Are there any simplified spirit rules? If not, then I could try my own.

Like, one of the things I don't like about the CoD spirit rules is that they're too systematized and limited.

For example, spirits build according to those rules are limited by the concept of space. That is, they can only exist in one spot and have a definite size.

Let's use an example from fiction. In the movie IT, Pennywise isn't really limited by that sort of thing. In fact, the only reason the main characters can even fight back is because they may have psychic powers. The clown itself is just a projection, a mouth.

In fact, most hauntings in fiction don't operate by such limitations. Unless you specifically need to interact with them, ghosts and spirits don't exist at any particular point in space.

Not sure how to represent that, though.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1082056Clans/bloodlines/etc often have personality types and whole cultures arbitrarily assigned, even though most of the time they can't alter your personality.

I created a Vampire variant where that happened: the Artsy Clan didn't embrace artists, rather the people they embraced became artists. Also, all of the clans were specifically tied to a family name, culture, and geography, sort of like the Giovanni. Except there was no mortal Giovanni family, rather you took the name when you were embraced (Tony Smith becomes Antonio Giovanni.)

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1082056...weird or annoying baggage like, I don't know, the Giovanni having a virtual monopoly over necromancy (at least prior to the Hecata taking over).

I always liked that, actually. In the above variant, each of the clans had a discipline known only to them, and the only way to learn it was to drink some of their blood. This introduced some new concepts to the game: being offered the blood of the clan was a great honor, reserved for those who had done a great service. Also, there was a Tradition against "blood thievery" (taking the blood by force to learn the discipline.) This was one of the Sabbat's strategic advantages, since Vaulderie meant they were freely sharing the potential to learn disciplines. But my Sabbat was very different-- I took it back to it's Anarch roots, but made it more cautious and calculating.

I've been reading over the Chronicles of Darkness 2e book after years of not paying attention. Damn, it shears away everything interesting from the 1e. There's a World of Darkness-style explanation of every dot of every skill when 1e just used a single list for all at the beginning of the chapter, and all the evocative examples of uses and modifiers from 1e are gone to make way for the unnecessary redundancy and god-machine fluff. The notion that a purity ring could provide a bonus against seduction was comedy gold in 1e, but there's no mention of anything like that here.

Playing "Mother May I" with the modifiers mechanic and making up huge lists of modifiers for superpowers was probably my favorite part of 1e, but 2e refuses to entertain any inspiration. I though this was supposed to be a storytelling game, damn it.

Dear God, the social combat--sorry, "social maneuvering"--is a mess. I understand having the option for more complicated social systems (Mirrors offered several options, to its credit), but if you just want to play and have fun then it makes way more sense for the default rules to be heavily abstracted.

The willpower refresher isn't anything new, but I absolutely hated all the inane arguments over how 1e virtues/virtues were "too christian" or whatever other crap people were spewing. I'm not  Christian myself, but I'm not so religophobic that I am triggered by the use of Christian-derived concepts. It's a willpower refresh mechanic, not a moral judgment. So stupid.

The integrity mechanic just has me shaking my head at people's anal-retention over the name. People got upset that 1e was called "morality" (which was a weird way of putting it and flied in the face of real psychology but this is a game that uses mechanics to support its themes or whatever) but have no problem that a nearly identical mechanic is called "integrity." According to the dictionary, integrity is "moral uprightness." It doesn't relate to sanity at all. One definition does relate to the wholeness of institutions, aircraft and electronics, but this is never applied to mental states. IIRC, one of the writers stated they were using the second definition instead of the first. They're so anal-retentive about this that they resort to redefining dictionary terms (and this has been a White Wolf staple since the beginning). Seriously, what's wrong with using "sanity" or "conscience" or whatever else Mirrors uses?

I don't have a problem with the mostly cosmetic changes, but the community and writers are so anal-retentive and snobbish about it. They honestly believe that 2e is better in every way compared to 1e, despite increasing the complexity and shearing away most of the nuance.

The spirit rules for manifestations are way more complicated than they need to be. Back in 1e spirits never had to worry about opening and closing connections to manifest, so I don't see why they need to now. This is the absolute worst implementation of the condition mechanic and the one that lends most credence to all the criticism of it. And of course the spirit rules don't account for demons at all (not to mention the fact that there are two, maybe three, different groups of antagonists all called demons between Inferno, Hunter and Descent), nor any of the many, many additions to the spirit rules introduced by various books over the years. Like the rules for revenants and passions introduced by the Antagonists book and Mummy: The Curse, which BTW recreate the same over complicated distinction between anchors and passions from Wraith: The Oblivion. (There's a running them here that the CoD2e era tries to recreate unnecessary concepts from WoD, like the penumbra, nature/demeanor, vampires with photographic recall of their unlives, etc.)

Trying to simplify these rules looks like a huge headache. It would probably be easier to describe it all in free-form. I don't know, something along the lines of: Spirits need to manifest in order to interact with the world, and in order to manifest they need a connection to the world. What that connection is varies by the nature of the spirit, but it's always something that resonates with their reason for existing (e.g. spirits of emotion can connect to outpourings of that emotion, ghosts are always connected to their unfinished business, demons connect to sins, etc). In addition, environmental factors affect how easy/difficult it is to manifest, again varying by the spirit's concept (i.e. it's easier for ghosts to manifest in decrepit buildings or cemeteries as opposed to shopping malls or science labs, for a spirit of electronics to manifest in a city as opposed to a forest, for a tree spirit to manifest in a forest as opposed to a lake, etc). Manifestation takes many forms, depending on the spirit, but most commonly it appears as spooky SFX like you see in horror movies like Poltergeist , The Shining, or ghost-focused episodes of Truth or Scare (my personal favorite was the hallway filled with quivering red oatmeal). Manifestations can be as diverse and evocative as you want them to be: huddling inside (insofar as that makes sense when a spirit lacks mass) of the connection if it's an object or person, actively possessing the connection, riding the connection (like that art in the Immortals book depicting spirit wasps sitting on people's backs), etc. Also: Rank determines the general power of a spirit*, but a spirit's attributes also affect them beyond the obvious: e.g. a ghost's Power attribute affects how human it appears and how far it can stray from its anchors and it's Finesse attribute affects how much beyond its anchors it can perceive. Spirits often have weaknesses in the form of bans and banes, but this isn't systematized: e.g. some ghosts may be warded by salt, but not all are. Rituals (e.g. abjurations, exorcisms, blessed items) aren't considered weaknesses: a ritual involving a circle of salt (or brick dust, or anything else) to repel spirits will affect all spirits even if they aren't specifically vulnerable to salt, as this is a feature of the ritual itself. Whether the ritual will actually work depends on the faith and spiritual purity of the exorcist. It's a lot easier for a trained priest, rabbi or imam to perform a ritual than it is for an average joe, and it's a lot easier for an ascetic hermit than a hypocritical child molester.

* Although I personally find the Rank mechanic arbitrarily limiting and lacking in nuance, especially compared to the way more flexible and evocative 1e ghost rules, and it contributed to the problem of werewolves being severely outclassed compared to spirits because of the proliferation of spirits above rank 1. It makes more sense to use the same power stat mechanic as PCs do, like how Exalted handles things with it's universal Essence statistic.

The God-Machine is just ugh. Despite the book saying multiple times it is about "mystery," this new metaplot sucks out the mystery by literally saying that "god did it" to all mysteries.  There are interesting bits like sending angels to resurrect a cemetery to find someone who died or count every object that meets a certain criteria, but the explanation of the god-machine itself is laughably bad. It's severely retarded a la Azathoth and yet has legions of angels maintaining the world (which only raises more questions about how the world is even supposed to work in the first place, not to mention rendering the already complicated 1e cosmology even more confusing), and it's ultimate goal may or may not be to make humans mine more uranium. Dear God, not even the Principle in Promethean was that stupid.

The angels themselves are laughably generic and uninspired, especially compared to the 1e Qashmalim (who I expect 2e will lobotomize into similar absurdity). Some of them are psychopomps who ferry souls to the afterlife, which is a really bad thing to add if the theme is mystery. Sure, urban fantasy shows often include such things, but those shows are usually campy as hell and don't worry about consistency when it comes to world building (mostly because it is easier to write stories if you don't have to worry about contradicting obscure trivia you said two seasons ago). Lion-headed giant snakes appear as angels, definitely based on the gnostic icon of chnoubis, but they're used as generic D&D monster manual entries (i.e. their sole purpose for existing is to cause general death and destruction, which is good for D&D but terrible for a faux deep mystery setting) that player characters are expected to fight conventionally.

Oh, and angels are a separate thing from qashmalim. There's actually a whole over-complicated cosmology now that makes World of Darkness' umbra look simple in comparison. The writers wrote a whole manual of the planes-style treatment, then hypocritically claim in the text and interviews that they're not trying to write a manual of the planes.

I don't understand how the quality declined so drastically or how the writers forgot what "mystery" even is. Mystery means not giving an explanation or leaving it up to the ST, not giving a selection of stupid explanations or assuming an implicit cosmology for everything.

At this point I'm considering switching over to C.J. Carella's WitchCraft even if that means I have to use the wayback machine to get the web enhancements they never included on Drivethru.

EDIT: It gets worse. There are a half-dozen different Rank mechanics and none of them are comparable.

Dear God. Even Exalted wasn't this bad.

CoD definitely needs the Qwixalted treatment.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1082354Dear God. Even Exalted wasn't this bad.

...3rd Edition Exalted took every one of those mechanical ideas and decided to multiply the complexity by a factor of 10. As for the nonsensical setting changes, it had that in spades too.

CoD was the moment when I took a step back, looked at Exalted 3rd (then still in development by a different team) and went, "Uh oh." Someday, I would like to see them both get back on track as I believe both games have some good merits.

I'm a huge fan of the CoD mortal, hunter, core, changeling, mage, werewolf, and geist lines (though I never could make sense of Geist since it seemed like you should just be RPing partying all the time). However, the mechanics are VERY heavy and VERY fiddly. Much more complicated and spread out than something like Savage Worlds. I've been campaigning for years to get them to come up with a conversion to something else that is on par with SW-level complexity.

I see a lot of leftists praising Paradox for taking a proactive stance on LGBT and mental illness. I can only imagine how they'll react when they learn that Werewolf and Mage are extremely eurocentric and culturally insensitive.

The tribes and traditions are literally loony SJWs who want to destroy civilization. Not just in the sense of destroying Western culture, they literally want to reduce humanity to the stone age because everything more advanced than a spear is sexist/racist/whatever-ist.

The Akashic Brotherhood is supposed to represent the entirety of East Asian culture, and the Dreamspeakers represent all the dark skinned people who suffered under Western imperialism. Meanwhile, there are equally powerful traditions for wiccans, hackers, mad scientists, christians, stoners, hermetics, goths and serial killers.

The Stargazers tribe is supposed to represent all werewolves in Asia (except Japan). Meanwhile, Europe has at least a half-dozen tribes all to itself: teutonic, celtic, slavic, etc. Contrary to popular belief, Asia has a bazillion different ethnic groups. Seriously, the mongol invented smallpox blankets in the middle ages.

The Get of Fenris murdered all of its members who were nazis or neo-nazis, while still trying to claim they have the right to use the swastika because of its Indian origins. Hypocrisy and genocide, oh my!

The Black Furies are known to murder any boys they birth. They claim that the reason why the patriarchy took over is because the wyrm taught men where babies come from, and that every male culture hero worldwide was actually evil.

The Wendigo tribe worships the freaking wendigo, which in modern Algonquin culture is depicted as a Satan figure and a representation of Western imperialism and capitalism.

The werewolf's hopeless war against the wyrm now rings hollow because polls indicate that a billion people support environmentalism. China and India have the worst pollution problems, the biggest populations, and they're leading the environmentalist movement.

I imagine that the metaplot explanation for this will be that Pentex lost the war against the beast courts and regrouped in the USA under Trump, who is the Wyrm's antichrist or something.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1082686I imagine that the metaplot explanation for this will be that Pentex lost the war against the beast courts and regrouped in the USA under Trump, who is the Wyrm's antichrist or something.

There are simpler ways that are more true to life (but maybe bleaker, depending on your perspective): everyone supports a movement that nobody really participates in.

Pentex didn't lose the war. They figured out how to commercialize the enemy's weapon and make it their own. "I'm doing great things for the environment!" people say now as they engage in far more wasteful activities. Pentex won because their legitimate businesses figured out how to get people to feel good while being worse.

Quote from: Tanin Wulf;1082689There are simpler ways that are more true to life (but maybe bleaker, depending on your perspective): everyone supports a movement that nobody really participates in.

Pentex didn't lose the war. They figured out how to commercialize the enemy's weapon and make it their own. "I'm doing great things for the environment!" people say now as they engage in far more wasteful activities. Pentex won because their legitimate businesses figured out how to get people to feel good while being worse.

Perhaps. But I imagine the Technocracy would oppose Pentex. Assuming that Paradox's proposed "unified world of darkness" plan still holds.

Remember, Gehenna has been changed to a cyclical phenomenon rather than an impending apocalypse. It stands to reason that Paradox will do something similar for the other times of judgment. Otherwise it would start becoming silly that the sides have been fighting without resolution for as long as World of Darkness continues being published.

Like, I don't know, in a few decades when China and India have rendered solar power so cheap that it's the only power source available, and are spending uncountable sums of money on solving remaining environmental problems... would Werewolf: The Apocalypse Extieth Edition and its fans still be claiming that the Apocalypse is imminent and solar power is a Wyrm trick?

Actually, thinking in terms of decades from now reminds me how terribly dated the design of World of Darkness still is. Aside from intermittent metaplot developments, it's remained largely unchanged in its nearly three decades of existence. Dungeons & Dragons is 45 years old now and it's only partly recognizable if you compare then and now. The premise of going into dungeons and killing monsters for XP and loot is unchanged, but the classes and races have expanded immensely and there's a bazillion campaign settings and cosmologies referenced in the 5e DMG.

If World of Darkness was made today, then I highly doubt it would resemble the 4th and 5th editions as presented. I don't know if it would resemble Chronicles of Darkness at all.

Actually, what do you think a World of Darkness would look like if it was made today?

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1082686they literally want to reduce humanity to the stone age because everything more advanced than a spear is sexist/racist/whatever-ist.

Spears are phallic objects, so those are right the fuck out.

Quote from: Aglondir;1082297I created a Vampire variant where that happened: the Artsy Clan didn't embrace artists, rather the people they embraced became artists. Also, all of the clans were specifically tied to a family name, culture, and geography, sort of like the Giovanni. Except there was no mortal Giovanni family, rather you took the name when you were embraced (Tony Smith becomes Antonio Giovanni.)




I always liked that, actually. In the above variant, each of the clans had a discipline known only to them, and the only way to learn it was to drink some of their blood. This introduced some new concepts to the game: being offered the blood of the clan was a great honor, reserved for those who had done a great service. Also, there was a Tradition against "blood thievery" (taking the blood by force to learn the discipline.) This was one of the Sabbat's strategic advantages, since Vaulderie meant they were freely sharing the potential to learn disciplines. But my Sabbat was very different-- I took it back to it's Anarch roots, but made it more cautious and calculating.

Curious.

Why even have vampires start out as human? Why not dump the humanity mechanic and have them be born vampires?

Quote from: PrometheanVigil;1082131CTL 1e asked the Madonna question about its characters, particular ones who breach 6+ Wyrd: even with her mega-success, would she have become as sexually provocative and explicit in her personas over the years (as well as her infamous real-life "cougar-ing") had she not been raped when she was younger? Fucked-up analogy but it works. And that's the point. Would these characters be the way they are without these experiences? And how do they maintain their internal balance in spite of it, especially if still become successful.

Can you imagine trying to address those questions through a game in this political climate?

Quote from: PrometheanVigil;1082131If there's no consequences -- at least, initially -- then what stops you from being an absolutely fucked-up individual going forward?

You do.

Character is what you are in the dark.

Quote from: PrometheanVigil;1082131Beast was a really creepy book. I remember lightly skimming it only partially back when they released the unedited copy free online years back because I could just tell something was deeply wrong about it. I was like "why is this book glorifying abusers? Why is it trying to make out people who hurt others are good because their victims deserve it? Do they really have a high-schooler beating the shit out of another student in a school canteen because they felt they `deserved` it? Vampire never made it out vampires are good at all..."

It's almost as if abusers don't see themselves as such and feel completely justified in their actions.

Beast could have been the "who's the real monster here" game we all needed if it wasn't trying to so hard to validate a certain demographic and failing miserably at it.

Quote from: PrometheanVigil;1082131And then it came out that the lead designer on the game was a child molester.

Because of course he was.

I wouldn't read too much into that, as Matt was also lead designer on Promethean, and worked on quite a number of other WW/OP books.

Quote from: PrometheanVigil;1082131(I have never, EVER seen the RPG.net team -- or anyone of their like --  ever scramble harder than when that came out)

Meh, they did their best not to draw attention to it, banned him from the site, and then never spoke of it again.

That is until they were forced to when new allegations emerged which involved his wife, and then all they did was simply ban her too.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1082033The World of Darkness fanboys seem really toxic and snobbish lately. I left the community years ago, but I think it's gotten much worse by the time I decided to dip my toes back in.

You are sadly not wrong, and all fan communities seem to be heading this way.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1082033And you don't see this problem in World of Darkness? Because where I'm standing, both have this problem in spades.

I was actually referring to both, but now that you mention it, this was less of a problem in the original WoD because of how evocative it was, and the mechanics were less disruptive to the concepts inspired.

CoD in the meantime claims to be a toolbox, yet fights you whenever you try and use it as such. It has definite ideas of what it wants to be, but refuses to just come out and tell you what that is.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1082033You want to play a werewolf that isn't an eco-terrorist or a vice cop? Well fuck you, this is White Wolf.

I never found WtA to be this limited.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1082033Indeed? What gives you that idea? Because from where I'm standing, Lost is probably the single best game White Wolf has ever made. Or the only good game if you're not charitable to them.

While Lost may be the best game OP ever made, I still think doing it justice in a video game would be more difficult and less compelling than with Dreaming, which has a stronger brand, wider appeal, clear character concepts, well defined powers, and two worlds which overlap. It would basically be 'Malkavian: The Game' without all the problematic mental illness baggage.

Lost on the other hand would require a lot more work and lose a lot in translation.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1082047The Exalted rules equate all forms of social interaction with beating down someone's mental defenses until they submit to you. Real social interaction doesn't work that way unless it's abuse, bullying or torture.

I wouldn't be surprised if the game attracts socially maladjusted misfits if this is how they perceive social interactions.

I'm hesitant to jump to these conclusions, but the evidence is starting to make that very difficult.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1082060That description of social interaction fits the description of "leadership" held by the VPN of a job I quit last year. I was never so happy with that job as when I was summoned to her office for yet another "inspiring beatdown" and I opened the conversation with dropping my exit packet on her desk.

#Winning

Quote from: Snowman0147;1082084Well look who took it over.  In the 90's it was the pro free speech anti big anything crowd who just happened to be in the left.  Now it is just sjws and you know they don't like to create new things.

On the contrary, they like to create the same things, and validate their audience rather than entertain or challenge them.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1082186White Wolf has never been particularly good at game design. That they have good ideas sometimes only makes the whole that much more frustrating.

Tell me about it. Even OP's new house system #Storypath is an overcomplicated mess.

On the other hand I'm rather impressed with V5 mechanically speaking.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1082186Requiem 2e claims to be a storytelling game, but the vast majority of the devotions are combat-centric. Are the writers even aware of the hypocrisy?

This sort of thing is so common in RPGs that I sometimes wonder if any designers are aware of it.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1082186Sometimes changes are necessary for a brand to flourish, because toxic communities don't always translate into good sales. Toxic communities drive people away. Magic: The Gathering is good example. As is the Captain Marvel movie, which made a billion dollars despite widespread hate from online parties.

But contrary to what some seem to think, changing the brand doesn't flush the toxic out.

Rick & Morty fandom is full of idiots. Steven Universe fandom is full of bullies. These fans didn't just miss the core themes of their fandom, but adopted the exact opposite ethos in the process. Changing the brand would do nothing to extricate these individuals, only alienate the ones who do get it.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1082186It speak volumes that the funny talking Malkavian class is what most fans of the video game talk about, despite the fact that this is an absolutely terrible portrayal of mental illness and is completely at odds with any kind of grimdark atmosphere.

Malkavians emerged as the most popular clan when White Wolf did their survey, and I think a lot of that has to do with not taking the grimdark future of the WoD so seriously. But SJWs take everything seriously, which is another reason I think the #Bloodlines sequel is heading for disaster.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1082186Chronicles of Darkness 1e has an adamantine metal on DriveThruRPG. So do several other Chronicles of Darkness books.

I looked this up recently, and it's interesting to see that both obsolete corebooks are present, and both Mage corebooks are in the top 10. Thing is I'm not sure how many of those titles were bought mistakenly, as not knowing which game line or edition is which is still an ongoing problem.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1082231Speaking of flowcharts for spirits, the CoD2e spirit rules stripped away the previously evocative descriptions of spiritual manifestations.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1082354I've been reading over the Chronicles of Darkness 2e book after years of not paying attention. Damn, it shears away everything interesting from the 1e.

I've noticed new editions (such as for Shadowrun, Monsterhearts, Unknown Armies, and Over the Edge) tend to be far less evocative than their predecessors, and I'm not sure why.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1082686I see a lot of leftists praising Paradox for taking a proactive stance on LGBT and mental illness.

Despite the fact they don't actually know what that that stance is, which will only become apparent once the game is released.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1082686The tribes and traditions are literally loony SJWs who want to destroy civilization.

Well yeah, but theses are games about playing monsters after all.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1082686The Akashic Brotherhood is supposed to represent the entirety of East Asian culture, and the Dreamspeakers represent all the dark skinned people who suffered under Western imperialism. Meanwhile, there are equally powerful traditions for wiccans, hackers, mad scientists, christians, stoners, hermetics, goths and serial killers.

It's all essentially high school cliques. The entire WoD is based on high school cliques.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1082686The Get of Fenris murdered all of its members who were nazis or neo-nazis, while still trying to claim they have the right to use the swastika because of its Indian origins. Hypocrisy and genocide, oh my!

The Black Furies are known to murder any boys they birth. They claim that the reason why the patriarchy took over is because the wyrm taught men where babies come from, and that every male culture hero worldwide was actually evil.

The Wendigo tribe worships the freaking wendigo, which in modern Algonquin culture is depicted as a Satan figure and a representation of Western imperialism and capitalism.

But the tribes are supposed to be backwards and problematic.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1082686The werewolf's hopeless war against the wyrm now rings hollow because polls indicate that a billion people support environmentalism. China and India have the worst pollution problems, the biggest populations, and they're leading the environmentalist movement.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1082693in a few decades when China and India have rendered solar power so cheap that it's the only power source available, and are spending uncountable sums of money on solving remaining environmental problems...

I'll believe that when I see it.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1082710Curious.

Why even have vampires start out as human?

There were two ideas. The first idea was a change to the Vampire social structure. Vampires were not lone predators with solo havens, but social creatures who shared a communal haven. The vampires of each House (clan) lived together in the same house and took the same name. The general clan concepts were there, but the names were different. So the artsy vampires were House Montblanc, the rich vampires were House Argent, etc. You changed your name to the family's name when you were embraced, to symbolize that you had left your mortal life behind. Each vampire House had a heavily fortified mansion. The open streets were dangerous, since so many of the families had vendettas against each other. I think I got this idea from the movie Underworld, combined with Dune.  

The second idea was that vampire blood had more mystic properties. The embrace not only granted you vampire powers, but transformed your physical appearance to the point where you did not look like your mortal self. There was an in-game reason for this: centuries ago the Camirilla elders worked a ritual to make this happen in order to strengthen the Masquerade.

The Anarchs/Caitiff were replaced with the Exiled. If you committed a crime against your House, they drained you of your blood (which meant you no longer had access to their signature discipline,) fed you some mortal blood so you would not frenzy, and kicked you out on the street. Exiled were open prey for other vampires, and would often band together for mutual defense or revenge. And sometimes they were employed by the Houses or the Prince as disposable agents.  

So why have the vampires start out human? Don't know. Your mortal life was not important, in fact, you were encouraged to leave it behind, even to the point of faking your own death. As for Humanity? Didn't use it. This wasn't a game about personal horror or succumbing to the Beast-- those themes had long since been played out. I have no problem with "superheroes with fangs" and I guess that's sort of what this was. Even so, I can't say it was a success. There were too many changes and some of the players just wanted to go back to tried and true "Camirilla fights the Sabbat" nonsense.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;1082732You are sadly not wrong, and all fan communities seem to be heading this way.

Oh joy!

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;1082732I was actually referring to both, but now that you mention it, this was less of a problem in the original WoD because of how evocative it was, and the mechanics were less disruptive to the concepts inspired.

The mechanics are largely the same in structure, so I don't see how WoD is less disruptive.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;1082732CoD in the meantime claims to be a toolbox, yet fights you whenever you try and use it as such. It has definite ideas of what it wants to be, but refuses to just come out and tell you what that is.

Totally. I can't remember how many times I've criticized this hypocrisy.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;1082732I never found WtA to be this limited.

You're very lucky then.

I was referring to both Apocalypse and Forsaken. They force you to either become an eco-terrorist or a vice cop, respectively. You can certainly try to avoid that, but it's built into the cosmology of the setting.

In Apocalypse if you don't fight the wyrm, then you're contributing to the titular apocalypse. However, it's a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation because you can't stop the apocalypse no matter what you do.

In Forsaken, spirits wreak havoc on a semi-regular basis because their alien nature means they have no sense of restraint and even though homeostasis will kick in eventually it will cause a lot of damage in the mean time. If you're a werewolf, then you're one of the few people who can prevent spirits from wreaking havoc. You have a responsibility... unless you pick up one of the many alternate setting options published somewhere among the dozens of books available to buy and nightmarish to search through.

(I prefer the approach in C.J. Carella's WitchCraft by far. Rather than a constantly hostile spirit world that isn't feasible to deal with due to poorly balanced statistics, spirits exist in our world but only become a problem if something or somebody messes with their physical representation.)

And trying to suggest alternatives for the Apocalypse setting gets pointless dislike from the fans, despite the 3e ST handbook providing alternate setting options. Toxicity rears its ugly head yet again.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;1082732While Lost may be the best game OP ever made, I still think doing it justice in a video game would be more difficult and less compelling than with Dreaming, which has a stronger brand, wider appeal, clear character concepts, well defined powers, and two worlds which overlap. It would basically be 'Malkavian: The Game' without all the problematic mental illness baggage.

Lost on the other hand would require a lot more work and lose a lot in translation.

Dreaming doesn't have a stronger brand or wider appeal. It was cancelled due to low sales and only came back as an anniversary gift, and it's only still "in print" because of e-retailers making preservation easy. Lost proved so popular that it was continued despite originally intended as a limited product line, back in the days when White Wolf still existed as a company.

As for being "easier" to adapt because the powers are "well defined"... the arts and realms mechanic were criticized really hard for being difficult to understand. A video game adaptation is expected to be very different in its implementation, as shown by Redemption and Bloodlines adaptation of the tabletop mechanics. Dreaming and Lost would lose as much in translation as those two games, perhaps much more if Bloodlines 2 is anything to go by.

Dreaming's "clear character concepts" are hugely eurocentric and perhaps racist. Lost has a huge amount of appeal because it takes inspiration from the archetypes underlying all of human mythology world wide, rather than any particular culture.

You could certainly try to combine them, though. IIRC, years and years ago a guy by the screen name Luxifer published a bunch of Lost fan books that introduced concepts from Dreaming, such as chimerical reality and the shadow court.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;1082732I'm hesitant to jump to these conclusions, but the evidence is starting to make that very difficult.

I don't actually know whether that's the case. As you said, all communities are becoming increasingly toxic.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;1082732Tell me about it. Even OP's new house system #Storypath is an overcomplicated mess.

On the other hand I'm rather impressed with V5 mechanically speaking.

V5 has made some improvements, but nowhere near enough. At this point if I want to play a vampire game then I will only ever use one of the indie games.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;1082732This sort of thing is so common in RPGs that I sometimes wonder if any designers are aware of it.

So true.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;1082732But contrary to what some seem to think, changing the brand doesn't flush the toxic out.

Rick & Morty fandom is full of idiots. Steven Universe fandom is full of bullies. These fans didn't just miss the core themes of their fandom, but adopted the exact opposite ethos in the process. Changing the brand would do nothing to extricate these individuals, only alienate the ones who do get it.

That doesn't explain the anecdotes I heard on Malcolm Sheppard's blog years and years ago in which he called tabletop communities toxic and said that video game designer friends of his do their very best to design their work in a way to drive such toxic people away.

You could certainly make the case that this doesn't work, and even if some are driven away then others will take their place. Like a metaphorical hydra.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;1082732Malkavians emerged as the most popular clan when White Wolf did their survey, and I think a lot of that has to do with not taking the grimdark future of the WoD so seriously. But SJWs take everything seriously, which is another reason I think the #Bloodlines sequel is heading for disaster.

It doesn't matter what the SJWs think. It's still really offensive to treat mental illness as the class clown. I've have traumatizing experiences with mentally ill individuals, so when I think of mental illness I think more along the lines of abusers, stalkers, serial killers and so forth. The malkavians aren't just offensive to the many, many people in society who are mentally ill, but also to the people who dealt with the mentally ill like caretakers, family and abuse victims.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;1082732I looked this up recently, and it's interesting to see that both obsolete corebooks are present, and both Mage corebooks are in the top 10. Thing is I'm not sure how many of those titles were bought mistakenly, as not knowing which game line or edition is which is still an ongoing problem.

That is indeed a problem. Hence why I have advocated for condensing everything into campaign setting options for a shared rules book, like how D&D's 5e books reference the decades of history that came before.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;1082732I've noticed new editions (such as for Shadowrun, Monsterhearts, Unknown Armies, and Over the Edge) tend to be far less evocative than their predecessors, and I'm not sure why.

I think it might be because the new editions are targeted to returning fans who are expected to have already internalized the fluff from the previous edition, as opposed to maintaining appeal for new fans.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;1082732Despite the fact they don't actually know what that that stance is, which will only become apparent once the game is released.

I can't wait to see what happens.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;1082732Well yeah, but theses are games about playing monsters after all.

Again, a toxic community has created a lot of people who either enjoy playing amoral monsters or think said monsters are heroic.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;1082732It's all essentially high school cliques. The entire WoD is based on high school cliques.

True that. I can't remember how many times I've said this myself. It still frustrates me that apologists either ignore this or make silly excuses for it.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;1082732But the tribes are supposed to be backwards and problematic.

Indeed. The toxic fans didn't get the memo and think these lunatics are heroic.

Whenever you suggest changing up the setting to be morally ambiguous instead of apocalyptic black and white, the fans dismiss it and call you names.

Even something as simple as suggesting applying the beast courts organization to the Western world gets dismissed.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;1082732I'll believe that when I see it.

China and India are heavily polluted and undergoing extreme climate change. The evidence is clear to everyone and they accept it. They are suffering and dying every day and they know that the only way to survive is to adopt sustainable environmentalist policies.

People in the Western world are heavily isolated from this because our population density has always been lower and our earlier affluence resulted in our population growth rate peaking decades ago, resulting in much lower rates of pollution. If not for immigration from Mexico and the Middle East, then our populations would be declining and our social safety nets would collapse with no new blood to prop them up.

Quote from: Aglondir;1082747There were two ideas. The first idea was a change to the Vampire social structure. Vampires were not lone predators with solo havens, but social creatures who shared a communal haven. The vampires of each House (clan) lived together in the same house and took the same name. The general clan concepts were there, but the names were different. So the artsy vampires were House Montblanc, the rich vampires were House Argent, etc. You changed your name to the family's name when you were embraced, to symbolize that you had left your mortal life behind. Each vampire House had a heavily fortified mansion. The open streets were dangerous, since so many of the families had vendettas against each other. I think I got this idea from the movie Underworld, combined with Dune.  

The second idea was that vampire blood had more mystic properties. The embrace not only granted you vampire powers, but transformed your physical appearance to the point where you did not look like your mortal self. There was an in-game reason for this: centuries ago the Camirilla elders worked a ritual to make this happen in order to strengthen the Masquerade.

The Anarchs/Caitiff were replaced with the Exiled. If you committed a crime against your House, they drained you of your blood (which meant you no longer had access to their signature discipline,) fed you some mortal blood so you would not frenzy, and kicked you out on the street. Exiled were open prey for other vampires, and would often band together for mutual defense or revenge. And sometimes they were employed by the Houses or the Prince as disposable agents.  

So why have the vampires start out human? Don't know. Your mortal life was not important, in fact, you were encouraged to leave it behind, even to the point of faking your own death. As for Humanity? Didn't use it. This wasn't a game about personal horror or succumbing to the Beast-- those themes had long since been played out. I have no problem with "superheroes with fangs" and I guess that's sort of what this was. Even so, I can't say it was a success. There were too many changes and some of the players just wanted to go back to tried and true "Camirilla fights the Sabbat" nonsense.

Fascinating.

I find it quite frustrating that White Wolf has pigeonholed its vampires so much. It seems like you have a lot of choice and diversity, but that's an illusion. You only have as much they want to give you, because they want you to play in their sandbox under their rules.

Hence why I only ever want to play the indie vampire games now. Sure, you have to invent the setting yourself, but you at least get the tools to do that.