But cooperation also has a cost. And in humans it is elaborate. So why not in sapient monsters, too?

White Wolf oWoD is merely playing with that struggle through metaphor. And some take a game too seriously and try to overcomplicate it. Hence why I am not that curious about V5, or its heartbreakers. I already have a game that does it, relatively loosely and with warts, but easy enough to jump right in.

When I ran WW games, I specifically invoked high school. The petty egos, the forced obedience to often clueless masters, the seeking freedom while needing resources from above, the prom, the clubs, the need to develop skills faster than your peers, and all the various nonsense. Also, it works for players because....we all went to high school and many never left, or deal with those who never left.