Any word on who's going to write the game fiction?

Quote from: jan paparazzi;967358If there is someone who can do it it's probably him. I hope he comes up with some decent mechanics and with some practical GM's advice. I always wondered why there isn't any info about what kind of political conflicts you can have, who your opponent could be, what your opponent wants and why. Preferably in a random table.

He did Conspyramid in Nights Black Agents. Maybe there could be a similar system for organizing a rival political faction so you there are clear, identifiable angles of attack on them.

Quote from: CRKrueger;967207Yeah, pretty much.  WoD games aren't Storygames nor do they include a high degree of narrative mechanics.  Except for Wraith, where you can play Shadows, and a personality/morality mechanic in some lines, WoD has always been pretty traditional until recently.  BoxCrayonTales generally doesn't prefer that type of design.

Quote from: Baulderstone;967304Exactly. The mechanics for WoD were designed by Tom Dowd who worked on Shadowrun, and it is basically the same system with d10s instead of exploding d6s. If Vampire:the Masquerade is a story game, then so is Shadowrun.



That's my feeling. The guy is actually full-time, professional game designer. That isn't the kind of job description where you can afford to turn down job offers, especially from a company that can credibly pay you what they are offering.

My original question was about why WoD vastly outsold its few competitors. It's not because their mechanics are any good, since the Storytell system sucks compared to GURPS or PBtA. It's because of the backstory, metaplot, tremisce or whatever you would call it. I prefer a system that is optimized for its intended style of play rather than one which poorly mixes narrative and simulation mechanics.

In any case, I'm surprised we haven't seen any WoD retroclones and I will be more surprised if we don't see any after V5 comes out.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;967955My original question was about why WoD vastly outsold its few competitors. It's not because their mechanics are any good, since the Storytell system sucks compared to GURPS or PBtA. It's because of the backstory, metaplot, tremisce or whatever you would call it. I prefer a system that is optimized for its intended style of play rather than one which poorly mixes narrative and simulation mechanics.

While it had flaws, I think one of the reasons for the success was the system. It was very easy to explain to new players that a pip represented a d10. I think that is one of the reasons why you saw lots of new people come in with vampire. Contrast that with the base mechanic of D&D at the time, which was THAC0. I love THAC0 but it I just tried explaining it to some younger players yesterday and the blank stares reminded me why sometimes Vampire was an easier sell than comparable games at the time. GURPS is a great system as well, but to a non-gamer, I think it is pretty daunting. Once you dig into these systems, things get different. But Vampire was a system that people could understand just looking at the character sheet (or at least it doesn't seem quite as math oriented) and you didn't really need the background in gaming to grok all the concepts (whereas a lot of RPGs were much easier to understand if you had been playing for a while).

Quote from: 3rik;967399Any word on who's going to write the game fiction?

Good one.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;967968While it had flaws, I think one of the reasons for the success was the system. It was very easy to explain to new players that a pip represented a d10. I think that is one of the reasons why you saw lots of new people come in with vampire. Contrast that with the base mechanic of D&D at the time, which was THAC0. I love THAC0 but it I just tried explaining it to some younger players yesterday and the blank stares reminded me why sometimes Vampire was an easier sell than comparable games at the time. GURPS is a great system as well, but to a non-gamer, I think it is pretty daunting. Once you dig into these systems, things get different. But Vampire was a system that people could understand just looking at the character sheet (or at least it doesn't seem quite as math oriented) and you didn't really need the background in gaming to grok all the concepts (whereas a lot of RPGs were much easier to understand if you had been playing for a while).

WoD dominates the urban fantasy market despite its mechanics undergoing little refinement in the twenty five years since their inception. The cracks have really started to show, especially in Exalted and Scion. CoD, for example, bolts Fate's aspects onto the ST system. Given the innovation in the tabletop scene in the past two decades and the availability of systems which accomplish the same purpose far more elegantly, I presume that WoD is popular mainly due to either the depth of its setting or the good will of long time fans invested in that setting. The only real competitors IIRC are Shadowrun, Dresden Files, Monsterhearts and Urban Shadows. At least if the DriveThruRPG medals are anything to go by.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;967986WoD dominates the urban fantasy market despite its mechanics undergoing little refinement in the twenty five years since their inception. The cracks have really started to show, especially in Exalted and Scion. CoD, for example, bolts Fate's aspects onto the ST system. Given the innovation in the tabletop scene in the past two decades and the availability of systems which accomplish the same purpose far more elegantly, I presume that WoD is popular mainly due to either the depth of its setting or the good will of long time fans invested in that setting. The only real competitors IIRC are Shadowrun, Dresden Files, Monsterhearts and Urban Shadows. At least if the DriveThruRPG medals are anything to go by.

I don't know. Elegance and innovation may simply not be what people want. I think the combination of 'easy to grok at a glance', familiarity with the system over time, and setting, are all contributing factors. But I think you can't ignore the part about pips being pretty easy to grasp. Whenever I talk to WoD players, that is one of the big reasons they list of for liking it.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;967968While it had flaws, I think one of the reasons for the success was the system. It was very easy to explain to new players that a pip represented a d10. I think that is one of the reasons why you saw lots of new people come in with vampire. Contrast that with the base mechanic of D&D at the time, which was THAC0. I love THAC0 but it I just tried explaining it to some younger players yesterday and the blank stares reminded me why sometimes Vampire was an easier sell than comparable games at the time. GURPS is a great system as well, but to a non-gamer, I think it is pretty daunting. Once you dig into these systems, things get different. But Vampire was a system that people could understand just looking at the character sheet (or at least it doesn't seem quite as math oriented) and you didn't really need the background in gaming to grok all the concepts (whereas a lot of RPGs were much easier to understand if you had been playing for a while).

I agree with all of this. The pips on the character sheet make it very easy to get a non-gamer involved.

Call of Cthulhu is another reasonably light game that is newbie friendly, but you have a big pile of skill points that need to be numerically divided up among your skills. It leads to a lot of point juggling. You may put 20 points in a skill, then decide to add  20 more later. You need to erase the 20 and write 40. It's not exactly hard, but it is little clumsy.

With the WoD sheet, you just keep shading in circles until all the points are gone. I think WoD is an inferior system to CoC, but it is a lot easier to get players in the door.

The pips also conceal the numbers. A sheet of paper cover in number is intimidating to some people. Now, all those pips on the WoD actually represent numbers, but it looks less mathematical.

For whatever reason, percentiles are scary, while simple math under 10 (1-5 attribute, 1-5 skill) is welcoming, even though you know exactly what the chance of success is when looking at a percentile, and can maybe figure out the chance of success of a target #X with Y dice and needing Z successes without getting out the scratch paper.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;967986WoD dominates the urban fantasy market despite its mechanics undergoing little refinement in the twenty five years since their inception. The cracks have really started to show, especially in Exalted and Scion. CoD, for example, bolts Fate's aspects onto the ST system. Given the innovation in the tabletop scene in the past two decades and the availability of systems which accomplish the same purpose far more elegantly, I presume that WoD is popular mainly due to either the depth of its setting or the good will of long time fans invested in that setting. The only real competitors IIRC are Shadowrun, Dresden Files, Monsterhearts and Urban Shadows. At least if the DriveThruRPG medals are anything to go by.

Historically, the Storyteller system was basically designed to be loose (system doesn't matter; the golden rule, etc), simple and elegant insofar there really was only one dice pool mechanic. Times change, as do the expectations of what systems should offer, but it is worth noting that Fate's Aspects are not entirely original themselves. The Mind's Eye Theatre Live Action rules for Vampire, for example, had free form descriptor traits that were bid against others in contests, had retests by spending Abilities and could refresh with Willpower expenditure, that was in turn earned through roleplaying specified personality traits and personal goals. Sound familiar?

I think people mostly hang on to the wod because of the depth of the setting. I don't really mind the system that much at least not the nwod system. The combat is dull though. What mostly bugs me about the wod is the tone. It is written with the general idea that the GM should think about certain themes, the mood, the story arc, recurring motifs etc. and try to incorporate those in the story he wants to tell. There is very little written about what the players are going to do in these games and how the system can support that. Compare it to Traveller for example and the difference in focus is obvious. That game literally starts with pointing out what you can do in that setting.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;968032I think people mostly hang on to the wod because of the depth of the setting. I don't really mind the system that much at least not the nwod system. The combat is dull though. What mostly bugs me about the wod is the tone. It is written with the general idea that the GM should think about certain themes, the mood, the story arc, recurring motifs etc. and try to incorporate those in the story he wants to tell. There is very little written about what the players are going to do in these games and how the system can support that. Compare it to Traveller for example and the difference in focus is obvious. That game literally starts with pointing out what you can do in that setting.

In my copy of Vampire, which I will choose 1st edition by way of making a point, it included an entire chapter on "Chronicles" that discussed a range of options to base your stories on and an example introductory campaign set up with NPCs, etc. The notion of playing a brood of young, neonate Vampires working against the machinations of older, inhuman Vampires in a dark mirror of our own world was also explicit from the first chapter onwards. Did you really not know how to play it?

Quote from: Willie the Duck;968015For whatever reason, percentiles are scary, while simple math under 10 (1-5 attribute, 1-5 skill) is welcoming, even though you know exactly what the chance of success is when looking at a percentile, and can maybe figure out the chance of success of a target #X with Y dice and needing Z successes without getting out the scratch paper.

Exactly. It is partly because a lot of casual gamers simply don't think about the odds in the first place. You need to really understand the fundamentals of probability before you even notice that that the oWoD is damned complicated.

Quote from: Baulderstone;968054Exactly. It is partly because a lot of casual gamers simply don't think about the odds in the first place. You need to really understand the fundamentals of probability before you even notice that that the oWoD is damned complicated.

Dicepool systems were seen as the new shiny in the early 90s, thanks to Ghostbusters et al, but percentiles were seen as old hat. I remember seeing a review for Nephilim (which was ostensibly Chaosium's answer to Vampire back then) where the reviewer basically said as much! I take the point about probabilities, but I think it's fair to say that White Wolf wasn't aiming at Math analysts as a priority market. This was the grunge era, when the spontaneity of gameplay and interaction with setting was deemed more important than hard and tested rule systems.

Quote from: TrippyHippy;968062Dicepool systems were seen as the new shiny in the early 90s, thanks to Ghostbusters et al, but percentiles were seen as old hat. I remember seeing a review for Nephilim (which was ostensibly, Chaosium's answer to Vampire back then) where the reviewer basically said as much! I take the point about probabilities, but I think it's fair to say that White Wolf wasn't aiming at Math analysts as a priority market. This was the grunge era, when the spontaneity of gameplay and interaction with setting was deemed more important than hard and tested rule systems.

There is certainly an element of novelty to the whole thing. Percentile systems still seemed pretty cool in the mid-80s, but for no real reason, they were regarded as unhip in the 90s. I remember when Unknown Armies was done but not yet released, I mentioned to Greg Stolze that it was impressive that he has done a some cool things with percentiles that might get people passed the idea that they weren't cool anymore. He looked panicked and thought I was telling him that nobody was going to look at his game.

I used to be really good at genuinely trying to compliment people and somehow poking at their worst insecurities.